Data for urban change
Data plays a crucial role in any serious effort to reduce urban poverty. It's tough to design initiatives and measure success without a clear understanding of who people are, where they live, and what problems they face. Without data, governments can choose to ignore certain populations, neighborhoods, or dynamics. However, accuracy issues abound, leading to misinformed decisions based on bad data or flawed analysis. The following examples cover various government and NGO data programs in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, and Mumbai. Read on to see how these four cities deal with the issue of data — then join the conversation in the comments below.
Case study: Data collection in a Nairobi slum-upgrading project
Katy Fentress, Nairobi Community Manager
In order to engage in urban poverty reduction, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the nature of the area to be targeted and the essence of the problems faced by the people there.
The initial phase of a project is extremely important, as it helps define the target group or area that stands to benefit from the intervention and break down the different issues in order to select an effective point of entry. Consequently, it is essential to collect as much information as possible in order to ensure that the project will be successful, sustainable, and reflect the needs of the people on the ground.
Data collection methods vary according to the commissioning institution, the funding available for the initial research phase, and the time frame in which the intervention is taking place. These different approaches can be as superficial as putting ten questionnaires into the hands of selected slum dwellers and calling this a "baseline survey." They can also be in-depth and highly nuanced, with organisations employing methods such as community mapping, participatory design, or ethnographic research as a way to get a comprehensive picture of the reality on the ground.
During the Huruma slum-upgrading project, the Italian NGO COOPI collaborated with Pamoja Trust in order to come up with a participatory data collection technique to identify the needs of the community. Chiara Camozzi, an architect who works at COOPI and closely followed the project through its different phases, agreed to talk to urb.im and explain how the data was collected and later used.
KF: What data did you focus on collecting? What was deemed to be important and how was this decided?
CC: In order to identify a point of entry for the Huruma project, COOPI and Pamoja Trust adopted a participatory data collecting methodology called enumeration. Project beneficiaries were involved in selecting questions that were important for the survey and identifying useful data to be targeted in the questionnaire. The focus of this initial exercise was to gather socioeconomic information on all of the different families involved. This included what kind of structure they lived in, livelihoods, infrastructure and types of service delivery they received, tenure, an area map, photographs of every structure and its inhabitants and, finally, individual needs and priorities assessments.
KF: How did you verify and elaborate the data?
CC: The survey was undertaken entirely by Pamoja Trust, although each team had a community representative present to ensure that the information collected reflected the reality on the ground. Once the data had been elaborated in a series of maps and tables, it was reviewed at COOPI, and any doubts or discrepancies that we came across were brought back to the community for a second review.
KF: How was the data used?
CC: The data collected was then used as the base on which to plan our upgrading strategy. It was important information because it allowed us to identify structure owners, landlords, and tenants and to begin a process of negotiation to secure the land on which the new houses were to be built. In the end we were able to draw out an MOU between the City Council and the community, in which the City Council gave full authorization to build on the land that had been identified.
KF: In what way was the data important in the monitoring and evaluation phase of the project?
CC: COOPI followed this project from 2005 to 2010, when the funding we received from the Italian Ministero degli Esteri (Ministry for External Affairs) dried up. Because of this, there were not enough funds to be able to continue into the monitoring and evaluation phase of the project. This was unfortunate, as the data that had originally been collected was no longer relevant within a year of the project being finished. We soon discovered that many of the original beneficiaries of the program had moved out, sometimes because they were unable to repay the housing loan they had received through the project. Although Pamoja Trust still have all the data that was collected, I do not know the extent to which they have used it to review the project outcomes against what had been predicted would happen.
KF: Why do you feel enumeration is important?
CC: Ultimately I believe that this approach to data collection is very interesting, as it allows all the different stakeholders to be involved and helps build consensus around the project, giving people the authority and certainty needed to successfully negotiate with the local authorities.
Mapping Mumbai
Carlin Carr, Mumbai Community Manager
In Dharavi, Mumbai's largest and best-known slum, the population is estimated to be a half-million people living within one square kilometer of overcrowded space. However, the accuracy of these "estimates" is questionable. Capturing accurate data of vulnerable populations can be difficult for reasons that include varying household numbers (residents and their families move back and forth between their native villages) and difficulty in gaining access to densely populated areas. Most frequently, however, the reason is denial: if the government doesn't have the numbers, the government doesn't have to react.
As Sheela Patel, chair of Slum Dwellers International (SDI), wrote in a discussion hosted on Striking Poverty, "Almost all cities have no up-to-date data about slums in their city, and their engagement with slums is demolitions. SDI affiliates undertake settlement profiles and present the city with status of and conditions of informal settlements in the city. The logic is simple: if you know who needs to be included then projects to address infrastructure have to accommodate them."
Up-to-date and accurate data on slums, the people who live there, and the services they receive is the basis for all interventions. Despite the difficulties, data is essential in order to respond appropriately to community situations. The reality is that accurate data is scarcely available on slum communities; however, gathering good data also makes sense financially. Funds can be appropriately allocated toward necessary projects without wasteful guessing games that result in defunct interventions.
A sanitation mapping project undertaken by Harvard Public Health students in Mumbai last year underlines the woeful lack of knowledge of the reality of slum situations on the ground. The students visited Cheeta Camp, an unusual slum because it is a planned settlement. Residents were relocated there "to make way for a government atomic research station," says an article in The New York Times. "The displaced residents were given plots of land on which to settle, but no provision was made for basic infrastructure like sewers."
Like most slum areas in the city, adequate sanitation is a major problem in Cheeta Camp. The lack of infrastructure planning resulted in toilets springing up at random. "The first thing the students found was that nobody really knew how many toilets were in the camp: the local authorities said one thing, local nongovernmental organizations another," notes the article. The students decided to undertake a mapping exercise to understand the reality of the toilet situation. With that, they found that there was just one toilet per 170 people in the 117,000-person settlement.
