The Practical Radical
MapAfghan Update: New Maps from Afghanistanelectiondata.org
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I decided to do a specific blog on mapping of Afghan data, especially now since Afghanistanelectiondata.org has put together all the open source data that is related to the Afghan elections into one nicely laid out page.
I think this is a very nice example of what can be done again with keeping electoral processes transparent. We saw something in the same vein with the maps during the Kenyan referendum (see my blog post Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style). What is as well exciting is that the data is provided – gotta love that opensource!
The new maps are really interesting. As well as the basic landcover maps, there is one on ethnic groups. experiences of corruption and female candidates. I have put a few snapshots of the maps below. If you click on them you will go to the actual map.
Ethnic Groups
2009 Experience of Corruption
I have as well left the old blog post on the Afghan insurgency in this blog – it is an interesting reference point on how far mapping has come in so short a time.
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Mapping the War in Afghanistan
This is an interesting map visualization of the presence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan from 2007 to August 2009. The maps are based on insurgent activity reports. They give a probable snapshot of “how things are going” in the war (not well me thinks). The use of maps combined with reporting is informative over time, though clearly there are possible issues with both data validity and overlap in time periods.
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during 2007 – November 2008
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan between January and November 2008
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during January – August 2009
** Taken from the International Council on Security and Development website. The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) is an international policy think tank working to combine grassroots research and policy innovation at the intersections of security, development, counter-narcotics and public health issues.
Tags: Afghanistan, Afghanistanelectiondata.org, Mapping, opensource, OSM, politics, Taliban, The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), transparency, United States, War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Warfare and Conflict
Usahidi – Mapping the world one SMS at a time
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Usahidi - Mapping the world one SMS at a time
I have been struggling to get my head around Usahidi, the Swahili for “witness” or “testimony.”
I knew it was created during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. I had many friends who went through that terrible time, and felt equally horrified and powerless.
Tags: #ushahidi, @openstreetmap, Africa, Crisis Management, Erik Hersman, kenya, kibera, map kibera, Mapping, Text messaging, UN-HABITAT, Urban Planning
Steps into Mapping the Unmapped – via Mapping: No Big Deal
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No big deal?? Yeah right! This is an excellent and detailed step-by-step process on how to do mapping in remote areas, and for a great purpose as well (the successful referendum held in Kenya. Check out my blog post Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style to see how mapping was used there).
Here are the steps in quick preview (go to the main article to see the details):
1. Season planning.
2. Try to acquire existing maps or make people create them from memory.
3. Get contacts in the area prior to your arrival.
4. Meet community leaders.
5. Find a guide who knows the area and the people.
6. Go to a local bar and have a beer. ** key to any successful mapping process! – DR
7. Go for it. Map!
8. Write a working diary.
9. Present the results to the community.
10. Finish your work.
11. Stay in touch.
Keep up the good work and keep us posted!
Doug
Mapping hardly accessible, rural areas, is always a challenge. Each area differs so you have to tackle it in its own special way. Yet some basic steps are always the same. I have written some of them down. In July, Mildred and I went mapping on Mount Elgon as contractors for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) on behalf of Map Kibera.
They needed information regarding polling stations in the area for their work on election monitoring. The information included geographic location, accessibility – both physical accessibility and the availability of cell phone service, information related to infrastructure of these stations, and speed of travel to each individual station.
Tags: @openstreetmap, Africa, Cartography, Geography, Global Positioning System, kenya, kibera, map, map kibera, Mobile phone, Mount Elgon, research, Science and Technology, Social Sciences, Technology, Youth
What it means to “get it” – Mikel Maron on Building Digital Technology for Our Planet
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I am going to go out on a limb here and state that I think Mikel Maron and his crew of openstreetmap people are some of the leading experts globally in understanding how technology – specifically spatial technology – can be used in the developing world.
Why you ask? Why them? Well, because they aren’t at 10,000 feet, nor 5,000 feet, or even 500 feet — they are at ground zero. Yes, they passionately believes in technology, Mikel is a self-described techno nerd, but he, like many of the others involved in openstreetmaps movement, are on the ground seeing how technology ACTUALLY works, not how we would love it to, or how we report it to our funders to get more money, or how it works for just enough time for our research to be done (read about the hole-in-the-wall project in his blog post).
