Skip to main content

Community Improvement & Capacity Building

GISCorps

GISCorps is a volunteer team of geographic information systems professionals ready to serve as humanitarian GIS professionals, in international development and disaster response scenarios  GISCorps is a part of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA).

URL: 
http://www.giscorps.org/

Africa Map: Browse and Explore African Datasets

picture layer in Africa MapThe Africa Map project, currently in beta, is an online map and data viewer created by Harvard University.  The map combines data sets of numerous categories from a wide variety of sources, allowing thematic maps to be viewed and explored.  The purposes of the project, according to the project web site:

  1. Interact with the best available public data for Africa
  2. See the whole of Africa yet also zoom in to particular places
  3. Accumulate both contemporary and historical data supplied by researchers and make it permanently accessible online
  4. Work collaboratively across disciplines and organizations with spatial information about Africa in an online environment

URL: 
http://africamap.harvard.edu/

Who Needs Satellites? Grassroots Mapping Provides DIY Aerial Mapping for Peruvians!

Submitted by jim on Mon, 2010-01-25 09:00

Just read a great article from Grassroots Mapping about a public participation GIS project recently conducted for the Cantagallos community in Lima, Peru.  To help the community bolster their land claims to the territory they've settled, Grassroots Mapping led an aerial photography gathering mission using helium balloons and a camera.  Since the Google Maps / Earth imagery for the region was a few years old and didn't show recent changes to the environment, the detailed up-to-date aerial photography provided a more accurate base map for future public participation mapping efforts!

MoveSmart.org - A Web App That Helps Build Strong Neighborhoods!

Submitted by jim on Wed, 2009-11-25 12:00

Movesmart.org logoMoveSmart.org recently launched their Neighborhood Finder, an online web application for people seeking to move to a new neighborhood in Chicago - and coming soon, other cities around the US!

Map Kibera Project: Community-Generated Map of Nairobi's Largest Slum

Submitted by jim on Thu, 2009-11-05 12:00

Picture of Kibera from Wikipedia, CC3.0The Map Kibera project is an awesome example of community-powered mapping succeeding in a situation where commercial mapping providers would never venture: Kibera, the largest slum of Nairobi, Kenya with a population estimated at near a million.  The project will train local residents to create community maps - using OpenStreetMap tools and techniques - and encourage the use of community-generated maps in relief and development efforts.

PPGIS: GPS and tenure mapping

The article discusses the difficulties in other countries of collectiong geodata or making cartographic development while noting Philippine Association for Inter-Cultural Development (PAFID) activities.

URL: 
http://www.iapad.org/mapping_and_gps.htm