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What do we learn when we map a city? Voices and impacts from Open Cities Africa

  

What do we learn when we map a city? Voices and impacts from Open Cities Africa

Organizer: World Bank / GFDRR; Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Since 2017, the Open Cities Africa program has trained more than 500 neighborhood residents, university students, and civil servants how to use phones, cameras, drones and other tech to gather data on disaster risk. Yet data collection was only the beginning. How can hundreds of trained mappers and hundreds of thousands of mapped features help Africa’s cities understand, then take action on disaster risk? In this session, we take a look at the relationships that develop between mappers, citizens, and their governments, and how these relationships sustain the trust and accountability necessary to make this data not only complete, but useful and impactful. Speakers will reflect on aspects of the community mapping process that are particularly effective in supporting the planning priorities of a city, such as building the technical capacity of students to become future leaders in tech for disaster risk reduction, and data-driven decision-making for resilient urban planning.

Speakers:
Vivien Deparday, Disaster Risk Management Specialist, GFDRR
Jess Beutler, Field Programs Lead
David Luswata, Programs Manager
Willy Franck SOB, CEO, SOGEFI
Carter Draper, Country Director at iLab Liberia
Raya Ahmada, Assistant Lecturer/ Resilience Academy Coordinator at The State University of Zanzibar
Ibrahim Mambo, Commission for Lands, Zanzibar


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Session tags

  • AI / Machine learning
  • Data
  • Cities
  • Emerging technologies
  • Risk communication
  • Risk assessment
  • Infrastructure
  • Youth and young professionals
  • Fragility, conflict and violence settings
  • Nature-based solutions
  • Earth observations
  • Design, visualization and art
  • Stakeholder collaboration
  • Risk finance
  • Early warning
  • Decision-making

  • Flood
  • Landslide
  • Tropical cyclone/hurricane/typhoon
  • Drought
  • Heatwave
  • Wildfire
  • Earthquake
  • Tsunami
  • Volcano
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