These numbers tell a powerful story: the relocated community was moved for the government to gain access to valuable land with little provided in return for those displaced. Years on, the slum dwellers waste unnecessary time waiting in line to take care of their daily duties, often in extremely unsanitary conditions. In urban India, the ratio of toilets to people can be as high as 1:2,500. Understanding where these toilets do and don't exist is important in order to advocate effectively for additional services, but this information must go hand-in-hand with settlement and land-use mapping as well. Space is consistently an issue with sanitation and other basic service projects, making it important to have reliable data on a cross-sector of variables involved in understanding cities, and slum areas in particular. (Read here for controversy in Mumbai over land-use mapping issues.)
Back in Cheeta Camp, students planned to bring their information to the municipal corporation for review to incite action. "By mapping the locations and functionality of the toilets, the students were echoing a process that had been used by slum dwellers organizations in India to force government to act," says the New York Times article. "The act of naming streets, counting citizens, and mapping facilities turns information into an advocacy tool."
Información, fuente para la planeación de la política social
María Fernanda Carvallo, Gestor Comunitario de Mexico D.F.
Data is the main input for social policy design in terms of diagnosing and addressing social problems, including poverty reduction. The CONEVAL and Evalúa DF councils were created to obtain data on the dimensions of poverty, vulnerability, and inequality in Mexico. However, it is important to reflect on the extent to which public policies really address social problems, as there are often issues with the understanding and measurement of data.
Las ideas mueven al mundo, al igual que los números lo modifican. De acuerdo a Miguel Székely, un número puede despertar conciencias, puede movilizar voluntades, puede llevar a la acción, puede generar debate, y en casos afortunados, puede llevar a la solución de un problema.
Los números que han sido protagonistas en México son los datos que surgieron de la medición del nivel y la intensidad de la pobreza en el país. En el año 2000 con el cambio de administración Federal, así como de alternancia en el poder del partido hegemónico que gobernó por más de 70 años; el equipo de la administración entrante preguntó a sus antecesores cuántos pobres había en México, sin encontrar respuesta; ya que anteriormente existía muy poco posicionamiento oficial por parte del gobierno en torno a la pobreza y solo se contaba con estimaciones del INEGI, CEPAL y el Banco mundial. En este contexto, funcionarios de la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL) y académicos conformaron un Comité Técnico para la Medición de la Pobreza a nivel federal a fin de encontrar un indicador que estableciera la magnitud del problema, caracterizara el fenómeno para el diseño de políticas públicas, programas y acciones y evaluara los cambios en las condiciones de vida de las personas al igual que la incidencia de las acciones gubernamentales en la pobreza. Bajo la nueva necesidad de identificar el fenómeno del a pobreza, en el 2004 se promulgó la Ley General de Desarrollo Social que dio origen al Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, y estableció como su objetivo normar y coordinar la evaluación de las Políticas y Programas de Desarrollo Social que ejecuten las dependencias públicas.
Influenciado por el contexto nacional, en el 2008 se creó el Consejo de Evaluación de Desarrollo Social del D.F. (Evalúa DF) con atribuciones similares para la Ciudad de México. Evalúa DF es un organismo público descentralizado sectorizado a la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social del DF que tiene a su cargo la evaluación externa de la Política Social de la Administración y de los Programas Sociales que ésta ejecuta. Entre sus atribuciones se encuentra la medición de la desigualdad y la pobreza en el D.F., medir y dar seguimiento al grado de desarrollo social de las Delegaciones, medir el cumplimiento de los derechos sociales, la elaboración de un informe anual de la cuestión social en el D.F, emitir recomendaciones sobre las evaluaciones externas de la política social y dar seguimiento a las recomendaciones, y recibir la información de operación de los programas sociales del D.F., entre otras; lo anterior, bajo la metodología desarrollada por el propio instituto.
En sentido estricto, tanto las mediciones de la pobreza, así como las evaluaciones a las acciones de gobierno tanto a nivel nacional y estatal, se originaron para impactar en el fenómeno de la pobreza y mejorar las condiciones de vida de las personas; sin embargo es importante reflexionar sobre la vinculación de estas y de las políticas públicas en su etapa de operación. Dentro de la metodología de las políticas públicas, la información debe ser el diagnóstico de partida para identificar la dimensión y caracterización del problema en gestión, y de ahí partir con la planeación de la estrategia que impacte positivamente en la población objetivo; no obstante no todo el diseño de las políticas públicas en el DF y a nivel nacional no se encuentra justificado a partir de la información certera del fenómeno, puesto que las instituciones encargadas de la medición en mención se originaron años después de la instrumentación de algunas acciones de gobierno. Haciendo referencia a Jesús Gastelum, en su artículo "To what extent does social policy design address social problems? Evidence from the '70 y más' program in Mexico" el autor afirma que el diseño de las políticas públicas no hacen frente a las problemáticas sociales debido a esta desvinculación entre el diagnóstico y la instrumentación, particularmente en el caso de la erradicación de la pobreza; así como la falta de focalización de las políticas hacia la reducción de pobreza como objetivo central de estas.
Informação chave para intervenções de redução de pobreza no Rio
Catalina Gomez, Coordenadora da Rede em Rio de Janeiro
Segundo o censo 2010, Rio de Janeiro tem 6,2 milhões de moradores, dos quais 20 por cento (1,2 milhões de pessoas) habitam em assentamentos irregulares. O desenho de intervenções de redução de pobreza para estas populações precisa de informações muito bem feitas para conhecer detalhadamente suas condições e necessidades. Atualmente, Rio de Janeiro tem varias fontes de informação pública e independente para que os tomadores de decisão e líderes comunitários consigam planejar ações de redução de pobreza com objetividade e eficiência.
