How to create Geographical Areas

Video guide

Access a short video guide here (link available soon).

PDF guide

Click to access this step-by-step guide in downloadable PDF format.

Introduction

When creating a Geographical Area, you always need to select a bigger parent Geo Area (GA) for every new so-called child Geo Area that you want to create. For example, when creating “Africa”, World will be the parent Geo Area. When creating “Mozambique” as part of Africa, World-Africa will be the parent Geo Area.

Please note that the general rule is that an admin GA can create any new GA under their own. But not above. For example, a Global Coordinator (Admin GA: World) will be able to create any GA below their level (regional, country, provincial, etc.); a Regional Coordinator (Admin GA: Asia-Pacific) will be able to create any sub-region or country within their region; and so on. You can consult Roles in STOCKHOLM for an overview of roles and actions that can be performed by each role.

If you don’t see any changes from one step to the next, try to refresh the page.

The actions described in this guide can be performed by: Super Admin, Admin GA, Admin GA Donor.

Step-by-step guide

1. Open the Manage Data section on STOCKHOLM platform.

2. Select Geographical Areas.

3. Click on the button Create Geo-Area.

Here’s the map that we will work with. In the upper right part of the screen, you can select the type of map you prefer: Open Street Map (the one we are using in this tutorial) or ARCGIS imagery.

4. In this example, we are going to create the GA “Southern Africa” as a Global Logistics Coordinator for Welthungerhilfe. This means we have a level 1 role in the platform (see Roles in STOCKHOLM), so we can select “World” from the drop-down menu that appears below the field “Parent of geographical area”.

Remember the main rule which is that the highest GA you can select as Parent GA is the one you are in charge of. Nothing above. If your role is different (level 2 or lower), you will not see World as an option but only the highest possible GA you oversee. This can be for example Pacific, Fiji, or Northern Division within Fiji)..

In this case, the Geo Area World appears at the top of the drop-down menu to select a parent Geo Area. To select a different parent Geo Area, you can scroll down the list to see all available Geo Areas or you can start typing the name of the desired Geo Area into the search bar.

5. After selecting World, all countries in the Geo Area World will be highlighted in light blue. Any country highlighted in blue can be selected.

Your map should look like this:

Now you have three options:

a. manually select all countries you want to include in your Geo Area, by clicking on each

b. use the “Search location (ex: country, province)” bar on the left-hand menu to look for a specific country

c. draw a polygon around your desired Geo Area. Click on the “Use polygon” button, move the cursor to the map and click on a point on it. A small white square will appear: this will be your starting point. Move the cursor and click again on a point. Repeat these actions as many times as needed: every click will mark a side of your polygon and a small white square will appear. Once you are happy with the polygon, close the drawing by clicking again on the starting point/first white square.

6. The countries you add either manually, via search bar or via polygon will turn red and appear in the list on the right-hand side, in alphabetical order.

7. If you need to add a country, you can click on it on the map. You will see it turn red and appear in the list on the right-hand side.

8. If you need to remove a country, you can either click on it on the map or click on the trash bin next to the country’s name on the right-hand side. The country is removed when its borders turn light blue again.

9. Give a name to your Geo Area and click on create on the bottom of the right-hand side list.

Next steps

You are now ready to create additional “child Geographical Areas”, such as countries within a region or provinces within a country. You can simply replicate this process by selecting the highest desired GA available to your role, instead of “World”.