Humanitarian OSM Team/HOT Microgrants/Community Impact Microgrants 2021/Proposal/Multi-temporal Digitization of Land Cover features for urban planning in Lilongwe Malawi
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.
Urban communities in low-income countries are facing unprecedented challenges arising from climate change and rapid urbanization. One of such problems is flooding. Urban flooding is becoming more common and has profound effect on low-income households whose livelihood is more vulnerable to any perturbation. In Lilongwe, the administrative capital city of Malawi, urban flooding seems to be localized in two communities only. These communities are hedged within the catchment areas of Mtandire and Kawale River (also known as Lingadzi and Mchesi River, respectively) which are all tributaries of Lilongwe river- the largest river channel in Lilongwe city. Despite records of increased frequency of flooding in these communities, little information has been generated to provide a baseline framework for detailed hydrological assessments that can guide city planners to build a resilient society. Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions (NADS) seeks to challenge the status quo by making use of free and open data resources to generate data that can fill this void.
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.
The proposed project seeks to generate baseline data that can be of great value in flood risk management and urban planning. Specifically, the main deliverable from the project will be the well detailed data on human settlements, roads and vegetation of two key watersheds in the city of Lilongwe. This data will be shared on Open platforms such as Open Street Map (OSM) and the Malawi Spatial Data Platforms (MASDAP). Secondary to this, the project will apart from using Open Street Map also use Satellite Images to digitize features of interest for the three time points, 2020, 2010 and 2000 that will give us capacity to assess land cover changes across time. In course of doing this exercise, our company is committed to finish the mapping operations within time and budget specifications. In this project, we are planning of engaging University students who will be provided with virtual training in open collaborative mapping and internet support. We intend to work with at least two mapping groups and recruiting 70 participants. Each participant will be assigned grids to digitize all the buildings, roads and vegetation. The outputs of this operation will be crosschecked by validators who will perform quality checks. Project findings will then be disseminated to funders and the general public.
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 plan presented in this proposal has a very promising life beyond funding that is currently being requested. The plan is uniquely positioned within the conundrum of national and international development aspirations including the Malawi Vision 2063, the African Vision 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). As shown in the plan presented, we are through our company going to demonstrate how collaborative mapping can help to generate data that can provide vital information to efficiently improve socio economic wellbeing, sustainable economic development, and environmental protection. In addition to this, in its capacity as a private company, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions is going to demonstrate how the private sector can collaborate with the academia and public sector to support developmental planning. Upon completion of this project, our company will be exposed to key actors in development space and, will provide similar support to new sets of problems. It is also worth to mention that most of the financial support to be rendered in the project will support capacity building and digitization/data collection. This will mean that at the end of the project there will be 70 more experienced OSM mappers thus expanding the human resource of OSM community in Malawi. Another key output will be data that will be shared openly. We are confident that this data can be used for applications beyond planning and disaster risk reduction. Lastly, as we plan to disseminate our experiences for this project as widely as possible, our story will be an inspiration to other entrepreneurs and communities across the world.
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 main goal of the project is to generate baseline open data that can be used for planning and disaster risk reduction. This data will cover three time points (the year 2000, 2010 and 2020) targeting an area of 60 square kilometers for each year of interest. While doing this, our company is going to train project team (70 participants) in mapping using Open Street Map platform together with other platforms such as Google Earth. The company will ensure equal participation of different gender groups when recruiting the project team. We are going to target 35 female participants and the same number for male participants. The data that will be generated will be prepared and shared on Open Street Map and Malawi Spatial Data Platform as the project insights will be shared with the Lilongwe City Council and government departments responsible for planning and disaster management. The exercise will be a unique and yet innovative demonstration of how open collaborative mapping can help to generate huge amounts of datasets and help to solve developmental problems. We hope that our demonstration will attract and inspire people not only from Malawi to take similar initiatives on similar community challenges.
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.
The project’s target communities are within Malawi, the country that has just set a new vision to guide all policies from now up to 2063. The vision of the broader community recognizes that unplanned urbanization in the country has come with environmental downsides inducing emergencies and disasters such as flooding. Among other things, the vision also recognizes that data gaps and limited funding for environmental sustainability initiatives are the challenges that can explain such shortcoming. So, it is envisioned that all the cities in the country including Lilongwe where target communities for this project are located, should have master plans that adhere to spatial, economic, and social factors that provide citizens with an all-inclusive quality of life. In addition to this, it is also envisioned that between 2020 and 2030 the human capacity and technology readiness of the country should increase from 1 percent to at least 2 percent. It is worth to note that the vision quoted herein reflects also other aspirations that Malawi subscribes to including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and the African Vision 2063. Along these lines, we are confident that the data that will be generated through this project will provide a baseline information for digesting existing data shortcomings, eventually helping to develop a robust master plan for Lilongwe city. In the near future, our company will establish strategic partnerships with the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) and key developmental partners of Malawi government such as USAID, DFID, and the European Union.
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.