Uma das fontes de informação mais importantes para Rio e para os demais municípios brasileiros é o censo liderado pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). O censo é a única pesquisa que visita todos os domicílios brasileiros (cerca de 58 milhões) para conhecer a situação de vida da população, incluindo informação sobre aceso a serviços básicos e condição da moradia. O IBGE lidera o censo a cada 10 anos desde 1940. Este é um trabalho gigantesco, que envolveu cerca de 230 mil pessoas na coleta e processamento de dados.
Especificamente para Rio, a informação do Censo junto com outras pesquisas de nível de bairro lideradas pelo instituto municipal de urbanismo Instituto Pereira Passos, permitem atualizar os dados do Sistema de Assentamentos de Baixa Renda (SABREN), a principal fonte de informação sobre assentamentos irregulares na cidade. Aquele sistema facilita ao governo local ter dados atualizados para planejar e priorizar investimentos de urbanização de bairros carentes.
Outra fonte de informação relevante é a Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD), que também é feita pelo IBGE. A PNAD é uma pesquisa amostral realizada anualmente para conhecer características socioeconômicas da população. No Rio aquelas estatísticas levantadas são um importante instrumento para a formulação, validação e avaliação de políticas orientadas para o desenvolvimento socioeconômico e também para a focalização de vários programas de transferência e subsídios.
Como complemento das informações do governo, tem surgido varias organizações da sociedade civil e ONGs que vem avançando no mapeamento e pesquisa das condições de vida de algumas comunidades carentes no Rio. Provavelmente um dos exemplos mais interessantes é o Censo da Maré. Maré é a nona comunidade de baixa renda no Rio e pelo esforço das organizações Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré e o Observatório de Favelas, aquela comunidade esta avançando num censo que permitirá conhecer detalhadamente as condições de vida e dinâmicas sociais de seus 130 mil moradores. O esforço tem sido muito rico e tem um valor adicional por ter se coordenado com o governo municipal por meio do Instituto Pereira Passos; aquele envolvimento tentará garantir que os resultados do censo sejam utilizados pelo governo na tomada de decisões sobre possíveis investimentos de redução de pobreza e urbanização. No futuro esperamos ver mais inciativas lideradas localmente, mais com parceria do governo local para ter maiores informações confiáveis e atualizadas dos bairros de baixa renda no Rio e seus moradores.
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Comments
Unsavoury Mapping
Carlin, another type of mapping that is now considered quite useful is Open Defecation Area (ODA) mapping. As unsavoury as this may seem, the Map Kibera and Mathare teams here in Nairobi have found it to be an important tool when it comes to raising awareness amongst people in the community about the dangers of open defecation and consequently mobilising communities to act and speak out about the importance of living in a clean environment and receiving adequate sanitation.
To your knowledge was something similar conducted at Cheeta Camp and do you feel this methodology is relevant to an Indian scenario?
Katy, thanks so much for
Katy, thanks so much for bringing my attention to the ODA initiative. I haven't heard of anything similar happening here, and I don't think that was used in Cheeta Camp. I did a quick search, though, and while mostly rural programs showed up in India, I found this "Open Defecation Crowd Sourcing" initiative: http://www.sanitationhackathon.org/crowdsourcing-open-defecation-through.... It's starting in Tanzania, and if it works, they'll use this method elsewhere. Interesting ideas--thanks for sending over.
Open defecation mapping
Hi, just wanted to add that open defecation mapping has been an immensely successful tool in rural areas as part of a community-led total sanitation (CLTS) approach to improve community sanitation. It was piloted in an urban setting in Mathare back in 2011 (http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/resource/piloting-clts-urban-...). Overall, very compelling strategy for building community cohesion toward a shared goal. From what I've seen, it's typically more successful in rural areas than in urban or peri-urban areas -- rural communities map out problem areas of open defecation, and band together to make their community open defecation-free.
Any examples of successes for this in urban settings?
Participación es la fuente de la información.
Haciendo referencia a la imperante necesidad de obtener información certera que diagnostique los problemas sociales, el diseño de las políticas públicas se pone en tela de juicio puesto que el impacto de la implementación muchas veces no soluciona la necesidad de la población objetivo. Si bien es cierto que la aproximación al diagnóstico es esencial para determinar cualquier estrategia de intervención social, en los enfoques participativos recae un gran valor, puesto que según Robert Chambers, la comunidad y las personas son las expertas y quienes tienen el conocimiento más preciso sobre su situación de vulnerabilidad. Proyectos como el de Nairobi permiten que la comunidad identifique sus necesidades para el desarrollo de alternativas de solución.
Community mapping
In this week’s discussion, several community mapping exercises were presented, including experiences in Mumbai, Nairobi and Rio. Although there are some differences in terms of approach and scale, all three exercises share the common goal of improving the accuracy of information available regarding the living conditions of low income communities. In the case of Mumbai, I thought it was very interesting that the mapping exercise was also intended for advocacy purposes, meaning that the results of the mapping were used to reveal extremely precarious and unhealthy conditions of the Cheeta Camp neighborhood, which the local government didn’t know about or hasn’t really acknowledged. I wonder who has taken the lead voice of this advocacy process, how has the affected community participated and how has the local government reacted so far. Maybe Carlin can update us with any recent news.
I also found quite interesting that in the Nairobi and Rio experiences, both mapping initiatives describe some level of coordination between the NGOs and community based organizations (the leaders of the initiative) with the city government. At least in the Rio case, such coordination has been pivotal to ensure that the findings from the community mapping aren’t just "more numbers" and such results are taken into account by the city’s planners and policy makers.
