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IdeaMap Sudan - Building a geodata community in a data scarse context

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IdeaMap Sudan - Building a geodata community in a data scarse context
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IDeAMapSudan is a 2.5-year project finishing in March 2023. The project aims to develop a community-led geospatial database for mapping deprived urban areas (e.g., informal settlements) that will support the decision-making process for displacement and socio-economic reconstruction in Khartoum, Sudan. To that end, nine trainers from different governmental and non-governmental organizations were selected to be trained by a team of international experts from the Faculty ITC of the University of Twente, The Netherlands; the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; and from the African Population and Health Research Center Kenya. These nine trainers were taught the essential competencies in using Free, and Open Source Geospatial Software to produce, compile, curate and distribute spatial data. Once the training of the nine trainers was completed, a series of community workshops were organized so that the trainers could train local community actors in tasks related to spatial data curation in close relation to their communities. The datasets produced from this process were then used to create a deprivation model and additional open data sets that can be used to help local communities and actors to take actions to mitigate several types of deprivations: Unplanned urbanization - e.g. small, high-density, disorganized buildings Social risk - e.g. no social safety net, crime Environmental risk - e.g. flood zone, slopes Lack of facilities - e.g. schools, health facilities Lack of infrastructure - e.g. roads, bus service Contamination - e.g. open sewer, trash piles Land use/rights - e.g. non-residential zoning This talk will describe three significant aspects of the project: the curriculum of competencies and the software tools used to teach these competencies; the phases and challenges of assembling a team and infusing it with a sense of community and participation; and the importance of disseminating results and evaluate the social impact open source software and open data can have.
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
Well, welcome everyone, thanks for coming. What I'm going to do is that I'm going to try to share what we learn with the projects that we run for three years.
And when I say we, it's basically this consortium here, but I will give you the details later. And actually this presentation should be presented by me and my friend Ines, that's her there, obviously, there's no room for confusion here, but unfortunately the events
in Sudan developed in a way that it was not possible. But anyway, so it is still the presentation of Ines and myself on behalf of everyone that contributed to this project. Now, what is Idea Map Sudan? To answer that question first, I need to explain briefly what is the Idea Map initiative.
So the Idea Map, so there's a conceptual paper if you want to go more on the academic side of things, but the idea is to develop a way to bring together data and methods that are usually isolated in silos. That is something that we see a lot.
So there's someone doing census data, there's someone doing something with satellite images, there's someone doing something at the local communities, but all these pieces of information they don't come together. So the proposal of this Idea Map framework is that, but this is a very recent thing.
I think the conceptual paper is four years old or something like that. So the Idea Map Sudan is basically an iteration of the Idea Map framework. It was a project that ran for three years. The project came, then came COVID, so it was a bit attributed.
So in the end, we are happy with the results, but of course, you can imagine that a lot of activities that we had planned had to be adapted, and it's not always easy. So Idea Map Sudan focused on cartoon. And the reason why Sudan? So Sudan, well, has many countries in Africa, there are a lot of problems, I don't need
to go into detail here, you can imagine what they are, so there's not a big abundance of spatial data, the institutions don't communicate. So there is not a spirit of collaboration, there's still a lot of data in paper when
there is data. So there are all these problems, and one that is not listed here is that we found a very good local partner, because if you don't have a good local partner, there is only so much
that you can do. And we had a very good local partner, and that local partner was Sudet, the Sudan Urban Development Think Tank, that was our local partner. Then there were two higher education institutes, so two from Europe and one from Kenya, so
ITC, that's from where I come, Faculty of Information Science and Earth Observation, Le Université libre of Brussels, and the African Population and Health Research Centre that they have a lot of experience working in African cities. The project was funded by NAFIC, so NAFIC is a capacity development program that is
financed by the Netherlands, and the beneficiaries were public institutes, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Planning, and the Ministry of Social Development, however the project went beyond this government tier, as I hope to be able to explain in a more clear way.
So basically this is the team, we had a local coordinator, so Inas, and the guys at Sudet, that you know, they do a fantastic work by the way, if you ever need to work on Arabic speaking countries or in Sudan, I highly recommend Sudet, they are an excellent
local partner, like really fantastic, nothing of this would be possible without them, so they are really reliable, a reliable local partner. Then of course then we have the guys from academia that gave the conceptualisation and the training and all of that. So what were the objectives, what did IDEA-MAP wanted to do?
