Smcose Youth Mappers
ABOUT THE CHAPTER
SMCoSE YouthMappers is the single definitive and inclusive representative group for YouthMappers at the Sokoine University of Agriculture. SMCoSE YouthMappers is affiliated with YouthMappers (link to: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/YouthMappers), the global consortium of university based mapping clubs.
Background
SMCoSE YouthMappers is comprised of students from various departments, including Environmental sciences and management and Geography, and we are using mapping techniques based on systems concepts and theories to facilitate, explore, and capture the different understandings of the relationships, perspectives, and boundaries involved in environmental sustainability in order to develop plans for action.
Projects
All projects are initiated and directed by student members of SMCoSE YouthMappers with support from faculty at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, local community members, researchers, and YouthMappers staff (when requested by SMCoSE YouthMappers).
Current
- Mapping Flood protection zones and evacuation routes to improve preparedness and response capabilities to flash floods in local communities both in Morogoro municipality and Ifakara Town Council. (World Meteorological Organization and Global Water Partnership) (ongoing)
- Solid Waste (Plastics) and Siltation Level data collection in Storm Drainage at Morogoro Municipal, Tanzania (OMDTZ , HOT-ESA_HUB (2021-2022)
Past
Contact information
Summary of the Projects
PROJECT 1:Flood Vulnerability Mapping at Morogoro Municipal, Tanzania (YouthMappers Field program Award) (2020-2021)
PROJECT 2: Solid Waste (Plastics) and Siltation Level data collection in Storm Drainage at Morogoro Municipal, Tanzania (OMDTZ , HOT-ESA_HUB (2021-2022)
- Local challenge
Flash floods have been a major challenge to high developing regions in Tanzania. . The rate of urban development in Morogoro is higher than infrastructure development and maintenance. Plastics play an important role in facilitating drains clog upon its combination with other solid waste. Blocked and clogged drains have been a major source to urban flooding in Morogoro urban. Unavailability of plastic pollution datasets have obscured disaster management teams and urban planners searching to identify the current state of plastic pollution as distributed geographically, specifically on and near drainage systems.
- Objective
The project will develop a broad plastic pollution dataset that will be easily accessible, sufficient and available open source to support decision making on disaster management proactively.
- Motivation
Through their participation in this project, student members of SMCoSE YouthMappers will have the opportunity to improve skills in the field of mapping and create open geographic data and analyses that address locally defined development challenges in their communities and field of expertise. Our execution of this project will allow us to serve as a a resource and service to Sokoine University of Agriculture, student organizations and our local communities to add value through mapping. As recipients of this community microgrant, we are motivated to express our vision of youth leadership in creating resilient communities.
- Lesson learnt from the previous project
While doing field data collection on trash point, enumerators recognized plenty of plastics trash point which are very scattered and challenging to capture actual location due to their lightness to be transported by either wind or water. In this end enumerators failed to capture plastic flows as the situation portray because of lack of budget stream to deeply capture plastic trash flow channel and life cycle to water channels specifically in drains which cause clogging.
- Sustainability plan
The project post-funding activities includes (1) launching of plastic pollution mapping campaign accompany by trainings both on site and online trainings on how to map by capturing images and uploading to respective server to contribute in solving both local and global plastic challenges. This launching expected to involve partnerships with governments institutions, NGOs and community based organization to help scale the campaign as fast as possible. Through partnerships, our community will expose to other opportunity for its survival. (2) Our community plan to develop web portal for easy data interpretation (counting of plastics on images) that will help to preserve more volunteers on the pitch. The web portal will be our baseline investment platform as we will engage in mapping of complex aspects through georeferenced photographing. The web portal will be a center hub for labelling image datasets aimed to develop broad data that will be used as input to train machine learning/ deep learning model to detect plastics from images automatic. Development of AI powered model is the future scope of this project. Web portal will be our key product for achieving and securing both spatial and non-spatial data collection projects that can ingest revenue for the survival of our
- Goals
The project will train at least 100 new mappers from the local community, at least 1000 new mappers from volunteers globally. This project will develop broad dataset that will be used by national/regional/district disaster risk and management team and urban planners purposively to intelligently prioritize the risk drains to floods and mitigate proactively; Also, it will give a broad picture and initiate research or modelling on possible movement of plastics to oceans. Our community intend to register as legal entity as soon as possible to alleviate the likelihood and meet the prerequisite for funding from the world biggest donor agents such as USAID, UKAID, IKI etc. Current we work under the custody of Youth mappers network and Sokoine University of Agriculture as our host agent, we aim to scale out and stand as independent community organization that can partner or sign memorandum of understanding with the government such as National bureau of statistics for easy recognition and acceptance of data usage; with universities (from SUA and others) for providing access to grant opportunities; NGOs such as GIZ, GWP, WWF etc. purposively for attracting data collection tenders; and with community organizations such as YouthMappers to access the community easily. The partnership broad aim is to attract or request for funding for biggest and long-term projects from the world biggest donors such USAID, UKAID, GCF. We will ensure to involve both mappers, community members and volunteer in equal gender basis to empower more women to contribute to this easiest way of mapping (georeferenced photographing)
