In a humanitarian response, sometimes just knowing where you are working is a challenge in itself. In complex emergencies like Ukraine, Somalia and Gaza, there are thousands of unique displacement sites in close proximity to each other. To further complicate matters, these sites are always changing, either opening or closing, growing in size, or re-arranging almost on top of one another in ways that make even maintaining a list of locations and focal points a major challenge.

However knowing where your sites are – and in essence where people are – is the foundation of any effective humanitarian response, helping identify not just where to work, but also understand more about populations and key needs. In large scale responses, developing a common site list has historically been a long-term, large-scale effort involving significant work within and between agencies and operational teams.

In Gaza, with large-scale displacement of most of the population, the response was immediately faced with this challenge of understanding where the people who need aid are. In the beginning of the emergency, while armed fighting continued, Site Management Working Group (SMWG) partners struggled to compile an accurate list; there was a large number of sites, no formal naming conventions that led to many sites having multiple names, and an urban setting that meant that many sites were so close to each other location-based matching couldn’t reliably identify what were different sites and what were different names for the same site.

The 2025 ceasefire presented the humanitarian community the opportunity to begin large scale aid provision. As the ceasefire took affect, people began returning to and moving in-between over 2,000 displacement sites – a challenge that in any previous emergency would have upended the data and information systems of a response. However, in the months leading up to the ceasefire, over 250 frontline staff across 11 agencies had begun using Zite Manager to collaboratively manage this list of over 2,000 displacement sites. In Zite Manager agencies and field staff can add, change, and update sites and site information as they collect data. Changes made by field teams are reconciled and reviewed by Information Managers who code sites and check for duplication. These changes are then instantly available to all the agencies using the platform, who can view the sites in a list, in exports, or on a map.

With Zite Manager, the response has been able to update and maintain an accurate and real-time site list that is shared by all. Even as humanitarians have increased their efforts, and there are more people are in the field than ever, the broad-based use of Zite Manager is making sure that all new information is integrated into this common and shared site list. This is allowing humanitarians to better collaborate and coordinate their monitoring efforts to ensure aid reaches the sites and people where it is needed the most.