Since we are in this project targeting the issue of urban planning from a point of view of a flood hazard, our company found it reasonable to consider an entire catchment of a river as a unity of analysis. There are two different rivers in the city that have record of flooding and, that means that two river catchments will be considered. Catchments being referred to in this project are delineated. One river has a catchment area of 33 square kilometer and the other has a catchment area of about 27 square kilometers giving us a total of 60 square kilometers. We therefore intend to map land cover features of these two catchments for the year 2000, 2010 and 2020. The target is to have detailed land cover maps with buildings, roads, and vegetation. To successfully do this, we are proposing of using a wide range of tools in this project.
Firstly, we are going to plan our mapping using HOTOSM task manager. Each of the recruited mappers will be assigned grids to digitize on OSM using satellite data resources that are available on OSM as reference. Parallel to this, a satellite image from early 2000’s and around 2010 will be downloaded from Google Earth and the necessary geometric corrections will be applied. The google earth image will later be clipped into small tiles of at least 0.5 square kilometer and assigned to a mapper who digitized the same location on OSM. At the end of the exercise, land cover for early 2000’s, 2010 and 2020 will have been digitized. The data will be checked for quality and then combined to give a picture of the two river catchments under consideration. The data is going to be shared on Open Street map and Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) for wider dissemination.
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.
Communication plan for this project will be double fold, covering both digital and print media. Execution of the project plan will start once we get the news that the current proposal has been funded. The company is going to engage contributors of two top Malawian newspapers for publication of this development to Malawian public. Upon completion of all the activities, we are going to contribute to a newspaper article in Malawian newspaper. The content of this will include the data that has been generated and some interesting insights that will be observed. This will be complemented by numerous blog articles that will detail how the exercise has helped participants of this project (mappers) and government position regarding our contribution. Beyond conventional media, we will also develop a manuscript that will be published in a peer reviewed journal.
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.
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 that will be generated in this project will be used to derive information crucial for urban planning and disaster risk management. Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions knows for sure that the data generated from this project will be directly used by Lilongwe City development and the disaster management planners. Secondary to this, the data will be used by universities for research and teaching. Particularly, given the fact that the frequency of flood occurrence is increasing and that projections are indicating that in the near future such flooding frequency will be even higher, it is interesting to have data on where people live, how river catchments are changing and how the changes can create dangerous situation for a flooding disaster. As such this data will be of great value to researchers who are working in urban studies particularly to devise climate change adaptation measure that minimize flood related damage to urban communities.
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 have intentions to leverage on this project to promote collaborations between academia, public institutions, and private sector in solving problems facing communities. As a member of the private sector, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions would like to complement academic institutions in efforts to building local technical capacity by empowering and exposing students to technologies for digitizing, processing, and analyzing open data. The company intends to engage local mapper’s groupings in Malawian universities whose role will be supporting with digitization activities. It is on this background that Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions hopes to go into partnership with University student’s mappers groups. Considering that these mapper’s groups comprise of students from all levels, some with little or no knowledge, skills and experience in mapping and others with advanced, NADS through this project specifically wants to impart mapping knowledge, experience and skills to students needing it and, advance mapping knowledge, experience and skills to students already having them. Broadly, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions hopes to strengthen mapping community in Malawi.
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.
The proposed project seeks to leave no one behind by being inclusive of marginalized groups. First and foremost, we are planning to ensure that there should be 50-50 gender representation in all the activities. The company intends to do this by working with a Youth Mappers Chapter at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR). The choice of this group is strategic considering that the group has greater than 50 percent of female student mappers both in its leadership and general membership. Their efforts to be an inclusive group has earned them Women Participation Award from Youth Mappers and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) GEOCENTER. With these credentials, this group is a key partner that will ensure inclusivity of all gender groups. The project’s target is to engage 35 female mappers.
In addition to the issue of gender, the project will also be inclusive to marginalized groups especially people with physical disabilities. The project would like to deliberately recruit two people with physical disabilities in this project who will take a crucial role in the mapping efforts and as well engage them in developing the project framework with special focus to learn from them on issues that affect them.
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.
Throughout this project, we will strive to make sure that other mapping communities are engaged. Our major interest is to expand the existing mapping community in Malawi, and strengthen their capacity. The current project targets two communities that are within watersheds that together covers an area of 60 square kilometers. This area is large and for timely and successful mapping of all the buildings, roads and vegetation features, more human resource will be needed. As such our company is going to limit its staff members to only support building capacity of mappers that will be recruited and later perform data quality assessments. For the actual data collection, the company is going to recruit 70 mappers to support actual digitization. These personnel will be trained and provided with support for internet connectivity throughout the project. The training together with the support that we are going to provide will be a motivation for them to participate throughout the activity.
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.
Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions is part of Malawi open street map community. It has taken initiatives to contribute towards strengthening of mapping community in the country by targeting university students. In 2018, it deployed a team to take an initiative to introduce the idea of open mapping to university students at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR). The company introduced students to how Open Street Maps have been utilized across the globe in disaster mapping and food security. One of the examples was how OSM data was used by the International Red Cross Society and Malawi Government during widescale flooding that affected Malawi in 2015. The result of this was establishment of a Youth Mappers Chapter at the university. Up to date, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions continue to provide mentorship support. Just in the year 2020 for example, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions received financial support from Open Knowledge Foundation, and this helped the company to organize a training session on open data in environmental conservation. The training attracted participants from various students’ organizations including LUANAR Youth Mappers and the Universities Environmental Club. The company provided hands on training to students on the use of QGIS, a free GIS software with particular focus on contributing to open data mapping, accessing, downloading, and processing data for research.
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..
Looking into the future, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions plans to extend its work to strengthen the capacity of public institutions in development and utilization of open data in their operations whether in planning or building of resilient communities. Specifically, the company plans to target Lilongwe City Council, Malawi government’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) together with the department of urban planning. The Lilongwe city council has the mandate to promote Infrastructural and economic development through formulation, approval, and execution of Lilongwe City Development plans. This institution can potentially be a key stakeholder that can directly use the data that will be generated from this project.
Secondary to this, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions also have plans to approach m-HUB, which is Malawi’s first and currently the largest innovation center. The company has prior knowledge that this innovation centre in Malawi has before taken initiatives to promote Open Street Maps and support establishment of a Youth Mappers Chapter at the University of Malawi- Chancellors College. Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions would therefore like to work with it particularly in engaging the public during implementation of the current proposal. Tentative thoughts are to leverage on their platform to recruit young innovators who are not necessarily members of any youth mapper’s chapter with the goal to build their capacity and competencies in OSM mapping for them to explore later how such data can help to improve their innovative work.
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
| What the Money will be spent on | Unit being purchased | Expected Cost (US Dollars) | Total Cost for budget item | Why is this money needed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recruitment, partnership building and capacity building | ||||
| Internet Compensation for key partners | 11 | $2 | $22 | Before the project starts when the funding is given, Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions will brief the media, Lilongwe City Council and the Department of Disaster Management Affairs about the project through a Zoom/Skype meeting. This money will therefore enable the company to purchase internet bundle for the participants. |
| Recruitment of mappers | 35 | $1 | $35 | NADS will recruit mappers from groups specified in the proposal. With COVID-19 pandemic, universities in the country have been closed so this cost will support identification of individuals from these groups. |
| Internet provision for training | 75 | $2 | $150 | Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions will have to brief and train the project team (70 mappers in addition to the 5 participants from Nyasa Aerial and Data Solutions) about the project and data collection/digitization using both Open Street Map and Google Earth. This money, will in this case be used to purchase internet bundle for the participants at the project briefing and training session. |
| Digitization, data generation and results dissemination | ||||
| Internet provision for digitization | 70 | $50 | $3500 | The company will use this money to purchase internet bundle which mappers will be using when collecting data/digitizing for the duration of three months. |
| Internet support for quality control Access | 6 | $35 | $210 | The company will use this money to purchase internet bundle for its staff members who will be validating all the data collected. |
| Internet support for project progress reporting to key partners | 5 | $2 | $10 | The company will share project insights with the media, Lilongwe City Council and the Department of Disaster Management Affairs through a Zoom/Skype call. This money will therefore be used to purchase internet bundle for one participant from the media, 2 participants from Lilongwe City Council and the Department of Disaster Management Affairs and 2 from the company. |
| Publication of the project insights in the Malawian News Papers | 1 | $200 | $200 | The company will collaborate with a colleague from the media to write and publish an article in the News Paper on the project insights. This money will therefore be used to pay for the space in the News Paper where the article will be published and, pay the person from the media |
| Conference fee | 1 | $ 200 | $200 | This will be used to pay for costs that are required to register for a research dissemination conference |
| Administrative costs | 1 | $100 | $100 | This will go to NADS to cover costs related to administrative work. |
| Contingency | $440 | This will cover for uncertain costs that might come during project implementation. | ||
| TOTAL | $4867 | |||
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
| Activity | Months | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 | Month 4 | Month 5 | Month 6 | Month 7 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | ||
| Phase 1: Administration | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Informing the general public about the project through media | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recruitment of project team and partnerships | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Training the project team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase 2: Data Collection | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Digitization | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase 3: Data Validation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Validating data collected | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase 4: Data assembly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assembling all the data validated and drawing insights | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase 4: Information Sharing and Project closing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Collecting Data for report writing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Report writing and publishing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Uploading data on Malawi Spatial Data Platform (MASDAP) and Open Street Map (OSM) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.
Endorsements
Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here! Please note: We will take endorsements into consideration in the final review but credit will be given to the quality of the application as well as the endorsement (this is not a popularity contest). Endorsements will be checked by HOT’s community team prior to selection to ensure the integrity of the endorsement (ie. that applications are not only endorsed by members of the community that submitted the application)
HOT staff, voting members and board members are welcome to endorse, and give feedback to all proposals. However, those who are taking part in the selection process will not be endorsing or giving feedback due to conflict of interest.
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.
Below is an example an endorsement.
- I fully endorse this project - strong idea and detailed project plan --Kateregga1 (talk) 13:26, 2 February 2021 (UTC)