- Long term goals
We will be a legal registered entity specializing on data collection. Our data will be easily accessible, sufficient and open source unless the project-based donor specify otherwise. We will be hosting a biggest campaign on plastic pollution mapping using georeferenced photographing globally. We will have a web portal where anyone can access from anywhere globally. We expect that our web portal will be important tool for facilitating decision support to policy makers and decision makers, and researchers to modelers. We also expect to contribute a great potential to fighting the fate of plastic pollution. Our partnership vision aims to sign memorandum of understanding with the government such as National bureau of statistics for easy recognition and acceptance of data usage; with universities (from SUA and others) for providing access to grant opportunities; NGOs such as GIZ, GWP, WWF etc. purposively for attracting data collection tenders; and with community organizations such as YouthMappers to access the community easily. The partnership broad aim is to attract or request for funding for biggest and long term projects from the world biggest donors such as USAID, UKAID, GCF. In addition, we will allow data publication to our web portal from our partner organizations
- Methodology
The project will use mobile phone technologies open data kit (ODK) and Kobo collect to collect georeferenced imagery dataset from field.Python libraries, especially pandas and numpy will be used to clean our datasets. The dataset will be supplied in two phases, phase 1; volunteers will label images, phase 2; dataset will be randomly re-arranged to allow volunteers to re-label for validation. The validation phase also will use google sheet. This validation design is best due to the fact that the project is pilot and it has no any baseline data that can be used for intelligent validation.
- Documentation
Social media platforms (Email, Instagram, Twitter and medium) will be our main land pages for sharing the progress of the project activities and different experiences. Student members of SMCoSE YouthMappers will develop all social media content.
- Inclusiveness
The project will be done in 50-50 equal between female and male (including youth and schools children). From field data collection to data validation, we will ensure equal sharing of duties.
- Open Knowledge Evolution and collaborations
The project post-activities expect to initiate plastic pollution mapping campaign. The campaign will accompany with a lot of mapathon embedded with prize to attract retention of volunteers and drive in new mappers. This campaign expects to recruit at least 100 new mappers globally that will aid in scaling of campaign activities. Again new recruited mappers will attract other volunteer at their respective area to help contribute in plastic pollution mapping. Transparency is our member retention principles, such that all project we secured or involved in must be shared and all member must provide with all information including project financial flow purposively to build strong trust and accountability among our self.
SMCoSE Youthmappers chapter members have been working hand in hand in collaboration with majority of other YouthMappers chapter through training, capacity building, and filling missing maps to the open street map. Earth day Tanzania also have been a proud organization we were working with mobilizing the community to stay carbon free lifestyle
- Project Background and rationale
The proposed project is a continuous effort by SMCoSE YouthMappers, a YouthMappers chapter at Sokoine University of Agriculture who have been addressing flash floods challenges through community mapping programs. Lack of effective disaster response capabilities to flash floods events in Morogoro municipality and Ifakara Town Council has been linked with outdated maps and insufficient data that address risks and vulnerability of local communities to flash floods. In this context, people at risk and first responders have no understanding of evacuation routes and safe areas during flash floods events.
Disaster risk knowledge and preparedness are some of the key elements of early warning systems (de León et al, 2006).
- Overall objectives
The proposed project aims to extend the data gathering process to Ifakara town council, then use the community gathered data to map flood protection zones and evacuation routes then finally disseminate project findings to stakeholders both in Morogoro municipality and Ifakara town council.
- Methodology and tools
Data acquisition and field survey
Remote data shall be collected by hosting a mapping project on Humanitarian Tasking Manager, this site not only simplifies the mapping tasks but also gives access for validators to validate the mapped task. Mapathons shall then be hosted for remote mappers and we estimate that more than 90% of the project's buildings, roads, farm plots to be mapped and validated collaboratively with university students at Morogoro municipality.
Field data gathering shall use online and offline mobile-based applications such as Open Data Kit (ODK) to undertake questionnaires for flood experience datasets in Ifakara town council. To avoid duplication of datasets enumerators shall be allocated specific data collection zone as illustrated in the figures below and mostly under the supervision of the MAPHUB platform.
Quantum Geographical Information System (QGIS) software shall be used in data cleaning to get rid of irrelevant field observations. Also, this tool will be used by the project team to analyze both community data gathered and remote edits datasets as well as digital elevation model data from United States Geological Survey to address, allocate and create flood protection zones while Spatial network analysis that uses Dijkstra’s algorithm is to be used in allocating evacuation routes in Ifakara Town council and Morogoro municipality.
Project reports as well as printed and web maps of flood protection zones and evacuation routes shall be presented to stakeholders (local government, academia, Non-governmental organizations) through workshops. The datasets collected shall be made publicly available through OpenStreetMap and resilience academy climate risk database.
