The Sketch Map Tool Facilitates the Assessment of OpenStreetMap Data for Participatory Mapping

Carolin Klonner,Maximilian Hartmann,Fernanda Lima-Silva,Alexander Zipf,Liana Anderson,Rebecca Dischl,Martin Raifer,Lívia Castro Degrossi,Lily Djami,João Porto de Albuquerque

doi:10.3390/ijgi10030130

Abstract

A worldwide increase in the number of people and areas affected by disasters has led to more and more approaches that focus on the integration of local knowledge into disaster risk reduction processes. The research at hand shows a method for formalizing this local knowledge via sketch maps in the context of flooding. The Sketch Map Tool enables not only the visualization of this local knowledge and analyses of OpenStreetMap data quality but also the communication of the results of these analyses in an understandable way. Since the tool will be open-source and several analyses are made automatically, the tool also offers a method for local governments in areas where historic data or financial means for flood mitigation are limited. Example analyses for two cities in Brazil show the functionalities of the tool and allow the evaluation of its applicability. Results depict that the fitness-for-purpose analysis of the OpenStreetMap data reveals promising results to identify whether the sketch map approach can be used in a certain area or if citizens might have problems with marking their flood experiences. In this way, an intrinsic quality analysis is incorporated into a participatory mapping approach. Additionally, different paper formats offered for printing enable not only individual mapping but also group mapping. Future work will focus on advancing the automation of all steps of the tool to allow members of local governments without specific technical knowledge to apply the Sketch Map Tool for their own study areas.

Highlights

The OpenStreetMap History Database (OSHDB) [22] is a tool developed by the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) that allows analyses of OSM data with a focus on analyzing the data’s evolution
The result contains an assessment of the fitness of the OSM data for participatory mapping, which is displayed as a traffic light depending on the quality of the existing data
Concluding recommendations are given to help the user to be aware of possible problems that might occur during a sketch map study and further information which could be helpful to check beforehand

Summary

Introduction

This paper focuses on flooding because a lack of adequate financial and technical means to account for flood mitigation leads to insufficient disaster risk reduction in many regions. How can these people prepare themselves better and how can they be supported? Sketch maps are a specific way to capture spatial local knowledge about floodings, which can be based on digital devices [2] or on paper maps [3,4]. Bustillos et al [6] base their sketch maps on normal maps, while the method applied by Klonner et al [4,7,8] offers a step more because it makes the data available in a digital and spatial format based on Field Papers, which offer automatic georeferencing. The advantage of paper-based mapping, i.e., the inclusion of marginalized people, is combined with the advantage of mapping based on digital devices, i.e., the availability of georeferenced data

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion