Humanitarian OSM Team/HOT Microgrants/Community Impact Microgrants 2021/Proposal/Digitalization Of Ward Level Boundaries For Urban Local Bodies, Kerala, India
Your project
This is an opportunity for you to tell us about your project. In this section we'd like to hear about your community, which local challenge your project addresses, what you plan to do and how, your sustainability plan, and how you plan to share your stories.
Describe the local challenge your project is addressing
In this section please describe in detail the challenge that your project addresses. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Local bodies are the administrative units of Kerala state. Post Kerala floods in 2018, OSM Kerala community has taken lot of initaitives to map the state[1]. We have contacted the Kerala Govt, Facebook, HOTOSM, Maxar etc to support our mapping efforts. Together with various partners we were able to make a vibrant OSM community in Kerala. Local body boundary mapping (Admin Level =8) was one the initiatives we took during COVID times. First Version of data which we released during Nov 1st, 2020 was widely used[2]. Feedbacks from community, a lot data demands & training requirements to do, ward boundaries (Admin Level 10) of Kerala (expecting around 21900 polygons in 1200 lsgs).
Currently this vector geospatial data of ward boundaries is not available in open access. Our local challenge is experimenting to do armchair mapping (selected urban bodies) of ward boundaries (correction and verification will do by consultation of local social workers) from the informations and sketches available in public domain and getting workflows and training sections to community to empower to create and maintain osm lines and relations their local areas.
Describe your project
In this section, please provide specific details about your mapping objectives. This should include: how you will contribute to help solve the local challenge you are addressing, what you aim to achieve with funding, what volume of mapping you plan to complete and how, and the number individuals are you aiming to include in mapping activities. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Kerala is having 93 Urban local bodies. Urban local bodies are divided into wards/divisions. Wards/Divisions are basic unit of administration. The project is to digitalise ward boundaries few urban local bodies.
We are planning to digitalize ward boundaries of 5 corporation and 35 municipalities Kerala LSG Ward boundaries. We have already mapped Kochi corporation on the request on Ernakulam District Administration. Media Report Kochi mapping
5 Mappers and 6 Volunteer Validators, 11 members Team is driving the project. We are expecting a minimum 20 OSM Mappers will join in our Online Training & capacity building Programs. Training sections will be recorded and available community YouTube channels. Documentations & Materials will be available in wiki for future reference. Event Updates and Learning Experiences sharing will be done in OSM Kerala and OpenStreetMap India community channels. This Data and Informations will help organisations for micro level planning and helpful to effective social welfare activities. Helpful to make dashboards and visualisations on different types of data with geospatial references. Researchers and Disaster management experts can extend their activities to micro level data. We are doing this task, very close with Wikidata Kerala Community which already running a project on Local self governance in Kerala.
Describe your sustainability plan
In this section please describe how your activities will continue post-funding. If you are applying for funding to purchase equipment, explain who will store/use the equipment you purchase, and if you have long term sustainability plans for your community's development. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
The project plans for different series of training not only in the OpenStreetMap but also different aspects of general mapping. The training will be led by a group of professionals who are already part of the community and are working in the geospatial and data science industry. The training series will be open for all in the community and will be done on a biweekly/monthly basis. Post training the participants can try the things and doubts can be asked to the experts in the community through telegram groups. The training sessions planned are on maps and importance of it, open data, openstreetmap, digitising of hard copy maps using open source tools, Openstreetmap tags and values for the boundaries, the hierarchy of admin boundaries in India, how digitised maps are added to the openstreetmap platform etc.
The training sessions will help in building the community and the capability of the community. The volunteers will be able to take projects of their own of similar character and can develop the openstreetmap dataset. The admin hierarchy of India is highly dynamic and can have minor and major changes in every five years. So it is a continuous process of making the admin boundaries upto date. Hence the necessity of reinforcing the community with the knowledge is highly recommended for having the dataset up to date.
- All discussions and events updates will done on osm wiki, india mailing list and community telegram channels of (OSM India and OSM Kerala). It helps to make more openness and encourage participations in community.
- All training sections will open to all community and will try to stream in social media. Recorded content will store in OpenStreetMap India Youtube Channel for future references.
- Document the process of this initiative OSM wiki. By the end of this project, OSM wiki should be a self guide to continue and track this project.
- Currently osm kerala community mapped and maintaining the admin level = 8, its around 1200 polygons relations, after that we moving to next level as per community demands in telegram group discussions. There are a lot wrongly tagged attempt to do ward level boundary by community peoples (eg http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/12UM). Through this program we trying to improve the skill-sets of volunteers and helping them to maintain and update the boundary layers in future providing advanced trainings.
- By the activity of new mappers, there are lot of issue happening in the breakage of relations and tags because of unawareness and editing from id editor errors. Trainings will help to get more help hands to error fixing.
