Featured Image: Gardens for Health International’s agricultural agents complete a mental mapping exercise in Ndera, Rwanda.

At Broad Street Maps, we believe that health is inherently a geographic issue. In the U.S. today, your zip code is a better predictor of your health profile than your genetic code. And in much of the developing world, where resources and infrastructure are limited, physical access to primary care can be the single most determining factor in the utilization of health services, and consequently, the health of a population. Therefore, the majority of the problems health workers face in these countries on a daily basis are inherently spatial. Resolving concerns about access to services and coverage, allocating limited resources effectively, and understanding the distribution of phenomena across a catchment area all depend on geographic knowledge.

The strength of local public health systems is inextricably linked to basic infrastructure. And being able to visualize that system as a whole — one made up of health centers and hospitals, water wells, bus stops, and marketplaces — is essential for delivering services to where they are needed the most.

Maps were used in public health since the 1800s

More than 150 years ago, Dr. John Snow, the father of modern epidemiology, and local community leader Reverend Henry Whitehead set out to investigate the cause of London’s raging cholera epidemic. The duo conducted interviews and gathered data points, going door-to-door to track the source of the epidemic. As their research progressed, Snow decided to map of the distribution of deaths in relation to Soho’s water sources. The map showed a trend — many of the deaths occurred around the Broad Street water pump or around businesses that used the pump’s water. Bolstered by his visualization, Snow insisted that the city remove the handle of the pump. After the pump was removed, mortality declined rapidly, forcing the medical community to consider, for the first time, the waterborne nature of the disease. Dr. Snow’s actions not only saved hundreds of lives, they also marked the first time that maps were used to directly influence public health policy.

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Snow, J. On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, 2nd Edition, 1855.

Opportunities and Challenges in public health mapping today

Today, maps and geographic analysis are being utilized in a myriad of ways across public health. They have, for example, been used to record distances that patients have to travel to get to the nearest tuberculosis directly observed treatment (DOT) distribution points, to quantify a relationship between the accessibility to roads and HIV cases, calculate population per bed ratios at local clinics, spatially analyze clinic usage, and evaluate and improve ambulance response times.

But despite their proven value, geographic tools remain extremely underutilized in the field of public health. Anyone who has ever interacted with a geographic information system (GIS) can probably guess why. The software is incredibly complex and time-intensive. It requires either a trained staff member or a significant investment in consultation. And most significantly in the developing world, it requires complete and accurate geographic data.

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Analysis of the distribution of health centers performed in QGIS

Luckily, the proliferation of GPS-enabled smartphones is beginning to simplify the process of collecting and building upon this fledgling geographic data infrastructure. Tools like Magpi and ODK Collect allow users to update health surveys with the simple addition of a ‘Location’ field, thereby putting in place the essential building blocks for geographic analysis without exorbitant time, training, or cost. At the same time, Quantum GIS (QGIS) is offering a free and open source alternative to the close-source giants. And new platforms like CartoDB are making game-changing strides towards making web maps and geographic analysis more accessible.

But possibly the biggest obstacle to adopting these tools is a lack of roadmap on how to truly integrate geographic analysis into existing workflows. Smaller-scale organizations with limited bandwidth don’t have time to invest in new systems that don’t directly make their lives easier. Far too much ICT4D ends up being a burden. What we need are tools that streamline the process of analysis to decision-making. What we need are maps for action.

A Place to Start

Fortunately, organizations do not necessarily need to dive into software licenses and new tech to begin making action-oriented, spatial decisions. Hand-drawn maps have proven to be incredibly valuable tools for incorporating local knowledge, enhancing community ownership, and understanding local perceptions of distance and space. As Dr. John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead demonstrated, visualizing pertinent health data in even the simplest ways can elicit valuable new insights that inform future decision-making. And maybe even more importantly, the duo also proved that the grassroots process involved in understanding your “where” can be essential to developing a sound, and possibly life-saving, theory of “why.”

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Broad Street Maps helping to conduct a household survey and collect GPS locations of patients in the Sacred Valley of Peru

Inspired by both the lessons from London and our time in the field, our team at Broad Street Maps is committed to leveraging the power of maps to visualize information, identify patterns, and, above all, actively use this vital perspective to make decisions.

If you are interested in learning more, have any questions, or are just head over heels about maps, please shoot us a line at contact@broadstreetmaps.org. Our team is always happy to provide guidance to organizations interested in mapping at all stages of the process.