So first develop a model for mapping deprivation, I will briefly explain that, I don't want to focus too much on the academic part of it. Train a group of professionals, so training trainers, because that was the thing, is that there were really not that many people in Sudan that could just train others, so one
essential objective was to train, let's call it champions, the first group of champions that then could act locally without our help. Then of course do knowledge transfer and develop a database in the dissemination system,
these ones are kind of the classic objectives so to say, but this one was really a very interesting part of the project. Now I said that one of the objectives was deprivation map, but we have to briefly understand what is deprivation and how do you measure poverty, so poverty is not just about how
much money you have, so there are several ways, there are several dimensions to poverty, so it's a multidimensional concept, and basically that means that you can assess poverty in terms of your objective material conditions, so the money you have, the conditions you
have in your house, the sanitation that you have, but also at the local level, what kind of services are around you, what kind of infrastructure is around you, what kind of economic opportunities are around you, and all of that compounds to this concept of deprivation that is a bit wider than the concept of poverty.
So we wanted to understand that to try to somehow assess what areas in Khartoum are more deprived, and for that you have to look at the household level, at the local level, and at the connection level. So basically conceptually this is what you have, so you have services, you have
infrastructures, and you have opportunities, and all of these, the presence or absence of each of those things, compounds together into this deprivation map. And this comes to this conceptual thing, which I am not going, if you are very interested
in this after the talk, I'll be happy to go into detail into this, but I really want to focus my time on the human and social aspect of the project, so I'm going to skip this a bit faster, but if you want to know more about this conceptual framework that we developed together with our Sudanese partners, I'll be happy to go into details, okay?
So basically the map, for the deprivation map there's really nothing special here, so it's the classical workflow, so you define what are the indicators that measure something, you hunt for data for those indicators, some of that data was crowdsourced
like open street map data or satellite imagery or data collected in the field by communities and all of that comes together, you define, you combine these variables, you define the weights and all of those things, and in the end you have an indexed map for each, you have an overall map that indicates levels of deprivation globally and also for each
level, each dimension of deprivation. So you will have a map like this for access to public transport, access to schools, access to hospitals, access to economic centers and so on, okay? But this is kind of classical, so to say, and this is what you end up with, a series
of maps on deprivation. Now, the idea of these maps is that these would be planning tools, remember that the recipients of the projects were ministries, right? So the idea is that these would be tools to help them in their activities and in their planning.
But COVID came, then came a coup, came a revolution, so it's not easy. So what we have initially planned had to be adapted. So, but the thing is, this was not done by us. This was done by the trainers, by the Sudanese. We did not do that. So we were just advisors to the project.
We would teach them how to do certain things, you know, how you classify satellite image and all of those things, okay? And then they would come up with indicators and the weights, they defined that and we were just advising them. So this was made by them. This was not made by the universities, this was made by them. And I think that's very important.
So to train this initial set of champions, these trainers, we started with an online course because it was supposed to be face-to-face, but then corona. So first kind of set back, it changed a bit things. So it started with an online. Then there was a training in Kenya on data collection using ODK, how to collect data
at the local and the neighborhood level. And then there was the part where we just supported with the co-creation of the database, organizing the data sets and all of that. This is basically what we, the universities, taught the trainers.
So again, then you can see the details. I think there's no point in going into much detail. There's really nothing, you know, very, you know, special about it. You can argue that it's kind of a classical syllabus of a geospatial course.
Nothing too fancy here. And of course, we only used open tools for sustainability and inclusiveness reasons, of course. So everything was taught using open source software. But now the important thing is that once these trainers were trained, they themselves went to train others.
And that's where the project starts to propagate because this is the effect we want. I'm skipping slides. This is what we want. We train nine trainers. Then they gave three different workshops for three different target groups. And then hopefully we would reach a point of continuous impact.
In theory, that's what we conceptualize. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you to what extent that happened because that was something I would like to share. But because of the war, we have no way to assess this and we can only hope everyone is safe. We just don't know. But this was the idea.
About this workshop. So there was one workshop for non-GIS people. So we are talking about people that work for NGOs that really never dealt with maps and spatial data. Nothing of the source. Then there was another one for GIS specialists.
These are mainly people that work for government offices and government departments where they have some idea. They have done some maps, but they are not necessarily that proficient with GIS. So for these guys was more kind of a refresher course, an up-to-date course for them. And then a workshop for local communities where the focus was not on teaching them
GIS, but raising awareness on how collecting data and curating data themselves could help their communities. That was the focus on this last workshop. And of course, the idea is that these three target groups would be contributing to the
same data ecosystem from different perspectives. Like you would have the government perspective, the NGO perspective, and the community perspective and all coming up together. And then in the end, there was a final conference. Visit the communities, try to assess. And this was very important because in these community visits in a final conference, we
managed to take a lot of ideas and follow up projects because then you go to the communities and you start to understand better what they need. And sometimes what you think they need is not what they need. You need to go there and talk with them to understand that.