- Data release and issue tracking using git https://github.com/orgs/osmkerala/
- This skill-set also helpful to make expand the increase the area of work to other boundary like layers
- Purchased GPS device will use for future osm mapping activities. Device will keep with any of the team members who working in the field level mapping.
What are your community defined project goals, and how do you define project success?
Please explain you project goals. This can include: setting goals such as "we will train X number of new mappers", "we will register as a legal entity", or "the data will be used by X", and why these goals are important to your community such as "we intent to be legally registered so that we can receive more grant funding in the future", "we intend to engage X number of women in mapping activities so that we can empower local women" or "we want to build a partnership with X so that our data will be used and trusted". We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
The community defined primary goal of the project is to develop the base layer of the existing ward level delimitation of boundaries of 35 municipalities out of 87 total municipalities and the ward level delimitation of boundaries of 5 municipal corporations. These layers are made currently available only on non editable raster formats even with the government agencies. Also they are as small parts like never matching jigsaw, when combined together, there will be a lot of areas of mismatches. Bringing these hardcopy maps to a single datum will be solving the issues currently facing. The vector boundaries are made available for public use through the openstreetmap platform.
The secondary aim is to set an example to the public that community led projects and create a lot of difference that even government agencies cannot bring, thereby attracting more volunteers to the mapping community and reinforcing the community and building a technically sound community cable of taking the similar projects ahead in public domain
What are your community's long term goals?
Please give describe your community's vision. This can include: where you see your community in five years time, how you want your data to be used, future partnerships you'd like to establish, or how you would like your community to grow (or not!). We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Although the admin boundaries of India are highly dynamic, the basic units at the bottom of the hierarchy are the less changed one. Creating the smallest units makes the generation of bigger units which are more prone to change easier. What happens often is the wards of a Local body are transferred to others or merged with others etc to make new bigger units. Hence having the boundaries of the smallest unit will help in creating the bigger units much faster and without any hessle. So this acts as the base for all the upcoming changes and datasets. This is also a document of historic importance in the urban planning prospects.
The training sessions create a more valuable asset to the community - the knowledge filled volunteers. Making the volunteers of a community technically sound means making laying a strong foundation for the growth of the community. This knowledge transfer will be the start of the chain reaction going to happen for the upcoming generation there by making sure about the existence of the community beyond times.
List the tools you intend to use during your project and why
Please describe which tools you plan to use to collect, update, clean, or store you data and why. For example: "we plan to use HOT's Tasking Manager to coordinate volunteers" or "we will upload our data to X platform because..." We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
We plan to use opensource tools for the project which are a sustainable and feasible solution for the community. This also makes the process accessible to all irrespective of their financial status. The tools will be used are
- QGIS - QGIS is the powerful geospatial software used widely in the industry and researchers. QGIS will be used for digitizing the ward boundaries and bringing it to a universally accepted projection system. Vector boundaries of wards are created in QGIS.
- JOSM - The Java OpenStreetMap Editor is the offline editor for Openstreetmap where we can have satellite imageries as base layers for reference and there are a lot of presets for tags available making it easier and faster for the user.
- ID Editor - Web based OpenStreetMap Editor for the beginners
- Gimp -to perform the adjustments and editings (if required) in the raster datasets used as references.
Please give examples of how you will use share your stories with others. This can include: how you will publicise your news, where you will collect media content, how you will use social media channels, and if you will reach out beyond your immediate network to share your stories. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
- We plan to share our stories via media and social media.We will be also writing the detailed documentation in OSM wiki and OSM dairy.
- Both National and State level media coverage for Openstreetmap has been pretty good in India. Various activites of OSM community has been covered very well in media.
- We have documented all the media releases and stories over the years here
Partnerships
Successful applications will demonstrate one or more partnerships with a local data user. Priority will be given to applications for which the data has been requested by a partnering organisation, or where the partner organisation has expressed interest in collecting the data for a specific use or intervention. Example partners include local non-government organisations (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs), local governments, companies, universities, schools, and other academic institutions.