How Mapping is Used as Advocacy Tool
Catalina, your point is right on about what happened after the Cheeta Camp mapping was finished. I've posed this question to Prof. Richard Cash at Harvard School of Public Health, who led the students to Mumbai last year, to see what's come of the mapping project. The school's website does say that the map was forwarded to local NGOs, the BMC and to the medical director at Cheeta Camp. I also curious to know if any of these organizations or officials are using the information.
How Mapping is Used as Advocacy Tool
Many thanks Carlin! I look forward to learn what happened with the process. Hopefully there is some continuity with the advocacy efforts that were once started.
Michael replied on Permalink
Have things like Google Maps been useful?
Really interesting topic that I don't know anything about. Maybe this answer is obvious but I was wondering if satellite imagery and more generally the sophistication and detail of things like Google Maps provides census and map-making opportunities where before it might have been impossible (or ultra time-consuming)? For example, using data already in hand about how many people tend to live in a one-room house, if you had an aerial image of a building, and you knew the number of floors, couldn't you come up with a pretty close estimate of the number of people living in that building? Multiply that out to 100 similar buildings and you seem to have a better than ballpark sense of the numbers.
Open street Map
Hi Michael,
So far I think mappers have found it more useful to use open source maps like open street map than google.
Here are a couple links of different organisations that have approached mapping Kibera, Nairobi's biggest slum, in different ways:
http://mapkiberaproject.yolasite.com/maps-and-statistics.php
http://mapkibera.org/
What the guys at Map Kibera project did was to conduct a census of one of the villages in Kibera and then multiply the numbers from extrapolating satellite imagery to get an idea of how many people lived there. This is similar to the process you mentioned above.
Ingredients for successful community mapping?
It often seems that community mapping seems to "take off" in some settings, but is less successful, or less explored in others.
Any ideas on what the key ingredients/foundation is for successful community mapping?
I'm also interested in the follow through of government/urban and community planning agencies. Specifically, it's exciting to see even the positive short-term benefits for projects to empower communities by getting their areas documented. But it seems these initiatives are so often implemented by external NGOs, private agencies, rather than the local planning and government agencies themselves (also a general issue in urban planning, at least in parts of West Africa that inhibits the continuity of planning goals).
Katy and Carlin, in your cities, how do you see this impact long-term planning for these communities as part of the wider urban space? How do these organizations ensure that these plans are used, updated, and serve as continuing planning resources? Are there any examples of planning agencies that are integrating community mapping initiatives into their overall paradigm?
For example, Katy, I am super interested in the MOU that came about between the city council + community -- is the city council also going to be using this mapping data for future resources (and finding ways to update it)?
Carlin, you talk about the Harvard students' plans to bring their mapping data to the municipal agency to advocate for action -- what was the municipal agency's response? And especially, how, if at all, are they using this data for their own planning purposes?
Catalina, I feel that the processes you describe are exactly what we sort of aim for, in terms of collaboration between different sectoral agencies, but also the government welcoming -- and using these inputs. I'd love to hear more about how this system, this collaboration between the government, NGOs, and the Instituto Pereira Passos, came into being.
Lots of questions, but looking forward to your responses!
Some ingredients for a successful community mapping
Victoria, you have shared great views (and questions) on this week’s discussion. Here are some thoughts on Rio’s mapping exercise and some ideas why collaboration of all involved parts became so effective.
First of all, the Redes de Desenvolvimento da Mare and the Observatorio de Favelas (the leaders of the mapping exercise), are well respected organizations. They are not only known to be excellent community mobilizers, but they are also known for their good quality research and technical work. This allowed a solid dialogue with the local government (represented by the Instituto Pereira Passos) regarding the mapping initiative and the expected results. Another positive aspect from the leading organizations is that they contacted the Instituto Pereira Passos quite early in the process, allowing an active local government’s involvement, which contributed to more ownership of the exercise. This aspect is quite different to some other mapping exercises where the local government is only informed at the end of the process, but is never a contributing partner.
Second, in my understanding of the process, another key element was that all involved parties were willing to collaborate and they committed to a final common goal, which was to produce an excellent mapping exercise. On the government side, the Instituto Pereira Passos has expressed its interest to expand the work with non-governmental organizations in order to obtain more accurate information on low income communities beyond the census and databases that already exist. For the local NGOs, the mapping exercise was only going to be effective when it reached the local government and it became a source for better understanding the Mare Community.
Integrating mapping into the paradigm
Basically from what I can see both Pamoja and Muungano trust are beginning to build up a substantial database of information and best practices across Nairobi and beyond. A couple years ago they published a report called the Nairobi Slum Inventory (http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/nairobi_inventory.pdf) - which personally I find very useful when I am researching articles. They do not however appear to be adding onto or expanding on the information they provided in the report and I am not aware how often they go back and check how relevant their data in the months/years following the survey.
I think there are quite a few organisations and academic institutions that have involved the two trusts in research projects and initiatives. Amongst these we find the University of Nairobi, Berkley, University College London, Architects sans Frontiers, UN-Habitat, UNEP and the World Bank to mention a few.
In respect to government projects however, the situation is slightly more complex and to the best of my knowledge the data that is collected through the mapping initiatives is used more as an advocacy tool for slum dwellers to challenge government policies or slum clearance and eviction threats. The problem is that there might well be a conflict of interests and it can be difficult for the government to work as a partner in initiatives of this kind when it could be the case that the land the slum in question has sprung up upon is owned by a politician and it is not in his/her interest to see residents get security of tenure.
