Presentation showing our crowdsourced mapping project to map rural Tanzania into OpenStreetMap for navigation, planning, and to help protect girls from Female Genital Mutilation, FGM.

1. Janet Chapman
j.chapman@tanzdevtrust.org
GROWING LOCAL MAPPING COMMUNITIES IN RURAL TANZANIA

2. WE’RE MAPPING RURAL TANZANIA. WHY?
• Remote villages are EXTREMELY poorly
mapped.
• Local officials lack maps of their area.
• This makes navigation and planning
difficult.
• We are mapping onto OpenStreetMap
that is accessible to everyone online and
on phones.

3. WE’RE MAPPING RURAL TANZANIA. WHY?
• Much of rural Tanzania is blank in Google Maps and OpenStreetMap.
MOST RURAL TANZANIA LOOKED LIKE
THIS WHEN WE STARTED - AND MUCH OF
IT STILL DOES..
Zeze village, Kigoma,
population 8200, 2015

4. WE’RE MAPPING RURAL
TANZANIA. WHY?
LOCAL MAPPERS ADDED POINTS OF
INTEREST, CHURCHES, SHOPS,
SCHOOLS, WATER POINTS USING
MAPS.ME ON PHONES…
REMOTE MAPPERS ADDED ROADS
AND BUILDINGS (TASK 1069 –
THANKS PETE!)…

5. INITIAL FOCUS: FIGHTING FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IN MUGUMU, SERENGETI
Tanzania Development Trust’s largest project is a Safe House
for girls refusing Female Genital Mutilation, run by FGM
survivor Rhobi Samwelly. She visits the villages around
Mugumu to tell girls about the Safe House and the dangers
of FGM. This work was hampered by the lack of maps
showing the location of the villages.

6. MAPPING ON MAPS.ME
When Maps.Me released
version that allowed
users to add points
directly to OSM we
started training local

7. MAPPING ON MAPS.ME
Also have a Swahili version,
but issues with updating.

8. MONITORING MONTHLY EDITS

9. REMOTE VILLAGES ARE STILL MISSING FROM MAPS …
Set up Facebook group to post questions
to local mappers

10. SATELLITE MAPPING VIA HOT TASK MANAGER /project/1788
http://tasks.hotosm.org/
project/1788#
Now 100% mapped, 99%
validated – (thanks
Sophie!)
https://vimeo.com/199314736

11. SATELLITE MAPPING VIA HOT TASK MANAGER /project/1788
Online volunteers trace
roads and villages from
satellite images.
Recent release of Digital
Globe imagery very
helpful.

12. SATELLITE MAPPING EVENTS BY VOLUNTEERS
Launched Crowd2Map
with triple mapping
party in London,
Vilnius and Dar es
Salaam:
Ramani Huria
volunteers mapping
Mugumu on May 7th
2016 in Dar es Salaam.

13. MUGUMU SAFE HOUSE GIRLS ENGAGING IN MAPPING THEMSELVES
Rhobi and some of the girls at the Safe House mapping in
OSM on May 7th after initial training when I visited.

14. TRANSFERRING GOV OPEN DATA TO OSM
data from http://opendata.go.tz/

15. TRANSFERRING GOV OPEN DATA TO OSM
Over 600 online
volunteers manually
added schools and
clinics.

16. BUILDING COMMUNITY - SLACK CHANNEL
Slack channel is good for
generating a community, and
for volunteers to ask
questions etc. – if anyone
would like to join please let
me know!

17. WINS
• Mugumu Safe House able to reach more
girls in Mara via
✓ Discovery of remote villages
✓ Reaching remote villages (limited
roads, bridges, issues in rainy
season)
✓ Fuel planning
✓ Better maps will eventually help
girls reach the Safe House on their
own
“We’re reaching places that we’ve never reached before”

18. WHAT WE’VE ACHIEVED..
• We’ve now recruited over 1600 online volunteers and
over 300 local mappers.
• mapped an area of over 16,248 square kilometres,
added 23 towns and 363 villages and 45 hamlets.
• added over 96,742 km of roads and tracks and over
1.4 million buildings, 2644 POIs.
• Countrywide we have added 12,294 schools and 162
clinics to Openstreetmap from government open
data.