All the data sets that we produced are in a geonode platform. They are essentially raster data sets. And in the end, so what were the expected outputs? And some of these outputs, in all honesty, I cannot tell you to what extent they were
fulfilled. Again, because the country descended into civil war. But the first one is new projects. So we already had three projects undergoing, one to help to measure, one to map sanitary facilities, water points, and all of those things.
Another one for flood prevention. And there was another one. I don't recall what was the focus now. They were, we were optimistic that they would be approved. But these projects will be executed by the Sudanese, not by us. And that is the important thing here. It is, it would not be us going there. We would be as advisors at the distance.
So I mean, if they need our help, okay, we can give some support. We can ask questions if they have questions. And if we know the answer, of course. But on the ground, it would be the Sudanese that would be executing these projects. And I think this is fundamental. It is not the university guys that are going there again to do what they already did.
No. From that, from those nine champions and those community workshops, we were confident that we had built, you know, a sufficient basis of know-how to let things fly by themselves, okay? So that was the idea. I also found something interesting that some of our trainers managed to change careers,
so change jobs, you know, apply to academia. So it opened new opportunities for them. I think that is very, very, very positive. We know of at least two of those community leaders that they set up their own ODK and they are mapping those things. But I don't know what is the status of that, unfortunately.
But I found that very interesting because we did not direct anything. It just started to happening. And I think that is very, very interesting. And in the last day, we, on the talk at University of Khartoum, we gave them the challenge of, okay, okay, start your OSG local chapter and start your QGIS chapter.
And there was a QGIS Sudanese user group about to be approved officially by QGIS. But again, the war came and I don't know what is the status of it. But this would be very interesting because what this group was doing was a group of 10 students and they were highly motivated.
And I was very confident that something interesting was about to be born. Do I still have time? We all know that, right? We all know about this, about what happened. So now the key part of my talk is what we learned, not only from this experience, but
mainly from this experience. So and the first one is that what mobilizes people? And then you will always hear, well, it's the community, the sense of community. Yeah, we know that. But what does that mean exactly? Okay, what does that mean? So it means that people feel that they are part of something bigger, but that something
bigger is more important than themselves, right? We are all part of something bigger, but that is not necessarily a good thing because we don't perceive that scale as something that is more important than us. So that is very important that people feel that. It's also important that all humans have a certain level of selfishness.
And I don't say this in a negative way. It is important that there is some kind of gratification. And this can be economic, can be social, can be something like that. But it's very important that people feel some kind of gratification, boomeranging back to them. That is a very important thing.
And on practical terms, what this means? It means, for example, that you might have to pay for the people that are going to coordinate some activities in the communities. And that is fair. There's nothing wrong with that, okay? But that is a more materialistic way. But there are also other ways.
For example, people, they do this effort and then you invite them. You write an email from time to time checking how they are, how are things going. All of those things, they count because they are a form of gratification. And that helps to keep people mobilized. I also got the impression that most people appreciate to have a certain level of control
in the sense that they sense that what they are doing is actually meaning something. It's actually making a difference. It's not just doing because doing. It's not just doing because I am being paid, for example. It's not just doing because I have nothing better to do. No.
It's the feeling that they are doing something that can actually be useful. An environment of trust. And that in this context can be tricky because the idea was that communities would be providing data to government officials. And if there is no trust, this can be complicated. So people have to trust each other, have to trust everyone in the project.
Otherwise, things might be a bit more complicated. And the most important one, and this is something that I only realize in Sudan, is hope. This has nothing to do with Sudan. So this photo is a photo from 1976 from Portugal.
It's from a small village, some 40 kilometers north of Lisbon. And what you see here, like all these dudes here, what they just did is that they come together and they went to the top of the hill and they built like this water silo and the pipe that would basically take the water to the valley into the village
because there was no running water in the houses. There was no running water in the village. This was two years after the revolution. And this is the photo of the first water that came out of that effort. And now check this photo and check that photo.
What do you see? I don't know if you see what I see because I was there in that one, not in this one. Do you see hope? You see hope. People believe that they are doing something that is bigger than them, that is important and makes a difference.
And this led me to believe, and this is a belief, I have no data to sustain this. So you take it as you want. This is not a scientific fact. But what I learned, and because I know a lot of stories of this era and all of that, is that people, when they have hope, they will mobilize.
So whenever you are in the context where you see that there is a lot of hope around, if you tap into it, it's always easier to have people contributing to it. So you can try tapping into something big like a revolution that was the case of Portugal and the case of Sudan, because Sudan in 2019 had a revolution that ousted the 30-year revolution.
So when you were talking with young people, they were full of hope. They were always willing to do stuff. It was very easy to bring them on board because they have hope that things are going to be better, and what I'm going to do is going to make a difference. So of course, revolutions don't happen every day, right?