If you are passionate about mapping development data, take a moment to check out the incredible work being done in the OpenStreetMap, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, and the Missing Maps communities.

And lastly, for a true immersion experience, be sure to check out TechChange’s course on Mapping for Social Good. Course starts this week!

About Isabel
isabel
Isabel Shaw heads cartography and product development at Broad Street Maps. She has worked with Save the Children and National Geographic and lived in Rwanda and Argentina. She is a TechChange alumna and holds a BA in Geography with concentrations in Global Health and Spanish from Middlebury College. Shaw lives in Seattle, WA.

Green infrastructure hasn’t always been a priority in urban development. Now, more than ever, green spaces are an essential component of urban design to build healthy, livable cities, and urban planners have jumped onboard. They have started integrating green infrastructure, green spaces (parks and recreational areas), tree canopies, vertical green walls, and green roofs into urban environments. And they are doing it with the help of maps!

Geographic Information System (GIS ) and geospatial technologies are incredibly useful to plan, build, and monitor green infrastructure. Urban green infrastructure is not only important in building a fun and vibrant city, but also necessary for supporting resilient populations across an environment. Increased use of green spaces is associated to improve psychological well-being, physical activity and general public health of urban residents. As green spaces become important in city planning, it is crucial to be able to visualize them.

Some cities in the U.S already have green infrastructure on the top of their agenda.

Urban Tree CanopyNine cities that love their trees, via National Geographic

Access to green space; also an environmental justice issue

Though the benefits of greening a neighborhood are positive, they tend to increase property values and housing costs often pushing out or displacing traditional residents. According to researchers in the Landscape and Urban Planning Journal, “Most studies reveal that the distribution of [green] space often disproportionately benefits predominantly white and more affluent communities. Access to green space is therefore increasingly recognized as an environmental justice issue. Many US cities have implemented strategies to increase the supply of urban green space, especially in park-poor neighborhoods.”

Increased use of trees, especially in low-income housing areas has been shown to reduce noise pollution, filter air pollution and lower crime rates. Integrating trees along street sides of compact urban landscapes may improve environmental inequities.

While maps are only as good as their data (sometimes maps deceive the eye), they are a powerful tool in predicting and planning how cities grow. GIS and Remote Sensing go side by side in urban planning to help the decision-making process for new zoning laws, accommodate demographic changes and preservation of natural environments (wetlands, natural forests and rivers) on the border of new urban developments.

Here are three organizations who are already using maps to enhance green infrastructure in their cities:

1. Casey Trees

Casey Trees Logo

Casey Trees, a local non-profit organization based in DC has the mission to restore, enhance and protect the tree canopy of the nation’s capital by using GIS in their Research and Mapping programs. “We’ve compiled a map showcasing all of the nurseries within 25 miles of our headquarters in the District, Maryland and Virginia. These nurseries and garden centers have plenty of trees waiting for you to come claim them”

Casey Trees map showcasing all of the nurseries within 25 miles of their headquarters in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

2. Green Roofs for Healthy Cities

Greenroofs for health cities Logo

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities- North America, is a not-profit association with the mission to develop and protect the market by increasing awareness of the economic, social and environmental benefits of green roofs, green walls and other forms of living architecture. Green roofs increase urban biodiversity through the attraction of pollinators (birds, bees and hummingbirds) and reduce hotter city temperatures caused by the heat island effect.

Green Rooffds – Map

Powered by Socrata

3. New York Restoration Project (NYRP)

NYRP Logo
New York Restoration Project (NYRP), is a non-profit organization driven by the conviction that all New Yorkers deserve beautiful, high-quality public space within ready walking distance of their homes.

“As New York’s only citywide conservancy, they bring private resources to spaces that lack adequate municipal support, fortifying the City’s aging infrastructure and creating a healthier environment for those who live in the most densely populated and least green neighborhoods.”

NYRP has a map initiative that compiles locations of parks, gardens, community spaces and tree plantings across New York’s five boroughs.

NYPR maps

NYPR map that shows various green spaces in New York

Do you know of other organizations or individuals using maps to monitor green spaces in your city? Tweet at us @TechChange and @EvaAdler44 or comment below to join the conversation!

Interested in learning more about how mapping can be used for social good? Join Eva Adler in our upcoming course, Mapping for Social Good. Course begins on July 20!

