Tag: Community Mapping
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Sitting Around the Fire
The Power of Participatory Approaches in Documenting Pastoralist Communities Pastoral societies are among the most dynamic and adaptable populations in the world. With an estimated 240 million people living in these communities across sub-Saharan Africa, their experiences are far removed from those of others. Not many can relate to a lifestyle that includes moving across vast, semi-arid,…
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The Essence of Community Mapping
Beyond Buildings and Roads Community mapping initiatives are often considered tools for empowerment. Also known as participatory mapping, community mapping is a process where communities gather data and create maps representing their local knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. This approach includes social, cultural, and environmental information, and goes beyond traditional mapping. However, in recent years, many…
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Nungwi, Chwaka, and Makunduchi Mapping
In 2020 and 2021, Spatial Collective provided mapping services for Zanzibar’s Nungwi, Chwaka, and Makunduchi settlements. The project fell under the broad framework of the Tanzania Urban Resilience Program and was meant to showcase how locally accessible, low-cost technologies can support resilience building and urban development planning by producing high-quality spatial information. Specifically, the assignment…
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Community Mapping Urban Risks in Mwanza
In late 2020 and early 2021, Spatial Collective (SC) carried out the Community Mapping of Urban Risks in Mwanza under the broad framework of the Tanzania Urban Resilience Program (TURP). To complete the project, the company partnered with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and OpenMap Development Tanzania (OMDTZ). This assignment intended to showcase how locally…
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Mtaa and COVID-19
Informal settlements are often missing from the geographic and statistical representation of countries. Nairobi’s informal settlements are no exception. Very little information is available on the quality and quantity of public institutions and amenities, public services, or on the population itself living in the areas. They are often not even represented on official maps. This…
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Summary of the work completed so far on Zanzibar
In June, we signed the contract for the work on Tanzania Resilience Academy. Shortly after that, on June 16, we visited Zanzibar where we met the Resilience Academy team, reviewed the venue and equipment, discussed the plans for the training, and organized logistics for our team. In July, we prepared a Curriculum for the Industrial…
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Zanzibar Resilience Academy
Since 2017, we spent many months on Zanzibar working with the government and other stakeholders on data collection activities. The main focus of these activities was to utilize the rectified drone imagery provided by the Zanzibar Mapping Initiative and generate datasets critical to disaster risk management. Between May 2017 and March 2018, the first phase…
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User Experience Testing of Mobile Applications for Cadastral Surveys
Following our previous blog post titled Technical Testing of Mobile Applications for Cadastral Surveys, we continue our look back at the work we did a while ago on evaluating mobile tools/apps aimed at cadastral surveys and land/property mapping. In this blog post, we explain the tool we developed for user experience testing of mobile applications.…
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A neighborhood map
There is little accurate data about cities in Africa and a few effective methods to collect the same. Take Nairobi for example. Nairobi’s population has increased more than tenfold in the last 50 years. This rapid urbanization brought with it a two-tier development process where some areas are rapidly modernizing while others lag behind. Due…
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Open Cities Zanzibar
Open Cities Africa Project Open Cities Africa is an initiative carried out in 10 cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, to engage local government, civil society, and the private sector to develop the information infrastructures necessary to meet 21st-century urban resilience challenges. The project is aligned with the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery’s (GFDRR) Resilient…