With regards to the MOU, my guess is that the city council does not hold the data and is not involved in its collection and analysis. I might be wrong however. Maybe I can find someone more qualified than me to answer that question!
othuol replied on Permalink
community parcipatory mapping in mathare
Kathy what a nice artical and great picture of mathare mashimoni.
i am javin ochieng one of the community member living in mathare slums using digital tools and open source platforms to improve the live of disadvantage people living informal settlements of Kenya. in the year 2010 i was trained on how to do digital mapping by map kibera trust through a funding from plan international Kenya.
today i have started my own mapping initiatives here in mathare to improve the live of people last year i did a mapping of hot spot area in mathare slums using open street map platform and later develop an SMS alert platform here in mathare so that community members can send incidences happening their areas today the project have attracted a huge number of people sending in information of incidence within their areas.
thanks to the medicine san frontieres france for their huge support huge toward the project today encase someone sends information about violence in mathare in mathare we usually trigger MSF and they respond immediately here in the link of what we have been able to achieve in the last three months
http://uchaguzi2013.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/sms-alert-unveiled-in-matha...
http://uchaguzi2013.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/youth-group-launch-election...
Data Viz resources
Hi, my name is Jaime – from Spain, i have followed some of the very interesting discussions during the last weeks, and i was waiting for a subject related to my expertise in order to join the discussion.
I already notice that this might be a bit too long for a comment, I hope it doesn´t spoil the discussion.
Visualization of urban data is having a rapid development ever since maps are available online through user friendly interfaces – Google Maps, Openstreetmaps. Before this, GIS were the only alternative for dealing with spatial information. However, GIS often came with expensive licenses and what's more, they were / are not straight forward to use at all, meaning that they require specialized training which can be critical when implementing projects in developing countries. Though GIS have more capabilities for geo-processing and official-administration related tasks, community mapping projects are usually very well off with the online platforms provided by Google or Openstreetmaps. But before going into visualization itself I would like to comment on some of the main sources for data.
In any mapping initiative, it can be argued that there are two or perhaps three well defined phases. The first phase is data collection, next comes the structuring of the data into a coherent database, and finally – reading from the database, the visualization of the information upon a given cartography, be it GIS or any online map.
1. Collect data
2. Build a database
3. Visualize the information on a map
Data collection has become an extremely interesting topic with the rise of the social networks and other communication technologies. Data use to be collected through time and man-power consuming methods such as field surveys or others of the like. But now, data can be much more cost effective while at the same time reaching more extensive areas of population and with more frequent updates – even real time information. Such techniques, among others, are the following:
Remote sensing
Infrastructure cloud upgrade
Mobile GSM location
Web crawling
Apps – large enterprises
Apps – voluntary (community mapping)
Remote sensing is a broad field of research and it is applied to solve many different problems apart from collecting geographic or urban data. Remote sensing basically comprises the “understanding” of raster images by an electronic device through the implementation of complex algorithms (computer program). Satellite imagery comes first to mind when thinking of applications of this technology for the purpose of collecting information related to urban morphology such as the layout of suburban slums (as mentioned by Michael) or geographical features such as forest areas, seasonal water bodies etc. But the technique is not much different from the one used in some popular smart phone apps that for example, captures with the phone´s camera the headlines of a newspaper laying on the bus seat, and then has it download in pdf from a webserver. The technology behind is a computer program capable of recognizing text from a plain image.
Remote sensing applied to geography is widely spread and a common practice in most of European geography departments such as the Computer Vision Laboratory at the ETH Zurich among many others. Implementing a raster detection algorithm for a specific purpose or project can be a mathematically-painful enterprise; however collaboration with research centers expert in the field might yield a plausible and very enticing approach to the problem.
Infrastructure cloud upgrade (excuse me for making up this term) would be what comes out of initiatives that take an existing infrastructure such us public transportation i.e. public buses, and in collaboration with the local authorities, a device is installed that can upload simple information (GPS location + time) to a server on the web. These operations are relatively affordable and help to improve the efficiency of transportation by tracking the location and time parameters and visualizing the global system on a map. Furthermore, people are able to plan their time according to the actual timing of the transportation system, absorbing unexpected delays or any other issue that might appear, provided they have mobile access to internet. The project London Bus Checker is a particularly successful example
Mobile GSM location related projects have been used for research of intra-urban migration habits during specific time cycles. “GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications, originally Groupe Spécial Mobile), is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe protocols for second generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile phones” source: Wikipedia. GSM allows to geo-reference an end user within a radius of 10 - 500 m depending on the density of cell towers around the area. For this reason, and because of the compelling pervasiveness of mobile phones, some universities have engaged in short term collaborations with telecommunication companies to access their database in order to study human fluctuations within the city during the week. Such is the case of the project Ville Vivante in Geneva , or the study case of Harbin in China, among others. In my opinion, GSM location related projects constitute a fantastic opportunity to urban research though unfortunately, getting telecom corporations to engage in such initiatives can be a bit too complicated. For more resources check cellphonetrackers.org
Web crawling is as simple as programming a “robot” to read or navigate through websites for you, even though it might sound complicated, it is definitely less specialized than elaborating remote sensing algorithms. When a robot reads a website, it can stop over specific keywords and save the information related to that tag on your hard drive. With this technique it is possible for example to gather data upon a certain hash tag on twitter or collect articles talking about a hot topic all over the world. Of course, web crawling is mainly used in journalism but it is very applicable to mapping urban information in the cases where a geographic reference is given.
Apps. No need to say how many apps are out there by now, there´s almost an app for anything you can imagine. But there´s something really big about apps right now, and it’s that small GPS they have. Smartphones allow us to say / post / text anything and reference it to a geographic location.
All the major channels like Facebook, Google, Youtube etc. including the pioneering Foursquare are putting a lot of energy into persuading or simply “push” users to give up their location. These channels are extremely pervasive among the world´s population and therefore, knowing each user´s location means a very big deal. It means knowledge of our urban habits, where we buy, where we sleep, work etc. and global companies are surely willing to pay for it.