About Eva

Eva Adler

Eva Adler is  the course facilitator for TC141: Mapping for Social Good. She enjoys exploring geovisualizations that act as platforms for global health and social equity movements. Prior to TechChange, Eva served on the Center for Innovations Team at R4D identifying innovative approaches to water and sanitation challenges across East Africa and India. She thrived conducting field work locally in South Carolina as a GIS Technician at Moore Farms Botanic Garden and in Colorado as a Research Field Assistant at Routt National Forest. Eva has worked in resource-limited environments gathering demographic, health and sanitation data alongside rural communities of Nepal. She holds a BA in Ecology and Geography with deep enthusiasm to collaborate with others who share the same passion for maps and social change.

In June 2014, we wrapped up the second round of our Mapping for International Development online course. Nearly 60 participants joined us from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin, Mozambique, Australia, Kenya, Haiti, Thailand, France and 10 more countries. They represented organizations like Oxfam, Korea NGO Council for Overseas Development, Chemonics, Danish Demining Group, Abt Associates, and many more.

Before we start our next Mapping for International Development online course on Monday, we took a look back at the previous round of the course. Here are a few things we learned together:

1. Learning to create a map is much more than learning about mapping tools

In this mapping course, the participants were introduced to mapping tools beyond just Google Maps Engine, like Tomnod, Crowdmap, OpenStreetMap, and many more. But before diving into the tools, we kicked off our mapping course with a lively discussion on an ongoing debate about the power of amateur cartographers in telling their story by mapping their own communities.

In a course with various levels of mapping experience, this discussion was definitely a highlight of the course. Tom Mueller, a GIS professor at California University of Pennsylvania, pointed out in the course that “all maps are telling a story.” And the discussions in this first week made clear the participants’ view that the communities being mapped should have the power to tell their own story, whether it means creating their own maps or choosing not to be on a map.

Some of the participants were being introduced to thinking about the ethics of mapping for the first time through this mapping course. Participants grappled with questions like who is or is not represented on a map, is a map biased, what story is a map telling, who made the map and why.

Mapping for International Development was much more than a class on how to use different mapping tools (for that, there are already many tutorials available online) but rather an excellent overview of the current debates regarding mapping for international development and current ongoing experiences.Fabien Maitre-Muhl, who works in the Community Violence Reduction section of UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti

2. The best maps require collaboration

Like the global digital mapping community, the participants and guest experts learned from each other in this mapping course. Nine guest experts joined us from OpenStreetMap, Tomnod, Ushahidi, GIS Corps and other organizations that crowdsource the talent of mapping volunteers to create better maps. The active engagement of almost 60 participants amongst each other and the guest experts made the four weeks of the course a great learning experience for everyone.

After the first week, we discussed the different tools used to create maps, and participants had a chance to share the maps they were working on. They were able to see each other’s work and find ways to collaborate and learn from each other’s experience. Tom Mueller’s final project for the course was creating a mapping project for his students where they used social media to map ongoing crises around the world. He created the project by getting feedback and suggestions from the other participants in the Mapping for International Development course.

“Thanks to all the other course participants. There were some really interesting posts in the forums and obviously some fascinating and important development and humanitarian work is going on around the globe. The course certainly raised my awareness about the role that mapping can play in this work, as well as the kinds of barriers and challenges that mappers have to negotiate in a range of social situations.” – Gary Scott at Australia Central Land Council

“I have effectively learned how to create an interactive map using tools such as QGIS and TileMill starting from nothing thanks to this course.” – Mattia Zanazzi at the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti

3. Mapping makes the invisible visible

Fabien Maitre-Muhl, one of the course participants noted that, “mapping helps make the invisible visible.” Increasingly, digital mapping is becoming important in expediting humanitarian response as it is crucial to reach the population most affected by crisis in the most remote areas. During the Ebola crisis, OpenStreetMap helped map the affected areas to make tracing the outbreak easier.

Monrovia OSM pre-Ebola

Map of Monrovia in OpenStreetMap before and after volunteers mapped the city in response to the Ebola crisis. (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap)

Mapping can also help visualize the impact of international development projects. Mira Gupta, a TechChange alumna from the previous Mapping course “used election maps to illustrate to [her] research team that once geocoded there might in fact be very distinct geographical trends in the data” for a maternal and neonatal health qualitative study.

The last Mapping for International Development online course introduced the participants to various mapping tools, and more importantly, facilitated engaging conversations among people with varied levels of expertise from all over the world, and helped them get a better sense of the mapping needs and impacts for projects they were working on.

