Taxonomy As a Service
Taxonomy as a Service
Controlled Vocabularies and Taxonomies for Humanitarians
Words Matter! Using mutually understandable terminology is vital to humanitarian collaboration. How do you collaborate with someone if you use different words to describe the same thing? How do you find the information you need if everyone is describing things differently?
This site provides access to OCHA’s controlled vocabularies and taxonomies as human-readable spreadsheets and machine readable APIs. They can be easily integrated into all humanitarian platforms, information resources and datasets with little management overhead.
See our Taxonomy As A Service guide (pdf) to find out more about what it is, why it’s important and how it’s beneficial to humanitarians. Vocabularies and taxonomies complement the Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL). We’ll post more information about this ongoing collaboration soon.
The taxonomies shown below are the first in a whole series of taxonomies relevant to humanitarians.
- Administrative Boundary Names, P-Codes and Geometry (BETA)
ESRI Json available
Contains country-based Common Operations Datasets (COD) administrative boundary names, P-codes and geometry. In some instances populated places are provided – including names, P-codes and coordinates. The 3-letter ISO code and the UN Short Term are used in the COD datasets and services.
The CODs are agreed upon in country/ region by humanitarian organizations.
Managed by OCHA Field Information Services Section and ITOS
Request additions / more information for Administrative Boundary Names, P-Codes and Geometry - Countries & Territories (BETA)
JSON available
Contains Country and Territory names from the United Nations Protocol and Liaison Office (DGACM), UN m49 standard, and ReliefWeb Countries list, together with mappings to related Terms and IDs found in UNTERM, ISO 3166, the humanitarianresponse.info API, and the FTS API.
Download Countries & Territories JSON file
Countries & Territories spreadsheet
Managed by OCHA Digital Services
Request additions / more information for Countries & Territories - Disaster Types (ReliefWeb)
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains terms used by ReliefWeb to label content to a type of disaster. Examples include Heat Wave, Storm Surge, Complex Emergency, and Drought.
Site listing all Disaster Types and corresponding descriptions
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API references endpoint through https with an additional parameter of your application name (appname), for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/references/disaster-types?appname=vocabulary
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Disaster Types (ReliefWeb) - Disasters (ReliefWeb)
Available via ReliefWeb API
The Disasters list provides access to disaster names and disaster types covered by ReliefWeb, humanitarianresponse.info, and Humanitarian ID since 1981. It also includes the relevant GLIDE number.
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API disasters endpoint with an additional parameter ‘preset=external’, for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/disasters?appname=vocabulary&preset=external&limit=1000
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Disasters - Functional Roles (BETA)
JSON available
Functional roles define broad categories of humanitarian work. Their purpose is to facilitate the forming of appropriate Operational Groups (such as the Information Management (IM) Working Groups) with membership based on inclusion of those with the most relevant knowledge and skills.
Download Functional Roles JSON file
Managed by OCHA Field Information Services
Request additions / more information for Functional Roles - Global Coordination Groups (BETA)
JSON available
Contains IASC designated Global Clusters and Areas of Responsibility. Global Clusters and Areas of Responsibility (AoR) were defined to enable more predictable leadership in situations of humanitarian emergency. The content includes the Preferred Term to be used for each Cluster and AoR, the Acronym (3-letter cluster code), the Group to which the term belongs (defining whether it is a Global Cluster or AoR) and the website URL.
Download Global Coordination Groups JSON file
Global Coordination Groups spreadsheet
Managed by OCHA Field Information Services
Request additions / more information for Global Coordination Groups - Indicators
Available via Indicator Registry API
Contains reference indicators, agreed to by the Global Clusters and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, that can be used to track needs over time, to support monitoring along the programme cycle and to aid in analysis and reporting.
Indicators via API https://ir.hpc.tools/api/v1.0/indicators
See the API documentation for full details: https://ir.hpc.tools/en/api-documentation
Managed by OCHA Coordinated Assessment Services Section (CASS)
Request additions / more information for Indicators - Local Coordination Groups
JSON available
Contains local Clusters, Sectors, Working Groups, Task Forces, and Areas of Responsibility. There is a separate Taxonomy for Global Coordination Groups.
The links below point to the JSON files exposed via humanitarianresponse.info. More information on Advanced API Parameters can be found here.
An improved/replacement Taxonomy is in development and will be made available on this site soon.
Download Local Coordination Groups JSON file
Managed by HR.info
Request additions / more information for Local Coordination Groups - Location Maps (ReliefWeb)
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains small locations maps of all the countries that ReliefWeb covers. Included are both preview (thumbnail) and full size versions of PNG and PDF formats.
Site listing all location maps, including formats, and licensing details
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API reports endpoint through https with an additional parameter of your application name (appname), for example: example API request
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Location Maps (ReliefWeb) - OCHA Services Menu – Website Navigation (BETA)
JSON available
Key OCHA online services highlighted in the header of many OCHA sites.
The full list of OCHA Digital Services is available from the corporate website.
Download OCHA Services Menu – Website Navigation JSON file
OCHA Services Menu – Website Navigation spreadsheet
Managed by OCHA Digital Services
Request additions / more information for OCHA Services Menu – Website Navigation - Organization Logos
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains humanitarian organizations logos used by ReliefWeb for display on their site.
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API sources endpoint through https and with an additional parameter for your application name (appname), for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/sources?filter[field]=logo&fields[include][]=shortname&fields[include][]=logo&limit=500&appname=vocabulary (adjust the limit value accordingly)
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Organization Logos - Organization Types (BETA)
JSON available
Includes types of organisations and associated definitions – e.g. United Nations, Donors, etc
Download Organization Types JSON file
Organization Types spreadsheet
Managed by OCHA Field Information Services
Request additions / more information for Organization Types - Organizations (ReliefWeb)
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains organizations’, unique IDs and corresponding Financial Tracking Service org id (where relevant) for ReliefWeb’s various sources.
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API sources endpoint through https with an additional parameter of your application name (appname), for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/sources?&limit=500&appname=vocabulary
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Organizations (ReliefWeb) - Themes (ReliefWeb)
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains terms used by ReliefWeb to label content according to thematic topics such as Health, Mine Action, and Humanitarian Financing.
Site listing all themes and corresponding descriptions
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API themes endpoint through https with an additional parameter of your application name (appname), for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/references/themes?appname=vocabulary
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Themes (ReliefWeb) - OCHA Visual Vocabularies/Icons (BETA)
Link available
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs (OCHA) has created a set of 500 freely available humanitarian icons to help relief workers present emergency and crisis-related information quickly and simply.
Download the icons at https://brand.unocha.org/d/xEPytAUjC3sH/icons
Whenever possible, credit as follows: “Source: OCHA”.
Managed by OCHA VIU
Request additions / more information for OCHA Visual Vocabularies/Icons - Vulnerable Groups
Available via ReliefWeb API
Contains terms used by ReliefWeb to label content according to vulnerable groups such as Aged Persons, Children, IDPs, Persons with Disabilities, Refugees, and Women.
See all Vulnerable Groups and corresponding descriptions
Requests should be made to the ReliefWeb API references endpoint through HTTPS, and with an additional parameter (“appname”) to identify the your application, for example: https://api.reliefweb.int/v1/references/vulnerable-groups?appname=vocabulary
See the API documentation for full details: http://apidoc.rwlabs.org/
Managed by ReliefWeb
Request additions / more information for Vulnerable Groups