But the world of web and mobile apps can also be used to bring collective information into a community. In a world where everybody had a smartphone, if we wanted to know for instance how many people live in a slum and their spatial configuration, it would be as easy as to ask people to download a dead-simple app where they can press a button from their home and perhaps also enter the number of members of the family. But apart from the fact that unlike GSM, not everybody has a smartphone, there is a more fundamental issue to the concept. The problem is engagement.
Engagement is the key to community building and it is the same key question for community mapping. When responsibility and commitment are hard to pull, then creativity steps forward as the means to bring people to action. This is the approach of the private corporations mentioned above: give and take: to offer an attractive feature and get back some bits of useful information. In the realm of NGOs this seems to be also a valid approach, in Brazil for example, comes to my mind biogames: a very interesting experiment carried out by the Ozcan Research Group at UCLA to recognize cell patterns of malaria. The project consisted in a mobile game app that would challenge gamers to detect positive blood tests of malaria. By training players through an initial database of blood samples, players would judge new samples and results would be gathered in a centralized database, and compared statistically with the whole community of players. The end result was a collective intelligence proved to be more accurate than specialized diagnosis, but what interests us most is the creativity sought to bring a community to participating and boosting a project into life.
After skimming through some of the most frequent sources of urban information, I will try to comment very briefly on Pachube (now Cosm), Google Maps and Openstreetmaps.
Pachube, now Cosm, started as a platform able to process almost any kind of database or table format and normalize it to a standard online format shared by the community. It maps the info on top of Google Maps, helping to build collaborative mapping projects across the globe. It became very popular during the nuclear disaster after the earthquake in Japan; people built home-made radiation sensors and were uploading the levels of radiation measured in real time to Pachube. Results differed widely from the information released by the Japanese government.
Many eyes is a similar initiative brought by IBM Research, perhaps less focused on mapping but more into charts.
Finally, Google Maps is the most powerful resource for cartography worldwide. It is fast, reliable and can be easily embedded in websites, apps and anything you can think of. However, it is private, and this is why CASA (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis) of the University College London, created Openstreetmaps. CASA assessed correctly the enormous importance of a cartographic base to be used widespread over the internet. Initially, the Openstreetmap project counted on cartographic information donated by governments, but later on, it also achieved to engaged an impressive amount of volunteers to map chunks of their cities by means of a synchronized GPS and digital camera hooked on a bike (I have met one of these volunteers in Seville). Without large economic resources, it managed to cover the world and it is now an open and free mapping resource competing in quality with the giant Google. In my opinion, if confronted with the decision to use either of them, I would say that probably Google has slight advantages in the short run, but Openstreetmaps has a more holistic approach to information and sharing which might eventually pay off in the long run.
I hope this wasn’t too boring or too obvious, also apologize for possible incorrect statements lacking proper referencing.
Jaime de Miguel
@417tw
ps1: Some projects for free GIS resources are gvSIG – Valencia, Spain http://www.gvsig.org
ps2: Maptube, also from CASA is a very interesting platform for sharing mapping of data sets based on Openstreetmaps that works on the basis of the so called “mashups” http://www.maptube.org
For a more comprehensive article about Openstreetmaps, Maptube etc. please read here.
Data Viz resources
Jaime, your contributions are very much appreciated! They significantly enrich our discussion and exchange of ideas! Thanks for taking the time to present us this useful overall summary of current information technologies and their potential uses. Many thanks as well for providing updated research references and interesting examples for each case discussed. Please keep on sharing more of your knowledge, especially when you have examples of the application of the mentioned technologies in developing countries.
The fact that there are so many accessible technologies out there makes me believe that many creative solutions are available in order to improve the quality of data we currently have to formulate and implement poverty reduction interventions. Keep on sharing your thoughts and also please share if you have insights on how to approach NGOs and local governments in the use of all these technologies!
Técnicas de recolección de información incluyentes
Jaime. Gracias por tomarte el tiempo para compartir este valioso conocimiento. Como bien mencionas en el ámbito del desarrollo social debemos de aprovechar los recursos disponibles, como la tecnología, para tomar las ventajas que esta nos brinda y aplicarlas al desarrollo; por ejemplo la recolección de información a través del mapeo con las tecnologías de la comunicación. Así mismo, es importante el reflexionar sobre la implementación de estas estrategias en el sentido de que sean representativas e incluyentes puesto que las personas más vulnerables no tienen la misma facilidad de acceso a la tecnología para ser tomados en cuenta. ¿Podrías compartir, si es posible, cómo los proyectos que mencionas se vinculan con la población más vulnerable a manera de recolectar información en su contexto? Es decir por ejemplo a través de las redes sociales e internet se puede obtener información para el diagnóstico de proyectos, sin embargo cómo se podría implementar este tipo de estrategias en la población que vive en condiciones de pobreza.
Una vez más agradezco tus valiosos comentarios y nos encantaría seguir aprendiendo de ellos. Saludos.
dataviz specific context?
Thanks to you for this wonderful blog, and im glad that you find my post useful - i believe that the full potential of data mapping lies on the potential to community making and citizen empowerment, which is most needed in the context of the urban poor.
Regarding your question @Maria Fernanda, on how to implement these strategies in projects that deal with poverty conditions, i think it might depend widely on each particular case. From my perspective, which is more on the technical side, i would find necessary to have a minimum knowledge of the context and what the targets of the project are i.e. What is the technology if any, available to the community, what is the specific information that needs to be mapped. I could perhaps help to brainstorm if you have a scenario in mind.
About how to approach NGOs and local authorities @Catalina i am afraid i don´t have much experience myself. But i would argue that (depending on the country) some governments might feel threatend when confronted with real data going globally public - this is the case of US embassy in Beijing measuring polution levels and showing them on their website. My question would be, why would you need to approach local authorities when launching a community based visualization project? And regarding NGOs, i assume they would be willing to collaborate, but perhaps i am missing the big picture (UNHabitat is an NGO and so are many collectives like Vicente Ferrer Foundation, but they are two complete different worlds) - do you have a more specific context in mind?