More than two dozen participants from 13 different countries have already enrolled in our upcoming Mapping for International Development online course, representing organizations such as Oxfam, Deloitte, Helen Keller International, United Nations, International IDEA, Vera Solutions, PwC, and more!

You can join us too! Sign up today for our Mapping for International Development online course, that begins Monday, March 2.

By Sairah Yusuf, TC141: Mapping for International Development (Fall 2013) alumna

Before taking this Mapping for International Development course last fall, I had absolutely no previous background on mapping tools, so everything about digital mapping was new to me. For my course final mapping project, I created a digital map of the countries and locations of participants of an international training camp held by Generations For Peace (GFP) in November 2013 (Amman Camp 2013). Given my involvement in evaluating the impact of this training, I wanted a way to visualise the effectiveness of the training.

Here are the steps that I took for my introductory experience in creating a map for my work at Generations For Peace:

Step 1: Define the purpose of your map

Throughout the course, the importance of defining the purpose of your digital map as a first step emerged with debates regarding representation and privacy concerns. My aim with this map is to understand the cascading effect over time of these Generations For Peace volunteers, who will be passing on their skills to new volunteers in their home countries in the Middle East. By maintaining this map from November 2013 to November 2015, I hope that it will be possible to visually demonstrate the geographical impact of this training.

Step 2: Select your dataset

I used data from Amman Camp 2013, including the home country of each individual trained and the geographical reach of the training. I felt that this data was simple enough to work with, given that this was my first exposure to mapping. That said, I had to create the dataset from scratch, entering street addresses/locations for each participant.

Geocoding data in the MENA region proved to be the biggest challenge because geocodes for most street addresses (which were predominantly in Arabic) could not be found in the APIs I used. In addition, we had trainees from the occupied Palestinian territories at the GFP Camp. I struggled with pinpointing their locations on the map since the occupied Palestinian territories did not show up as a country option in many of the geocoding tools I tried. I had to get around this by tagging individuals from this region as hailing from Israel and then manually changing the name later to reflect their location. This issue was important to deal with because I did not want any of these trainees to view the map I had created and feel like I had misrepresented where they were from in any way due to geo-political sensitivities.

Step 3: Select your mapping tool or software

The Mapping course featured a variety of tools including Google Maps Engine, MapBox, Ushahidi, OpenStreetMap, CaerusGeo, and Palantir. I chose the Mapbox/TileMill combination over other options because I felt it allowed me to customise my map more – I could colour in different countries and introduce different levels of interactivity within the map.

Step 4: Choose your design

My design choices were partly shaped by wanting to keep my map easily readable, using block colours and simple labels, and also to keep my map customisation as simple as possible since this was my first mapping exercise. I also wanted the countries in question to stand out quite clearly.

By introducing dots in different colours for new individuals these volunteers train in their own countries, over the course of 2 years, for example, this would show how much of a geographical “spread” the training from Nov ’13 had. It would also help distinguish between volunteers with different levels of training. For example, as time goes on and individuals complete GFP programmes and further training, it is possible to change the colour of the dots representing those who were trained at the original Camp to red, demonstrating their status as a GFP “Pioneer.” Any new volunteers they train can be represented in “blue.” The idea is therefore to improve this map and maintain it over a period of time to represent these changes.

Filling out more details in the second click feature can provide relevant information about each individual – what they’ve done in the past and what programmes they are working on now, for Generations For Peace.

Takeaways:

Basic mapping software can actually be quite accessible, even with very little technical training. However, there’s definitely something of a “glass ceiling” in its use, after which more technical expertise is required. Overall, Mapping for International Development was a really great course, and I’ve already recommended it to others! This online course covers debates in the field in some depth, but also focuses on mapping tools in the field in enough detail to have a platform to build on afterwards.

Are you new to digital mapping as well? Would your work benefit from geographically visualising projects and impact? Register now for our online course on Mapping for International Development.

Bob Corbett’s final mapping project on flood-prone areas in Bangladesh. (Note: this map was prepared as a mapping exercise. Anyone viewing the map should understand that it would need to be reviewed and validated by a qualified expert before it should be relied upon.)

By Bob Corbett, TC141: Mapping for International Development alumnus

During my undergraduate work in Landscape Architecture, I learned a method of analyzing spatial data by overlaying various types of information on acetate sheets or tracing paper developed by Ian McHarg, a Scottish landscape architect. The technique is described here (Note: I am not related to the author). I have always been fascinated by this technique and the GIS capabilities available today make this type of analysis readily possible. This offline overlay technique was the basis of my final mapping project in TC141.