Parterships are planned with NGO's and organizations like
- OSM Kerala Community
- Wikimedians of Kerala, the group of wikipedia editors
- Swathantra Malayalam Computing, the free software and languafe computing community in Kerala
- Open Data Kerala, the open data community in Kerala
- many other schools and colleges
Describe who will use your data
It is important that the data you generate during the project is useful, and that it will be used to advance humanitarian and/or development challenges locally. In this section, please include: if the data you will be collecting has been requested by a partnering organisation, if there is an established formal relationship with the partnering organisation, if there is an existing MoU between you and the partnering organisation, and how long have you been working with the partnering organisation. If your organisation or community is going to be the data user, please describe how you will use the data, and how it ties in with your organisation's work. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
The data created is of big use from policy makers to students. Currently there is no proper vector layer available in the public domain. The data is of use for
- Health and Community Health workers - for Pandemic control measures
- Disaster and Rescue operation - for preparing better preparedness and mitigation plans
- Journalists for Preparing better reports and visualization
- Police - for administrative and jurisdiction purpose
- Researchers and Academicians - for base data for their studies
- Policy makers and Politicians - for better administration
- Data Scientists and Geo-Spatial professional- for Geo-spatial applications and predictions
- Common citizen - for knowing their administrative boundary to avail the facilities for respective authorities
and many more
Describe any other partnerships you plan to mobilise or establish for the purpose of the project
In this section, please describe any additional partners you might be working with. If there are no additional partners (beyond the data user) this must be stated here. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
- We are planning to reachout various Media houses and help them use Openstreetmap data. We feel democratizing geospatial data is too important.
- Malayalam Manorama
- Malayalam Wikipedia
- Usage of OSM data in articles in Malayalam Wikipedia https://smc.org.in/blog/smc-monthly-report-september-2020
Inclusivity
Successful applications will include a developed strategy for the inclusion of women, girls, and marginalised groups in mapping activities. This includes the number of women, girls or marginalised groups you plan to engage, and the way in which you plan to interact with them.
How will you ensure that your project activities are inclusive?
Please describe how you will engage women and girls, or other marginalised communities in your mapping activities. Please include the number of women, girls or marginalised groups you plan to work with and how, and at which point in your activities you plan to engage them. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
- We plan to conduct all the trainings as inclusive to diverse groups of people as possible.
- To address gendergap we had training on OSM with support of Pehia foundation. We plan to continue this collabaration with Pehia Foundation. We have plans to conduct a exclusive tranings to address gendergap. (With the support from Pehia Foundation)
Expansion
Successful applications will show how communities intend to grow community engagement. This includes a practical approach on how many new mappers you aim to recruit and how they will be involved in community activities. Priority will be given to communities that also include a plan for ongoing engagement beyond the grant period. If this is not relevant to your project, please explain why.
Explain how you plan to expand your mapping community
In this section, please include: your approach to recruiting new mappers, how will you engage new mappers, how many new members you plan to recruit, and how will you retain community members throughout the duration of project and beyond. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
- OSM Kerala community is currently 250+ volunteer. We try various reachout to increase the community.
- Mapathons in colleges.
- Training for school students and including Openstreetmap in school syllabus https://github.com/osmkerala/osmkerala-tasks/issues/16
- Welcoming new mappers
Collaboration
Priority will be given to applications that collaborate with other OSM communities in the region. This can be country specific or regional and can include collaboration with Youth Mappers Chapters, or members of the HOT community to help with training, validation (as examples). For support in sourcing collaborators, email microgrants@hotosm.org.
Describe other OSM communities you are already working with
This may include Youth Mappers chapters, or members of OSMF (as examples). If you are not already collaborating with an OSM community, please state this and explain how you plan to work with other communities in your project in the following question.
- We are few volunteers from OSM Kerala. Past few years, participants of this project has be enagaging with various partners. During Kerala floods 2018, we have enaged with HOTOSM, Facebook, Microsoft, Grab and various companies to help in post disaster mapping. We have reachout to Kerala Govt and helped in starting Mapathon Kerala via various consultations.In 2020, participants from this project has helped in various mapathons. For few to mention, Qikpik Mapathon two editions, Naksha 2021 etc. Participants from this project are conducting various online events like India/Virtual Mappy hours, Kerala Virtual Mappy hours and Kerala/Quiz.
Describe other OSM communities you plan to approach, or establish relationships with, for the purpose of the project
We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words..
- We planning support more Mapthons, increase number of partnerships across India. Two members of this project are part of volunteer India/HOTOSM team. To support more disastar response mapping we need volunteers from various part of India. Currently, volunteers are from southern side of India. To increase participation we have to create more local community like OSM Kerala and OSM Rajasthan.
Project plan and budget
Priority will be given to applications that collaborate with other OSM communities in the region. This can be country specific or regional and can include collaboration with Youth Mappers Chapters, or members of the HOT community to help with training, validation (as examples). For support in sourcing collaborators, email microgrants@hotosm.org.
