Development of a Multi-City Deprived Area Mapping Ecosystem

Abstract

The number of people living in deprived urban areas within low and middle income countries (LMICs) is large and predicted to continue to grow. Mapping these areas over time and space in a consistent manner is important for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and degree of deprivation between cities. This work describes the development of a mapping ecosystem to do this. The first steps are to define urban extents and collect the data needed for developing deprived area models. The goal of the mapping ecosystem is to produce maps of ranges in deprived areas that are comparable between cities and can be used by local governments and researchers to map within city variations in deprivation. By developing and describing this ecosystem, we hope to replicate this in other cities and countries so that this type of work can be expanded.