First phase of water and sanitation mapping

The first phase of detailed water and sanitation data collection and editing is over. In two weeks our teams collected and edited 262 points including: 89 points with toilets, 108 water points and 65 open defecation areas.

What we learned from the numbers:

• The smaller number of toilets does not show the real picture as there can be many toilets at one point (we collected the number of units per point, but this is not reflected in the 89 figure).
• The number of open defecation areas is alarmingly high – there is almost the same number of toilet sites as there are open defecation areas – which clearly points to a lack of toilets.
• The number of toilets and water points will likely stay low because of the specific structure of Mathare: half of its buildings are high-rise apartment buildings that usually have toilets and water connections on every floor , which brings us to the next point:
• In order to get the real picture of the water and sanitation in Mathare, we need to figure out how to collect the data from these apartment buildings (it will need to be an inclusive approach, connecting community members, stakeholders, administration, government, etc.)

For the purpose of data editing we used basic mapping features to tag our points as amenities, like toilet and drinking water, and for ODAs we used the tag landuse-landfill. In addition to these basic features we added our own tagging scheme which we created so it coincided with the data collection forms.

There was some confusion here and there because of the massive amount of papers which contained the data of different points (something to think about in the future – how to get rid of the huge stocks of paper), but otherwise the data entry itself went well.

Here’s a detail from OSM showing all three features.

Phase two is already on under way.