20. EFFECT ON FGM
Better maps helped
• prevent 2257 girls
from being cut this
year. However
change is a slow
process.
• 1076 girls were still
cut in Mara, down
from 3700 the
previous year,
• and 4 girls died, down
from 12 last year.

21. PEACE CORPS
Trained 50 Peace
Corps Volunteers
on using Maps.Me
to map their
villages via Skype,
May 12th and 13th

22. AWARDED HUMANITARIAN OPENSTREETMAP TEAM (HOT) MICROGRANT
Grant of $5000 to
• buy 48 smartphones,
• train village level community change agents in 4
areas of Tanzania, and
• generate village and ward level maps and data,
particularly around access to water, health
facilities and land rights.
STARTED 2 WEEKS AGO - ANY ADVICE
APPRECIATED!

23. COMMUNITY MAPPING PLANNING DASHBOARD
Dashboard set up by Gabor
Bakos
http://www.fragosus.pe.hu/J
anet/dashboard.htm

24. ORIGINAL MAPPING PLAN
Use Maps.Me to map:
• Village Office
• Schools
• Dispensaries/health
centers/hospitals
• Water points
• Mpesa shops
• Legal office
• Churches
• Police stations
• Shops
• FGM Activist House

25. AFTER DISCUSSIONS WITH LEGAL OFFICERS
Use KoboToolbox to Collect data
on:
• Number of children in village with
disabilities
• Whether they are in school
• What support they get
• Cases of Gender Based Violence
• Cases of land dispute
• School infrastructure including
toilets, water supply, teachers’
houses

26. ISSUES IN THE FIELD
● Logging in to OSM on Maps.Me
very challenging despite creating
all the user accounts in advance in
UK
● With poor connectivity repeatedly
get this message, and not sure if
you’ve typed password correctly.

27. ISSUES IN THE FIELD
Set location from battery saving (as kept switching off) to device only and display sleep time to 30
min. Left outside for 30 minutes. Still no fix

28. ISSUES IN THE FIELD
Took 10 phones back to Vodacom in Mwanza. Very helpful
manager stood outside with them until all found 3D fix.
Why did it work in Mwanza not Maswa?

29. ISSUES
● Mappers have never used a Smartphone or
computer before
● Never used maps before and need
convincing of their benefit
● Some women too scared to loan
● phones

30. CODING PROGRESS
Clustering buildings into residential areas /
villages.
Often mapped arbitrarily (top picture)
Developed a JOSM plugin that assists mappers in
marking areas consistently (bottom picture).
Ensures that:
Settable distance between buildings (here 100m).
Uniform “padding” (here 20m).
Minimum number of buildings (here 3)
See http://tiny.cc/OSMutil

31. MMSTATS.HTML TOOL
● Contributions from mapathons are often from
new/unexperienced users
● Web application that outputs changes made per
user with a certain hashtag/timeframe:
○ Number of mapped buildings
○ Listing of untagged nodes
○ Non-square builings ratio…
● Better reporting of contributions to support
validators in assessing changes quickly

32. OSMCHA FROM MAPBOX – FOR VALIDATION

33. YOUTHMAPPERS CHAPTERS.
• Institute for Rural Development Planning, Mwanza and Dodoma.
• Village surveys up to now have been entirely paper based.
• Introduced to OSM, Maps.Me and
KoboToolbox
• Very keen Youthmappers

34. REGIONAL MAPS AND PLANNING DEPARTMENT LAND USE FILES

35. NEXT STEPS
• Want to get 20 more smartphones to start mapping in
Shinyanga and Tabora
• Crowdsourced validation
• Best way for volunteers to print paper maps
• Mapcampaigner
• Move to updated playstore version of Maps.Me in September?
• Any comments, questions or suggestions always welcome!
• Thank you!
Janet j.chapman@tanzdevtrust.org @crowd2map