Case Study: UNHCR achieves real-time, UN-standard global coordination for millions displaced with Mapbox

UNHCR Global coordination for millions forced from home

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, coordinates protection and relief for millions of refugees and forcibly displaced people worldwide. To manage fast-moving crises like the COVID‑19 pandemic and the Ukraine exodus, UNHCR needed dynamically updated, high-performance maps that comply with UN-mandated standards for national borders and place names and can be reused across agency tools and dashboards.

Mapbox Tiling Service and Mapbox Studio let UNHCR upload and process authoritative boundary data, create a single standardized map style, and deploy it across Mapbox GL JS apps, Power BI visualizations and ArcGIS Online basemaps. The result is compliant, fast, and reliable mapping that improves inter-agency coordination and data sharing—supporting real‑time operational reporting for events such as the millions of recorded border crossings during the Ukraine crisis.

UNHCR

Léo Martine

Information Management Officer