- Stakeholders and Beneficiaries
This project aims to collaborate with Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Local governments at Ifakara Town Council and Morogoro Municipal Town Council, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and Academic institutions (primary, secondary, and advanced level schools as well as colleges and Universities) as stakeholders and Beneficiaries. Local governments and local citizens are the first beneficiaries of the flood protection zones and evacuation routes web and base maps which help them prepare and respond to flash flood events. All stakeholders shall have access to datasets to aid in research and address challenges related to flash floods.
- Limitations or Challenges
Training of the local citizens may prolong capacity-building sessions due to the variation of literacy level and familiarity of the tools to be used in field mapping. This project shall use interactive and mixed field groups (team member per local citizen ratio) that shall come up with practical demonstrations that shall help the local citizens become familiar with the steps and tools that will be used in this project. Stakeholders' engagement may also prolong work plans depending on their working schedules. Our team shall use preliminary project meetings to understand how to address our interests to our Stakeholders which shall be guided by the memorandum of understanding. Internet bandwidth and inadequate tools for instance computers during mapathons and field data collection may be a limiting factor. The team shall persuade the universities for access to computer laboratories during mapathons and satisfactory bundles to be used for mapping activities.
- Sustainability of the innovative products, tools, or services provided
Opensource tools are reliable and effective in addressing challenges and solutions in communities where resources have always been Scarce. Through collaborative efforts in this project, (Project funders, the local governments, Non-Governmental Organizations, and Academia) we anticipate that this strategy and methodology can be adopted and implemented in flood vulnerable areas across the country and the African continent at large. Both flood protection zones and evacuation routes base and web maps dissemination to local citizens as well as the local government will act as early warning systems to flash floods events.
Knowledge transformation through capacity building sessions and workshops to stakeholders including local government officials, citizens, and youth in academia on the use of geospatial skills, shall create a foundation where the community organizations will use these skills in solving other challenges or challenges related to flashfloods. “Equipping first responders during flash floods creates a resilient community”.
- Synergies or complementarities with other initiatives or projects
This project adds value to the ongoing efforts by the SMCoSE YouthMappers and the local government against flash floods in Morogoro municipality. The previous projects' objectives were, mapping flood vulnerable areas and solid waste data collection in drainage systems in Morogoro Municipality. More than 3000 solid trash points datasets and household flood experience surveys were collected. Also, two workshops were conducted for university students to enhance their capacity in solving challenges related to floods from the data collected.
The ongoing projects aim at mapping the flow of plastic bottles as well as engineering a baseline machine learning model that will classify areas in terms of flash flood potential. This project proposed shall help produce data that will help effectively train the machine learning model for predicting flash floods in Morogoro municipal.
PROJECT 4: MONITORING AFFORESTATION CAMPAIGN
In Tanzania, where the deforestation rate is about 1% per year, preventing deforestation is a crucial action for climate solution and can mitigate up to a third of the global emissions. With afforestation campaigns in line, much of these efforts lack proper monitoring, thus hindering ecological impact of such campaigns.
While individuals, organizations, and the government support climate action through afforestation campaigns, monitoring of these planted trees is not effective, thus hindering the trade of their ecological impact. Open Mapping tools have not only simplified data collection, analysis, and visualization but also the use of these tools has proven to be efficient and effective, especially in communities with limited resources. Using these tools to enhance monitoring of planted trees would help afforestation campaigns, to not only plan, track, and assess the planted trees but also reduce poverty through trade or selling of their Impact Tokens on an open market platform.
This project aims to create synergies with afforestation campaigns in Tanzania to help understand and utilize open mapping tools to enhance monitoring and sustainability of planted trees. Implementing this project shall help address Sustainable Goal 1 (No poverty), 13 (Climate Action), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)
Selection of prominent stakeholders working with afforestation initiatives, campaigns, and projects. 2. Workshops and field-based practical trainings on the integration of conventional monitoring methodologies with the use of open mapping tools for tree monitoring. 3. Institutional follow-up for effective adoption of the open mapping tools for tree monitoring practices
This project targets organizations/institutions (private and public) with afforestation campaigns/initiatives/projects such as My birthday tree and Soma na Mti campaigns in Morogoro region, Tanzania. Also, the project/campaign shall include youth of equal gender distribution from three universities in Morogoro Tanzania through the physical workshop and field tree monitoring exercise.
. Training of the stakeholders may prolong workshop sessions due to the variation of literacy level and familiarity of the tools being used for tree monitoring. The project shall use interactive and mixed field groups to promote better understanding of the methodology and tools for tree monitoring. 2. Stakeholders' engagement may also prolong work plans depending on their working schedules. Our team shall use preliminary project meetings to understand how to address project ‘s interests to our stakeholders.
Understanding the power of open mapping tools for effective tree monitoring by the stakeholders; through knowledge transformation, partnerships and provision of continuous technical and intellectual support to the stakeholders, shall all together support adoption and use of open mapping tools while conducting their afforestation campaigns.
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