Democracy & Governance – Page 10

Agriculture, Climate Change, Democracy & Governance, Environment, Environment, Health, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Pollution Prevention, Water

Open source software and participatory GIS

I work with a small NGO in the Cook Islands called Te Rito Enua. We recently concluded a pilot project funded by the Asian Development Bank to test the use of participatory GIS techniques to help develop community-scale climate adaptation strategies. Some of our key findings echo those Oregon State University scientists Sally Duncan and Denise Lach. As reported in the People and Place blog, they observe that

“Exchange of ideas and knowledge with the assistance of a technology that is both analytical and visual draws participants into new kinds of inquiry, calling upon broader kinds and definitions of knowledge and experience. In such a setting, GIS technology lends itself to the mapping of ideas as well as landscapes.” (emphasis is mine)

In our own work, we found that that the approach provides communities with the tools to assess climate risk according to their own frames of reference. Linking models with personal experience and traditional ecological knowledge gave the communities tangible evidence of climate risk that empowers them to own the problem and develop personal and collective responses based on their own needs and priorities. The participatory GIS process highlights behavioral and development issues that affect the vulnerability of individual households and the community at large. There was a discernable sense of empowerment by participating communities in developing vulnerability maps and planning on the basis of the spatially organized information.

Replicating the process is problematic though. We opted to use expensive high-end commercial GIS software to match the system used by the government. All the GIS expertise in the country (basically 2 people at the start of the project) were schooled in the use government system. We needed to work with those people. But the high end systems are a formidable barrier to entry; acquiring the software, hardware, and training costs thousands of dollars. Communities and NGOs lack those resources, and the emerging, computer-savvy generation lacks learning opportunities. In our final report, we recommended the use of open source software and support for regional training to build up the GIS community.

Fortunately the support for open-source GIS is growing fast. Some resources for beginners include:

The Participatory GIS Forum (www.ppgis.net) (and be sure to see the very helpful email list for PPGIS, links on the site).

Mapping Across Borders/Digital Distractions blog ( http://mikedotonline.wordpress.com/ )

Quantum GIS open source software (www.qgis.org)

And a new site, Training Kit on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communications (http://pgis-tk-en.cta.int/)

Don’t forget that good data layers can often be found at Data Basin, and you can upload and share your files there. (www.databasin.org)

I’ve experienced significant resistance to participatory mapping in the past from the GIS technical community. It is true that you can produce complete garbage in GIS. And garbage, in planning, can be dangerous. But the answer doesn’t lie in treating geospatial planning as an esoteric art and shunning the novices. The answer lies in widening the pool of experts and providing support for grassroots initiatives. Duncan and Lech observe:

“The frequent repetition of the phrase “re-framing the debate” during focus-group discussions highlighted the progression from the one-way communication model, in which scientists impart their findings, to the dynamic process of engaging GIS technology as a tool of inquiry, mediation, and communication. Ideas suggested for a broader debate included making assumptions explicit on GIS maps, using the power of GIS to examine new questions, and sharing responsibility for new kinds of learning. …”

Duncan, S. and Lech, D. 2006. GIS Technology in Natural Resource Management: Process as a Tool of Change. Cartographica 41:3, 201-205. DOI: 10.3138/3571-88W4-77H2-3617.

Sounds like development to me.

[The Te Rito Enua project report can be downloaded at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1735507/ADB%20SGI%20report/Final%20Report-web.pdf]

February 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Democracy & Governance, Environment, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Health, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Policy Development, Water

Use of neural net classifiers to map invasive plants using remote sensing data

Over the past year, I’ve been working with a Cook Islands NGO, Te Rito Enua, with funding from the Asian Development Bank, to develop a pilot project on participatory GIS as a tool to assist island communities to develop climate adaptation strategies. While there, Mona Matepi, president of TRE, called my attention to the problem of invasive vines on the island. Three species of woody vines* are colonizing the island forests, causing massive deforestation. They overtop and kill trees, replacing the forest with a solid jungle of vines. Since Rarotonga is dependent upon surface water for its entire supply, and since vines were killing the trees in its forested watershed, it seems like a non-trivial issue. Nobody knows how the vines will affect water supply. Will they reduce surface water supply through evapotranspiration? Will they hold the soils as well as the trees they are replacing? How will they respond to the more frequent cyclones and droughts that climate models predict? And, if they are a problem, how can they be controlled? Many questions to answer – our challenge right now is to find support for research into the issues and the options available. If no one does anything, there’s a chance, and its not a tiny one, that there could someday be a humanitarian crisis that would have severe implications for one of the dwindling number of robust Polynesian cultures remaining.