Involving NGOs and local governments...
Jaime, thanks for your clarifications and new questions!
I was actually curious to learn your experience in approaching NGOs and local governments in the use of new technologies for data collection and analysis, because both of them are important actors in the field. NGOs support many local initiatives with technical and financial support and local governments are involved in policy planning and implementation.
You are right about that many local (and national) governments aren’t very conformable with the publication of real data, so this issue will always be controversial and difficult to manage. But I think this emerging culture of open data is gradually changing some dynamics and is opening a window of opportunity for many cities. Depending on the country context and I’m thinking about various Latin American countries where I have worked, there are cases where local governments are willing to collaborate with communities in order to conduct mapping/data collection exercises (see the Rio article for this discussion). The value added of this (and I know it is context specific) is that local governments can help to scale up initiatives that otherwise might just end up with smaller impacts.
Hi Catalina,
Hi Catalina,
Im sorry that i can´t be of much help much regarding your question. I do agree that there is a trend in certain governments to open the access to data, and that it helps communities that are working directly with these data. Governments can accelerate local initiatives and scale them up very quickly, because they have the data and their infrastructure is already nation-wide, but they usually lack enough motivation to make something agile and really useful out of these initiatives. As an example i was browsing through the fabelas inventary on the observatoriodefavelas website, i found a list with all the favelas and all the information connected to them, but i would try not to enter the site again, because it is slow, annoying and in general not eye-candy. I don´t mean to criticize what is probably a huge amount of very commited and hard work, what i want to point out is that while governments have been struggling to implement good GIS tools for their own use, it took only an eye blink for Google to make a fast and amazing world map that anyone could use from their home and now, my local government is using it as a base for their GIS. And this in general is applicable for many other cases where there is a direct interest in having the end user interact easily with the information at stake (think of any app).
Nonetheless, all the information available from the administration, if reliable, is welcome. Policies that promote open data are for sure very important because they add more layers to our visualization projects. There are institutions that promote such policies by activating and engaging the intelectual community in such discussions, working with universities, administration etc. They help to create awareness in the digital community and at some point this ends up paying off. Such institutions in Spain could be represented as an example by MediaLab Prado, in Madrid. MediaLab Prado holds several lines of research in digital culture and is mainly funded by the council of Madrid. Through years of work and research, institutions like this one have managed to articulate an argument to support open data. They have not only explained the concept of open data but what is most important they have made clear the big picture of why open data is better for instance, for our economy. In this sense, i would argue that prior to approaching local governments regarding the free access to public information, there has to be a certain work done in promoting such awareness.
I assume, that if you have a mapping project working on one community it is very easy to scale it up to a national scale (from a technical point of view), but as you suggest, reaching the population to engage in your project might seem impossible without the aid of the government when there is no access to internet. But then i think it is easier to talk to authorities because they can get credits for a project they don´t have to develop, just by giving some extra help spreading the word around. In short, i stand on the side of building the technical apparatus on your own, and then incorporating open data if available, or asking people for data (ask telecom companies, telefonica has a foundation for social affairs) in exchange of credits on your project, and finally asking governments to help you out promoting the platform among citizens, also in exchange of credits. In my short experience, once you get a nice platform running online, everybody will want to jump in for a share of the cake.
Regarding the census you mention in your post, do you have a deeper insight of how it´s being conducted? I would be interested in knowing for example if its they are asking specific streets to sign in the census and then extrapolate statistically to the whole neighbourhood, or are they expecting everyone to register?
Also, when you are interested in strategies to approach authorities on mapping initiatives, have you had a negative experience yourself or is it more like a general question to build up useful resources? If you had experiences in this regard, i would be very interested myself, thanks.
*correction*
Sorry, i was referring to the Sistema de Assentamentos de Baixa Renda (SABREN) GIS resources, not to observatoriodefavelas one.
Thanks for all these insights!
Dear Jaime, these are great contributions. I think that there are many ways to build up an initiative that involves open data; but the approach depends on the objective, scale and also of who are your counterparts/ stakeholders. Since I’m usually working with local governments and communities I’m always interested in ways to bring them to work together. But I understand it is sometimes difficult; and sometimes government’s participation doesn’t ensure scaling up initiatives.
In the case of the Mare census in Rio, it was done house by house! If you are interested in learning the technicalities, Im sure Dalcio Marinho Gonçalves, the census technical coordinator at the Observatorio de Favelas will be very glad to provide you with further information! Let me know if I can be of any additional help!
Tecnología y Desarrollo
Jaime, muchas gracias por las aclaraciones. Precisamente una de las innovaciones para la identificación de diagnósticos situacionales en contextos de pobreza es el mapeo por medio de la tecnología. Si bien en comunidades aisladas como es el caso de las zonas rurales, la infraestructura para el desarrollo de tecnología es escasa; por lo que alianzas entre actores como la sociedad civil, puede atraer tecnología móvil a las localidades para el desarrollo de estos proyectos. Si conoces algún proyecto en donde se haya implementado el mapeo en zonas pobres, sería de gran valor que nos los compartieras para aprender más de ello. Gracias por tu participación y te esperamos en esta y otras discusiones para seguir compartiendo ideas.
Saludos.
Tecnología en zonas rurales
Hola María Fernanda, voy en español aunque no sé si es preferible en inglés?
Lamentablemente no conozco proyectos de mapeo en zonas donde no alcanza la tecnología. Sin embargo sí que existe una fuerte comunidad de desarrolladores de tecnología cuya agenda pasa por la descentralización de los procesos de producción. Me estoy refiriendo fundamentalmente a la organización FabLab originaria del MediaLab de MIT, aunque también a otros movimientos menos estructurados aunque también muy eficaces como Hackerspace.
