Serving Syrian IDPs and refugees with the help of cloud technology

Türkiye-based humanitarian organization Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU) works to safeguard the Syrian internally displaced people and refugees by managing and coordinating crisis-related information and support networks.

Recognizing the critical work carried out by ACU, Microsoft provided a strategic Azure grant to enable ACU to expand its systems and move to the cloud. A second grant provided ACU with visual studio licenses for the developer team.

“Before moving to Azure, we had been using on-premise servers,” explains ACU’s IT Manager, Khaled Aldroubi, of the benefits of moving to the cloud. “However, given our team works in many places across Syria, electricity and internet cuts caused our on-premise servers to go down. so, they often couldn’t access them, which was a significant disadvantage.”

Monitoring and responding to the Syrian crisis

Two key projects being supported by Microsoft grants are ACU’s health network program EWARN (Early Warning Alert and Response Network) and the organization’s IMU (Information Management Unit).

EWARN’s disease surveillance system works to prevent and control the spread of epidemiological diseases among Syria’s most vulnerable like Polio outbreak and measles, while its nutrition surveillance system assesses and address the threat of acute malnutrition in children under 5 years of age. The Information Management Unit aims to provide reliable and timely data that empowers better decision-making across humanitarian, stabilization and development organizations. Thereby supporting Syrian internally displaced people and refugees.

“Our reports are provided to organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF,” emphasizes Amir, “and we can now get information to those NGOs much quicker. When an aid organization responds to a crisis situation, those on the ground need up-to-date information to know how to respond – particularly when it comes to diseases or outbreaks. With Power BI, we’ve reduced the time it takes us to prepare a data report from a month to just one or two days.”

With Microsoft’s help, ACU issues over 45 reports covering different aspects of crisis management annually, including 15+ flash reports and 25+ periodic reports, meaning teams on the ground always have the most up-to-date information.

In future, ACU looks forward to providing data to aid organizations working on the ground even faster. “We’re working toward real-time crisis monitoring,” says Aldroubi. With staff now equipped to work anytime, anywhere, ACU is already one major step closer to achieving that goal.