In mid-2011, I launched SMS in Action, an Ushahidi Crowdmap that lists text message based programs worldwide that contribute to the social good. To date, nearly 240 programs classified under 29 different categories have been profiled on SMS in Action and viewed by thousands of visitors from 119 countries. With my general interest in mapping piqued by my Crowdmap experience, I ventured into crisis mapping with the Standby Task Force and more recently, Crisismapper deployments using the Tomnod platform. I have since worked on a variety of crisis mapping efforts from locating refugee encampments in Somalia, to tracking forest and bush fires in Colorado and Australia and identifying storm damage after Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in the Philippines to name a few.

TC141: Mapping for International Development

Taking the online course, Mapping for International Development, allowed me to combine my interests in ICT4D, international development, data visualization, and a love of maps. I very much enjoyed the format of TC141 with the combination of live presentations, weekly readings and videos, exercises, discussion forums, and the step-by-step instructions and “how-to” materials. Although I tried to “attend” each live presentation the fact that everything was archived for viewing at my convenience was a real plus. This being my first online course, I was surprised at the level of personal interaction available between participants as well as with the facilitator. Chris Neu was a great facilitator: always enthusiastic, arranged interesting presenters and shared an immense amount of information with course participants. I had no specific goals for the course at the outset other than to broaden my knowledge of available mapping technologies. I quickly realized TC141 provided me a chance to gain a capability to work with GIS, a long-term interest of mine. As a result, I selected QGIS, the open source GIS platform as the primary platform upon which to develop my course project.

Mapping with QGIS and MapBox’s TileMill
In a preliminary course exercise we were introduced to MapBox/TileMill. In a follow-up exercise I used MapBox/TileMill to create a simple map of the top ten world coastal cities at risk from flooding due to climate change – including Dhaka, Bangladesh. Given that we have a family friend from Bangladesh, I felt a more detailed investigation of flooding patterns in Bangladesh, an increasingly frequent problem, might lend itself to my major project for the course.

Drawing upon existing sources of information available via the Internet, I located shapefiles for administrative districts, the extent previous flooding, road systems, airport and hospital locations, topographic information, population data and more. After importing this information into QGIS I was able to identify recently flooded and flood prone areas of the country. Seeing how flooding can compartmentalize the country and disrupt the movement of people and relief supplies between areas, I then performed a quick search of key medical facilities and major airports to better understand which would be affected and which might be available to support relief efforts. The QGIS-based flood map was then exported into MapBox/TileMill where it was further refined using the tools and capabilities within the MapBox platform.

Mapping Bangladesh’s Flood-Prone Zones
Given that our Bangladeshi friend is engaged in development activities in the Khulna administrative district, I wanted to see whether flooding in Khulna might impact their area. Based on Internet research, I chose flooding from a 6-meter storm surge as the basis to work from. I then located ground elevation data for Bangladesh and loaded the file into QGIS. By filtering the elevation data I was able to “see” the general extent of flooding that might be expected in Khulna District by a 6-meter storm surge. I was very pleased with the resulting maps and the new skills and capabilities that I had gained. Prior to taking TC141, I was not even aware of QGIS or MapBox/TileMill. I feel compelled to note that my “flood maps” were solely academic mapping exercises and should not be interpreted to be definitive maps of anticipated flooding in Bangladesh. However, it did show me the new capabilities I had developed as a result of TC141.

Mapping in My Future
TC141 offered much more information than I have touched upon here. One area of discussion in the course was OpenStreetMap and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap. With my past involvement with crisis mapping I have developed an interest in pre-disaster planning. Although post-disaster efforts often involve hasty mapping after an event I am interested in what types of information and infrastructure could and should be mapped in advance of disasters as part of a preparedness program. For example, if we believe that climate change is expected to result in an increased frequency and intensity of tropical storms, typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones, etc. shouldn’t first responders and aid agencies have reliable maps to work with prior to a disaster? The Philippines experience, on average, 20 tropical storms per year. Accurate up-to-date maps of facilities and infrastructure needed to recover from such emergencies post-disaster should be mapped in advance in OpenStreetMap as part of a preparedness program. I am interested in learning more about the types of facilities and infrastructure that need to be mapped in advance as part of a preparedness effort and see OpenStreetMap as a logical platform for presenting that information.