Budget breakdown
Give your budget breakdown here. If you would like to present your budget in a tabular format, you can use this tool to convert your spreadsheet into a wikitable and paste the code below here
| Item | Unit | Unit cost (INR) | Total (INR) | Total (USD) @73.34 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mapping | ||||
| Corporation | 5 | 7400 | 37000 | 504.4995909 |
| Municipality | 35 | 5500 | 192500 | 2624.761385 |
| GPS Device | 1 | 27000 | 27000 | 368.1483501 |
| Quality Check | ||||
| Corporation | 5 | 1000 | 5000 | 68.1756204 |
| Municipality | 35 | 750 | 26250 | 357.9220071 |
| Other Expense | ||||
| Tshirt/Goodies | 30 | 800 | 24000 | 327.2429779 |
| Training | 5 | 2000 | 10000 | 136.3512408 |
| miscellaneous | 1 | 10000 | 10000 | 136.3512408 |
| Total (INR) | 331750 | 4523.452413 | ||
Project plan
Give your project plan here. If you would like to present your project plan in a tabular format, you can use this tool to convert your spreadsheet into a wikitable and paste the code below here
- OSM Project page:- Local Bodies Wards in Kerala
| Activity | Month | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 | Month 4 | Month 5 | Month 6 | |||||||||||||||||||
| w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | |
| Training | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Basic training 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Basic training 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Intermediate training 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Intermediate training 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Advance training | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Area Selection and data collection | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Listing the Urban area to be mapped | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data collection | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Digitization | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Corporations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Municipalities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Validation & Correction | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Corporations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Municipalities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Closing | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Blogs and other Documentation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Report preparation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Declaration
By submitting this form to Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, you certify the information contained in this application is correct, and that if you are awarded a grant, you will use it only for the purposes described above. You will provide written documentation and receipts for all of your expenses to Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to demonstrate this. You understand that the decisions made by the HOT Microgrants committee are final.
Mappers
| Mappers | Experience |
|---|---|
 manojkmohan (on osm) (Project Lead) |
Mapping since 2010, finished many local LSGI maps |
| arkarjun (on osm) (Training coordinator) |
Geospatial Engineer by profession, OSM volunteer since 2012, Mentor and organizer of many mapping parties |
| jothishbabu (on osm) |
OSM Volunteer |
| Jinoytommanjaly (on osm) |
Wikidata admin, OSM Volunteer |
| iamMY (on osm) |
OSM Volunteer |
Volunteer Validators
| Volunteer Quality Check(Validators) | Experience |
|---|---|
 Saritha K S (on osm) |
OSM trainer and trained around 200 students in OSM |
| Anilankv (on osm) |
OSM Volunteer |
| jaisuvyas (on osm) |
LSGI Secretary (Thamarassery Grama Panchayat, Kerala), OSM Volunteer since 2009, Organiser and mentor of many Mapping parties. |
| muzirian (on osm) |
Professional OSM Mapper since 2014, Ex Mapbox, currently works as OSM data quality manager |
| naveenpf (on osm) |
OSM volunteer since 2009, HOTOSM member |
| Heinz_V (on osm) |
mapper since 2009; know-how in mapping boundaries, led the admin level 8 completion |
Endorsements
Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here! Example endorsement Instructions for Endorsement
- Log in to the wiki if you are not already logged in. - Scroll down to Endorsements and click 'Edit source'. - Add your reason for the endorsement followed by four tilde signs --~~~~ Note: The ~~~~ automatically inserts your name and the current date.
- "I, Sophie Mower, fully endorse this project - strong idea and detailed project plan 14:32, 4 January 2021 (UTC)"
- Expressing my support for this project. Completing ward boudaries will be a great achievement towards free map of Kerala. -4n3y3 (talk) 07:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
- Happy to see this project. As an OSM mapper in the region a decade back (now mostly inactive), It is happy to see OSM activities are getting momentum in the community AniVar (talk) 07:38, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Support :This project will be an achievement to the community by creating more open data map sets of Kerala. The initiatives by the community post Kerala floods was a great step towards the needs of maps and mapping. I express my support for this wonderful project for Digitization of ward level boundaries of LSGs.--Jinoytommanjaly (talk) 15:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)- Very excited to see this project from the Kerala community who have time and again spearheaded OSM initiatives with cross collaboration with the local free software communities as well as government institutions successfully. This is a great project and i'd love to see a slightly more strengthened proposal which could serve as a model for other regions in India. Have added some feedback on the talk page and am happy to support once the feedback is addressed Planemad/Talk 04:44, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- Excited to see this project from the Kerala community .I express my support for this wonderful project. Rcollins (talk) 08:01, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- We'd like to endorse this as a very sensible addition to the commons with strong social value given the recent natural & health disaster responses and their dependance on map data becoming more evident. I (Cherry Mathew, CEO of https://qikpik.store) am happy to champion initiatives like this to the rest of our team. Best wishes!
- Support I love the OSM Kerala community! They are so thorough and creative, and have been instrumental in many firsts in the OSM India space. They have mobilised thousands of college students and non-mappers to be integrated with the OSM community and I have seen first hand how much they care about long term impact. I strongly endorse their application, and hope their work can serve as an example for other mapping and governmental bodies in India! Arunasank (talk) 15:36, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
Give feedback
You can give feedback on the proposal here.