I asked University of Maryland doctoral candidate Benjamin White, a remote sensing specialist, for advice on how to illustrate the extent of the vine infestation. The island is rugged and steep, difficult to map on foot. But I was able to take some measurements using a handheld GPS unit. Ben offered to have a go at classifying the vines using my field observations as training data. Commercial remote sensing imagery provider GeoEye donated high-resolution (4m and 1m) satellite images. Ben developed a sophisticated neural net classifier, and processed the images as R/G/IR reflectance, reflectance-based NDVI, principal components, mean texture and a quick reflectance to “dense vegetation” classification. The final result was uploaded to Google Earth for visualization purposes; Google Earth data is not useful for this kind of application, but overlaying the classification results on a Google Earth image gives a context in terms of location and topography. Additional satellite imagery could provide complete ground coverage and (subject to availability) time series to measure change in land cover.

I’m hoping that the image will drive home how bad the problem is, and mobilize some support for Te Rito Enua and the Cook Islands government to get a handle on the vine problem.

Heartfelt thanks go to Ben White and the University of Maryland Geography Department, GeoEye, and the Asian Development Bank for support.

* the vines are Cardiospermum grandiflorum, Mikania micrantha, and Merremia peltata.

via GREEN HAND.

February 13, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Competition: New Approaches to Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction

There are 22 days left to submit proposals for innovative ways to address disaster recovery for the World Reconstruction Conference (May 10-13 2011 in Geneva). Winners will be invited to the conference. All qualified entries will be invited to submit a poster presentation of their idea.

From the website:

“The focus of the competition is on innovation in services, products and approaches that have been implemented at the local level in disaster recovery and reconstruction. The aim is to:

showcase innovative and new solutions developed in the wake of disasters;
develop awareness for their use in other and future recovery operations;
provide a space to build partnerships to address key challenges in scaling up and replicating.

“Sectors of interest include but are not limited to: housing, water and sanitation, education, health, energy, transportation, information and communication technology (ICT), monitoring and evaluation, environment, governance and institutional strengthening.”

Let’s get some ICT proposals out there.

February 8, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

e-Governance Conference in Kenya: March 2011

There are a multitude of very interesting ICT4D events that are going to take place in 2011 throughout different regions of the world. The biggest mobile web conference- Mobile Web West Africa– will take place in Lagos, Nigeria on February 2-3, 2011.

However, in many African states governance is a huge issue and Kenya is set to hold an e-Governance conference in March 8-9, 2011 at KICC in Nairobi – Kenya.

The theme of this conference is, ‘Delivering Services through e-Government’. It shall include paper sessions, panels, demonstrations and poster sessions. It is a first of its kind in Kenya and it is hoped to become a tradition of showcasing exemplary GoK e-Government projects through project highlights and presentations. The 2011 conference also seeks to promote informal discussions on emerging digital government topics as well as feature research papers and case studies that seek to enhance the achievement of e-Government in Kenya in support of Kenya Vision 2030 and the implementation of the New Constitution.

The objectives of this conference are:

To showcase Kenya’s ICT innovations and strategies
To promote Kenya as an ICT hub in the African Content
To benchmark Kenya against other countries in terms of Government e-readiness.
To foster innovativeness and competition among Government Agencies
Demonstrations on the best case practices in e-Government Technology
Provide a platform for leaders, public managers, professionals, researchers and academicians to share their practices, ideas and research results
Explore collaboration potentials through the exchange of practical experiences in e-Government project implementation within the region

Learn more about the e-Governance conference in Kenya, visit its website

January 18, 2011/by actualize

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