Interested in learning how to build your own digital maps using the tools that Bob learned? Enroll now in our 4-week digital mapping course, Mapping for International Development.

As Syria’s civil war draws close to its third anniversary, actionable data for foreign aid workers remains scarce. Although the conflict has seen the birth of civilian reporting agencies (warning, graphic content) which have uploaded more YouTube videos than CBS News, CNN, Fox News, ABC News and the Associated Press combined, basic questions about where humanitarian aid is most needed and which delivery routes are safest remain unanswered.

It was this lack of information that drew Caerus Associates to partner with First Mile Geo to research opinions about living conditions, safety, and resource access from residents in Aleppo, Syria. Formerly the source of 35% of Syria’s manufactured goods, Aleppo has become a major conduit for humanitarian aid crossing the border to Syria from Turkey. Working with teams based on the ground in Syria, Caerus Associates and First Mile Geo were able to obtain essential data from each of Aleppo’s 56 neighborhoods. The study represents the single most detailed project conducted on the Syrian conflict, showing time-series data with neighborhood-by-neighborhood results over a period of four months.

Field teams conducted bi-weekly data collections on the locations of roughly 180 security checkpoints, as well as the conditions of bakeries throughout the city. Field teams also collected data about political perceptions, service access, and the presence of key groups on a monthly basis. The result is a collection of highly detailed maps that show everything from the price of bread in a neighborhood to the presence of armed groups. Of course, maps and data need to be accompanied by analysis and context, which are provided in an accompanying report that shares just a few of the following key findings:

  1. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al-Qaeda affiliated group is taking over Aleppo. While ISIS was a marginal player, controlling only one neighborhood in September of 2013, it now controls 10 neighborhoods – more than any other than any other armed opposition group in Aleppo. ISIS’ reputation for kidnapping aid workers and disrupting humanitarian operations make the neighborhoods it occupies in the east of Aleppo particularly dangerous to access.

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  1. The Syrian Government may be actively restricting basic services to opposition-held neighborhoods in Aleppo. Residents who participated in surveys conducted with First Mile Geo reported an average of 6 hours per day of electricity in opposition-held neighborhoods, while those living in government-held areas reported an average of 12 hours per day. Additionally, more than 40% of bakeries – a key source of food in opposition-held Aleppo are closed compared to just 10% of bakeries in government-held areas. The study confirms what many in the humanitarian-aid communities have feared since the beginning of the conflict: the most inaccessible areas of Aleppo are also the ones most in need of humanitarian assistance.

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First Mile Geo worked with organizers on the ground in Aleppo to survey which bakeries (bread that bakeries produces is a staple food in Aleppo) were still functional.

  1. Lastly, there is little consensus among Aleppines regarding who is the legitimate representative of Syrians. While the just 12% of Syrians felt that the Assad regime was legitimate, less than 2% of the participants said that the Syrian opposition (the “Etilaf”) represented the Syrian people. The majority of Syrians felt that “No One” represented them. Most importantly, these opinions were held evenly across all neighborhoods and did not correlate with whether whether or not a resident lived in a government or opposition-held area. Without a strong mandate from the Syrian people, it’s unclear what (if any) influence is wielded by parties negotiating for peace in Geneva.

Beyond providing key insights about realities on the ground in Aleppo, this study also highlights the importance of geographically oriented information. Even within the geography of one city, the disparities between basic services and safety can vary dramatically between neighborhoods and even city blocks. As developing countries continue to urbanize at a rapid pace, geographic methods such as those used by First Mile Geo will continue to grow in importance for humanitarian organizations looking vulnerable populations.

Interested in digital mapping of Syria or other challenging contexts in international development? Sign up now for our upcoming Mapping for International Development online course which runs May 26 – June 20, 2014. Would you like to access First Mile Geo’s data for your own use? Read their blog post to learn more.

This is a guest post by Matt McNabb, Principal of Caerus Associates. If you are interested in using mapping for digital organizing, consider taking our course Digital Organizing and Open Government. 

 

Today, my colleagues at Caerus Associates and I are able to announce the BETA launch of a new tool that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments collect, visualize, and share geospatial data in less developed emerging markets. We call it, CaerusGEO.

Geospatial in the Last Mile

The premise is simple. How can we leverage the cloud to deliver geospatial analysis to non-GIS users most familiar with basic, paper based workflows?