I wrote a management-nerdy blog post a while back on one of the projects they were involved in — mapkibera — and if you get past all the graphs my main message was that the people in the project were asking the right questions — basically — how can this project be sustainable past the initial “wow” phase. The answer to this question is quite simple, and one not often followed by aid agencies — the answer is “LIVE THERE”. Yup, be there, not in a hotel, or the UN compound, or the ex-pat enclave, but actually in the place you are working at. Find out where all the gnarly bits are, and then maybe it will be successful — or at least have a better chance. Parallel and just as important is WORK with the people that live there. Seems self explanatory … but something that is not always done.
And, that is what Mikel and his crew have done with mapkibera. They came for 6 months, and have stayed for a year+. They engaged the community in an asset based approach – a la John Mcknight’s Asset Based Community Development – and had the people map their community — and community which heretofore had no community accessible maps. The mapping was done on a platform developed in Kenya after the post-election violence of a couple years ago called Usahidi (you can as well read my yet unpublished blog post on this).
So, this all being said, the following blog outlines the questions he and they are asking, the possibilities and the possible pitfalls. I’ll shut up and let him speak … (but read my bolded bits to see where I think he nails it bang on) .. ok .. i will really shut up now. Promise …
Tags: Asset Based Community Development, kenya, kibera, map kibera, Mikel Maron, Non-governmental organization, Technology
From Kodak to the Mobile Phone: Urban Data and the Scientific Life
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Mobile Power
This is a repost from the Polis blog with my comments (my comments first, polis blog From Kodak to the Mobile Phone below):
Thank you for this post. I think that the mobile generation with their ever more powerful mobile technologies are changing how we view, analyze and plan our cities. I work with youth in East Africa, and i have found that through the use of mobile phones, which are now prolific throughout the region, we have been able to not only capture images, both still and in video, but use these images to tell the rarely heard story of some of the poorest of the poor. (An example of such a project is http://mobilemovement.tv/)
I have as well found that “photovoice” is an excellent way to allow people to “map” their communities. I have used this technique with youth in North America, through the Growing up in Cities project , and more recently through work with UN-HABITAT on their community mapping project (you can check out a story a wrote for them titled Bridging the Digital Divide .
Tags: Africa, cellphone, data, Growing up in Cities, GUIC, kenya, kibera, mobile, photography, planning, polis. mapkibera, research, UN-HABITAT, Usahidi, visualization
Mapping the War in Afghanistan
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This is an interesting map visualization of the presence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan from 2007 to August 2009. The maps are based on insurgent activity reports. They give a probable snapshot of “how things are going” in the war (not well me thinks). The use of maps combined with reporting is informative over time, though clearly there are possible issues with both data validity and overlap in time periods.
Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during 2007 - November 2008
Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan between January and November 2008
Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during January - August 2009
** Taken from the International Council on Security and Development website. The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) is an international policy think tank working to combine grassroots research and policy innovation at the intersections of security, development, counter-narcotics and public health issues.
Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style
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Stand up for Kenya - (the Nation, August 3, 2010)
Christabell’s facebook post says it all, a key constitutional referendum in Kenyan is so far violence free, unlike the last trip to the polls a few years ago. In part this is due to citizens (mostly youth!) tweets and posts providing real time monitoring, transparency, accountability … leading to … Democracy.
Uchaguzi (which means “election” in Swahili) is a site driven by tweets and posts. The site provides real-time reporting on what is happening during the referendum in Kenya. Issues such as violence, vote counting, results, and polling logistics are uploaded and mapped on Google Earth. This information then becomes accessible to people locally and globally.
A snapshot from the map on the Uchaguzi site
Some examples of what is being reported
The development of launch site is important for Kenyans and for citizens globally. One has to wonder who might have been elected President of the United States in 2000 if this technology had been around?