So you might want to tap into smaller things. It can be a management change, an inspiring presence. Maybe someone new is coming to the team and be someone that is very respected, or maybe there is a new project, but something that brings enthusiasm and hope that something interesting is about to happen. When you have those moments, it's the best moment to tap in
and try to harness this community power. So this is a key lesson that I learned. The higher the hope, the better the collaboration. It's much easier to mobilize people when there's this hope, when they believe that there is something that is useful and it's worth it.
And there's also the other things. What does not mobilize people? Too much direction. So that is something that I've seen in other projects and also in this one is that if you are managing, if you are coordinating, if you are promoting some kind of project where you are somehow relying on community, give people some rope, okay?
There are boundaries that you cannot compromise, of course, but don't be too strict on the boundaries because otherwise, people will feel that they are working for you and not for them. And they have to feel that they are working for them, not for you. So give people some slack. Tool-driven.
We are all very enthusiastic about open sourcing tools. I am one of them. I'm always evangelizing all of that. But most people couldn't care less and that's okay. We have to be at peace with that, okay? It's important to drive attention that the licensing model of the tools is important and it is, it is not a detail, but you shouldn't focus too much on that
because people are not that focused on that. Another thing is data-driven. So we were having a talk there that kind of touched this idea that we are going to collect data because we can. You can do that, but it is, again, it is easier if that data collection effort
that you are doing comes in the context of something bigger, of an objective that surpasses you and the person that is collecting. So it can be sanitation. It can be, for example, data that somehow is going to improve the quality of life of children, something like that. But if you just do data by the data,
it's going to be harder to give people this motivation. No immediate gain compensation. It's very hard to motivate people anywhere in the world if you say, oh, this is going to be fantastic in five years. Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe you're being very honest, but it's important that somehow people
can feel immediately what they are doing. For example, a small exercise we did in a final symposium was that we asked people, there was a 100 people symposium, asked people, okay, now tell us how you perceive your city. So there was a web map and people would create the point and it would give a score from one to five. Okay, from one to five.
And we showed the map immediately. We didn't say, oh, we will then share the map later by email. No, you show immediately. Give that feedback immediately. And most important, if there is no link to the people that you love, what you do has to mean something for the people that are close to you. That also makes things much easier.
And I think this is my last slide, okay? Rational is not enough. People need to feel. People move on feelings. They don't move on rationals. It is okay that you have the coordinator, that you give the layer of rationality, but you have to realize that emotion is what is going to fuel the contributions and that up.
So final message, data serves the people, not the other way around. So make sure you start with the people if you want to build geo community data, okay? Thank you for your time. Thank you. Any questions?
Because you said that trust was the most important thing, and I'm clear that the government was involved in it. I think it should sit down to be a place where people do not necessarily trust the government. Yeah, yes. So I'm wondering how or what was the contribution
that this project had on whether it changed or how did you build up the trust? It's hard to assess that, because when the project was submitted, there was a certain political background, and then there was a coup that basically put the militaries on charge again. So we kind of felt that that's when we felt
that things got a bit more shaky. So I really can't tell you to what extent that... It was still executed with the people from the ministries, but the fact that there was this coup that was kind of a conservative coup in a way, if you want, we felt that kind of made people hesitant.
People still collaborated. It was still a great project, but we could feel that suddenly people felt a bit more retracted because the landscape changed. But the trust also comes not only in government, but also among the team members. That's also very important, that the team members trust what everyone is doing, that everyone is pulling to the same side.
I don't know if this answers your question. Yeah, no, I'm always wondering, like when it comes to having government, if they say they want to build trust for me the most, two of them were able to be as a government, and the shops would go out and do one of these workshops with the community.
So I built up that trust. Yeah, which in a way, our trainers, they were all public officers, all public officers. Those nine trains, they were all coming from the nine ministries, precisely under that logic. But the moment that the political landscape changed, we could see that people got a bit more hesitant.
Nothing extreme. It did not compromise the project, but we could feel it. Question? Okay, thank you. No, no, I have a question. Oh, okay, you have a question. The data you're collecting,
are you making this publicly available? It's in GeoNode. Okay, that can be used by others? Yes. What license? Yes, it's a creative comment, share a like. I think non-commercial, but I have to check. I have to check, I don't remember.
But it's a creative comment. You just add something, and no commercial licenses are always very, very cumbersome for people to use. For instance, try to do something which is very open, but never add anything that is non-commercial, because usually it keeps the honest users from not using it, from using it,
while the dishonest users use it anyway. So it's a very, I think in the open data community, there are no commercials overall, rather. No, I understand. I need to check that. I am not sure. I need to check that. I know it's a creative comment lesson. I don't know if it is the most tolerant one, let's put it this way.
Thank you.