Probablemente ya conozcas la red FabLab, en caso contrario adjunto un vídeo de su fundador Neil Gershenfeld, en el que explica muy bien el propósito de la idea matriz. Los fablabs basan su filosofía en la aparición de máquinas de bajo costo altamente replicables, capaces de fabricar casi cualquier cosa. De esta forma, comunidades más pobres pueden producir su propia tecnología a partir de una inversión inicial muy pequeña. La más famosa de estas herramientas es la impresora 3D, capar de imprimir objetos listos para su uso real en una variedad de materiales que puede incluir materiales locales. La comunidad FabLab además, provee a los nuevos integrantes con una base de documentos suficiente para formar a los técnicos en el uso de estas herramientas, y proporciona una red de foros y espacios de intercambio virtuales donde nutrirse de nuevas iniciativas y resolver problemas de mantenimiento etc. Como nota, existen FabLabs en países tan diversos como Afganistán, Perú, Etiopía o Sudáfrica. Lista de FabLabs.
"A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication.
A fab lab is generally equipped with an array of flexible computer controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make "almost anything". This includes technology-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production.
While fab labs have yet to compete with mass production and its associated economies of scale in fabricating widely distributed products, they have already shown the potential to empower individuals to create smart devices for themselves. These devices can be tailored to local or personal needs in ways that are not practical or economical using mass production." ... continúa en wikipedia.
El programa FabLab en relación a las iniciativas de cooperación al desarrollo es muy extenso y quizás sea demasiado amplio como para discutirlo aquí. Pero quizás merezca la pena destacar FabFi: uno de los proyectos más importantes que ha llevado a cabo la organización en este ámbito. FabFi fue una iniciativa para dotar de internet a la ciudad afgana de Jalalabad y se extendió posteriormente a otras ciudades de Afganistán y Kenia.
"In January 2009, the Jalalabad FabLab wanted to bring high-speed internet to a village, hospital, university, and an NGO in the city. It used this low-cost design, building on a system designed to track sheep in Norway. The system could be easily extended to other villages and towns, and was designed to work consistently through heavy rain, smog, and trees.
Community members who used the fab lab received training and experience with the system for a month, after which they were given control and maintenance of it. Many locations began to join the initial nodes, expanding the mesh over the coming months. The longest link in the system was set up early on, between the FabLab and the water tower at the public hospital in Jalalabad. ... continúa en wikipedia.
Por otro lado los Hackerspace son una iniciativa mucho más informal, menos institucional, pero con una comunidad muy dinámica, flexible y eficaz.
"A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace, or hackspace) is a community-operated physical space where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, digital art or electronic art, can meet, socialise and/or collaborate.
Many hackerspaces participate in the use and development of free software, open hardware, and alternative media. They are often physically located in infoshops, social centers, adult education centers, public schools, or on university campuses, but may relocate to industrial or warehouse space when they need more room." ... continúa en wikipedia.
Aunque yo personalmente no participo activamente en ninguna comunidad, mi encuentro con Hackerspace viene de una experiencia breve en Londres y otra en Suiza, donde quedé gratamente sorprendido por las siguientes cuestiones:
1. Los espacios donde se celebran las reuniones de Hackerspace suelen ser cedidas por los ayuntamientos, pero no suele existir un apoyo económico fuerte, a veces ninguno, a estas reuniones. Es decir, la motivación de los integrantes suele ser desinteresada, o mejor dicho, por el interés de aprender, y aprender compartiendo.
2. Las reuniones son extremamente abiertas, cualquiera puede acudir y se atienden tus preguntas aunque no puedas aportar nada. La actitud es de apoyo, y resulta contagioso, de manera que cuando has aprendido algo estás encantado de mostrarlo a nuevos integrantes.
3. La filosofía de base es claramente descentralizar y democratizar la producción tecnológica. Esto implica que por ejemplo, en las reuniones a las que yo pude asistir, se fabricaban circuitos eléctricos a partir de placas de cobre en bruto, imprimiendo los diseños de circuito con ácido (es una técnica conocida que no recuerdo bien). Esos diseños de circuito a su vez estaban disponibles en internet gracias a otras comunidades que compartían esa información. La cuestión clave es que genera una cultura de fabricación que posibilita la independencia respecto de las grandes productoras de tecnología, tanto a nivel de conocimiento como de herramientas.
Traigo a colación un vídeo muy curioso del MIT sobre un niño hacker-prodigio de Sierra Leona que puede ayudar a ilustrar el caso.
Quizás estas redes puedan interesarte como punto de partida para tejer estrategias de mapeo en zonas rurales y desconectadas de los avances tecnológicos más básicos.
Tecnología al alcance de todos
Estimado Jaime, muchas gracias por las aclaraciones, son muy valiosos estos ejemplos en donde se ha innovado para producir tecnología a bajo costo y que esté al alcance de todos. Es muy útil esta información para evidenciar que existen organizaciones que están implementando estrategias para que la población tenga oportunidades, por lo que sinergias de estos actores podrán llevar un beneficio a las comunidades dispersas y aisladas .Definitivamente el acceso a las tecnologías es una herramienta que brinda ventajas o condiciona el desarrollo para estas. Gracias por tomarte el tiempo y compartirnos esta información.
Te esperamos en otros discusiones para poder continuar con los debates e incrementar el conocimiento para el desarrollo!
Has your team talked to the people at O'Reilly?
I have a feeling that you would find a lot of areas for possible collaboration. At the very least, it would be an interesting discussion.
O´REILLY
Many thanks for the information, we are very eager to discuss what other actors are doing in order to have more inclusive cities! Could you provide us more information about O´REILLY, what they do and a contact or web site. Thanks so much it will be a pleasure.
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