In our experience, most businesses, government institutions, and organizations in frontier markets rarely use technology across the enterprise. In some cases it’s a cost issue, in others it’s social stigma related.  But whatever the reason, ICTs are often used simply to support manual, tabular processes that already exist.

Want to run a survey? Use Word, Excel, and printer.

When it comes to spatial data, this challenge is only magnified. Collecting geospatial information can be hard enough, visualizing and sharing it can be even harder. As a result, geospatial information is often relegated to the expert user.  Of course, the GIS industry as a whole is trending towards accessibility, but rarely is it truly meaningful for most enterprises in less developed markets that simply want to know where things happen.

This is what got me interested in a tool widely used within the humanitarian response community called Walking Papers. The value proposition of Walking Papers has been that it extends geospatial data collection to pen and paper. Print off a map, mark it up, then convert what’s written into geospatial data. No magic. No optical character recognition. Just a simple paper insert that allows people without GIS units to collect spatial information in a way that could be easily geo-rectified.

The problem with Walking Papers is that it offers little back to the data collector. There is no visualization or data management. In fact, it’s really only a lightweight tool that lets the user print off a map and, through some gymnastics, let’s her then use it to edit a basemap on Open Street Map. It offers nothing for the non-technical user simply interested in using paper to collect information about events, or perceptions, or whatever other kinds of information one might be interested in seeing over the basemap.

For the past year, we’ve been wondering what it would take to create a tool that filled this gap. Let normal users capture geospatial data in paper formats and return analytical value once collected.

How It Works

This BETA of CaerusGEO is our first answer to this need. A user is able to create her own survey, find a place in the world where it will be centered, create an atlas and data collection sheets through a standard schema they created, and then manage, visualize, and share the data once uploaded. By bridging cloud analytics to paper workflows, we are able to drive value at enterprise level.

If you’re an NGO and want to integrate mapping into your polling, you can create a survey, manage the data, and facilitate sharing from start to finish. If you’re a business looking to understand your market, you can integrate it into your customer registration process and benefit from basic market intelligence. Although basic in form, the value is derived from a more reality-based understanding of workflows in these markets. Paper matters.

Smarter Public Safety

The very first place we thought to experiment was in the domain of public safety. What could be more obvious than the need for taking those antiquated paper and pushpin constructions used for crude crime mapping and making it more dynamic, analytical, and transparent?

As the Deputy Minister of Justice in Monrovia told me, ‘we send the police where the people are, not where the crimes are… this could help us see how to use our resources in a smart way.’ We can address this challenge by finding minimally intrusive places to insert paper maps into the pre-existing workflows of policing institutions and fusing them together for digital analytics by a single node with connectivity to the cloud.

In parallel, NGOs and violence observatories have the capacity to collect and share their own data, creating a basic framework opportunity for enhancing social accountability within the security sector domain. Perhaps most interestingly, by integrating paper-based mapping that connects to real geospatial data, the longstanding art of Participatory GIS in conflict management and of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design can be used in so many more ways.

Driving Value For The Private Sector

Public safety institutions are not the only ones we have learned can find value here. It’s also a pull for private sector development, particularly in the bottom of the pyramid. Microfinance institutions and others engaged in understanding their customer base face similar challenges.

By extending geospatial data capabilities to private sector development institutions and retail organizations, we have the prospect of significantly improving the precision and reach of private sector particularly to underserved areas.

So Much To Learn

Bending ICTs to the real-world challenges and workflows found in the last mile holds tremendous value to public and private sector institutions alike. For us, this experiment with geospatial information is only the beginning. We hope you’ll join us and give us feedback as our experiment moves on.

Matt McNabb is a member of the Board of Advisors for TechChange, and a Principal with Caerus Associates. For more, you can follow Matt and CaerusGEO on Twitter:  @mattrmcnabb  @caerusgeo

 

The past weekend was busy for the crisis mapping community, with a very full four days of events at the International Conference on Crisis Mapping.  While the ignite talks and self-organized sessions were fantastic what capped off the weekend for about 30 of us was the day-long activation simulation of the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHNetwork).  This effort was made possible by the support of the ICT4Peace Foundation who provided funding for logistics and for TechChange to design and carry out the simulation. UN-OCHA provided travel support to DHNetwork members who needed assistance in order to ensure that all entities could participate.  As well, key observers such as UN-SPIDER, USAID, the State Department, Department of Defense, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), and the Woodrow Wilson Center were invited to be present and give direct feedback throughout the day.

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