If you are interested in this game changing technology go to my (yet to be published, but hey, take a look at the draft) blog post on Usahidi, the platform this site is based on.
Good Luck Kenya!!
Tags: constution, kenya, referendum, uchaguzi, Usahidi
Nairobi Reflection 3: High Touch/Low Tech
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Community Mapping has always been quite an amazing tool – it localizes knowledge, draws on the “mappers” personal and community experiences, identifies interconnectedness – all this coming together and increasing social capital (if you are interested in the concepts of social capital read Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone; to better understand how it relates to mapping, read up on John Mcknight’s Asset Based Community Development). You can check out some of the work that the International Centre for Sustainable Cities and UN-HABITAT has done on community mapping by checking out their draft asset mapping manual.
As I have written about before, the Kibera Mapper’s project take this to the next level by combining the “soft” components of mapping – working with community, getting them to identify their “assets” or “social capital” – with the “hard” components of mapping – turning out maps which can be used in community organizing and advocacy. These organizing and advocacy outputs can be used to influence decision makers such as planners – I like to thing of it as the “pointy stick” of mapping, where you can drive your message home with great success.
What is even more exciting is how low tech this has become. Using what they call Walking Papers mappers are able to draw directly onto a map and then have it scanned and that be uploaded directly to a digital map. No GPS, no uploading to an onsite computer. The definition of High Touch/Low Tech.
A Walking Paper example - the barcode in bottom right allows the map to be scanned and lined up with an offsite digital map
Anyways, I am re-blogging Mikel’s post from the Map Kibera blog. It gives a lot more detail and new insight into mapping — real-time — in the field.
Tags: @mapkibera, @openstreetmap, community, kenya, kibera, map, Mapping, Sustainable Cities, Technology
Nairobi Notebook 2: The Sustainability of Good Works
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Nairobi Notebook
NOTE: I had a wonderful lunch when i was in Nairobi with some of the people from the Map Kibera project (you can read my previous blog on this here, or go to their website mapkibera.org). What fascinated me was the stage they were at in regards to the growth of their project and their concern about assuring that the project was sustainable. This got me thinking about sustainability and NGOs. Here are my musings on the subject …
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Just as the coin for business is, well, coins, the coin for NGOs is change. Positive change. It is what every NGO assumes it will be able to achieve when they start, and what many fail to do. The challenge often for NGOs as with for-profit companies is achieving and sustaining their success.
To achieve success an agency agency needs to plan, to plan they must have a “business model” – guidelines to better understand where they stand in relation to their own development.
One traditional for-profit model is that of the “business cycle” or “S curve”.
This model is used to understand the growth of industries and organizations. However, the S curve does not recognize key components of a healthy system – specifically the phases of destruction and renewal. A healthy forest is one that has trees grow older, die, and then become the fertilizer for the new growth. The S curve is silent on these phases of destruction and renewal. Ironically, it is the paradox of having things dies that assures the longterm sustainability of a healthy system.
Tags: #ushahidi, Africa, brenda zimmerman, complexity, Development, ecocycle, kibera, map kibera, Mapping, openinstreetmaps, Youth
Digital Access for All: Broadband for the People … really
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When there is an increase in broadband speed in the North America, we can download more episodes of our favorite TV show (mine is 30 rock); when broadband speed increases in Africa, millions more people get online through mobile technologies.
Whole “development” leaps are being taken on the African continent – mind numbing and corrupt bureaucracy is in one click being overcome with government services going online; banking is being revolutionized with mobile “MPESA” banking; “urban wilderness”, the unplanned settlements or slums, or being mapped for the first time. And I can go on – read my article on Bridging the Digital Divide.
Just saw this great article and video done by Declan McCormack on the impact of mobile phones and the internet in east Africa that i thought nails it in regards to what is going on. Enjoy.
Tags: Africa, business, Dar-es-Salaam, Developing country, digital, Digital divide, kenya, mobile, Mobile phone, tanzania, techology, World Economic Forum, Youth, youth digital mobile techologies africa tanzania kenya
Doug Ragan
practicalradical
The Practical Radical 