Community Mapping Research Articles

Disaster Risk Finance in Developing Countries: An Overview With Particular Reference to Indonesia

This paper is an overview of how insurance instruments could be used in Indonesia to improve disaster risk finance (the arrangements for managing the financial consequences of disaster). We review the policy and research literature to describe the existing arrangements in Indonesia for preparing for and responding to disasters, including the efforts of an active Indonesian community mapping movement to fill in some of the major gaps in data that hinder the assessment of disaster risks. We argue that as a large geographically diverse middle-income country, Indonesia is well placed to employ insurance instruments for fairer and more predictable sharing of the financial burden of disasters. This could be through a combination of increased private insurance for households, firms and government agencies across the country and insurance-based arrangements for allocating government disaster relief funding and, when required for the largest high impact events, accessing international resources. This will, however, require careful implementation and a sustained effort to address gaps in data, skills and institutional capacity.

Mixed-blood: Indigenous-Black identity in colonial Canada

In thinking through Indigenous-Blackness in colonial Canada, we explored the ramifications of the intersections of mixed-blood Indigenous-Black identity with colonialism, racism, gender, and social determinants of health, and how the outcomes of such intersections manifest as erasure, racism, and fractured identity. This critical research is nested within the larger Proclaiming Our Roots project, which uses an arts-based community-based methodology to respect and represent local and global Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, and utilizes digital oral storytelling, community mapping, and semi-structured interviews as research methods. Community members gathered in workshops held in Toronto and Halifax/Dartmouth, Canada, as these are sites where Indigenous and Black communities came together in the face of white colonial oppression. Community members and researchers told their stories and reshaped their geographies as acts of resistance. This work brings to the forefront Indigenous-Black identity, and how Indigenous-Black people manoeuvre within Western settler society.

Crowdsourcing and interactive modelling for urban flood management

AbstractParticipatory modelling has become a growing concept in environmental modelling, as it allows stakeholders to be involved in various stages of model development. The majority of studies, however, have focused on the participation during model use for scenario analysis and strategy evaluation after the model has been developed. Large‐scale community mapping efforts create new opportunities to establish, detail and improve flood models at the development stage by working together with local stakeholders. In this article, we propose a novel participatory modelling and mapping approach. It builds on the community mapping projects across the most vulnerable wards in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which uses OpenStreetMap as a data platform. The approach consists of community mapping, an automated flood inundation model development and facilitation of stakeholder involvement. The participation of stakeholders in data collection helped achieving a more accurate flood model. The participatory modelling approach made participants aware of the skills necessary to develop an urban flood model with OpenStreetMap, necessary for creating a resilient society. The level of improvement obtained through the applied participatory modelling and mapping approach demonstrates its value in hydrodynamic model development and its potential for application in data scarce areas prone to urban floods.

Peningkatan Kesejahteraan Masyarakat Desa Antajaya, Kecamatan Tanjungsari, Kabupaten Bogor melalui Penguatan BumDes

Community Service Activities aim to improve the welfare of the people of Antajaya Village, Tanjung Sari District, Bogor Regency through strengthening the BUMDes, with a three-year Sustainable Program. Methods of implementing Community Service Dissemination and mapping on village community participation in BUMDes, and the quality of BUMDes management. The community participating in this activity is expected to be able to understand the role and function of BUMDes which has great benefits for the welfare of the village community, and for BUMDes able and weakness of BUMDes to be able to take the opportunity and face the threats that exist. The results of the socialization and mapping of these activities were obtained by the Village Communities to understand the importance of BUMDes for their welfare, so the Village Communities were strongly motivated to participate in economic transactions with the BUMDes, while the BUMDes were committed to collaborating with the Higher Education in this case the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Pancasila University in a sustainable manner. to attend training, mentoring and business consultation to improve BUMDes Performance, because there are a lot of potential village resources that have not been optimized to produce Value Added products from BUMDes, meaning that many opportunities can be taken to produce superior products in the village.

Microbial composition in the nose of children with and without viruses during asthma exacerbations.

Recent evidence suggests microbial composition of the respiratory tract can influence respiratory health and disease. We sought to further elucidate the role of microbial communities in the upper respiratory tract during acute respiratory viral infections and exacerbations of asthma in a pediatric population. We recruited 155 children, ages 4-18 years, during asthma exacerbations (AE) (n=97) or during cold symptoms (CS) without history of asthma (n=58) from the emergency department over 4 years. A nasopharyngeal swab was obtained to provide both RNA for virus identification by viral genome sequencing and DNA for microbial composition by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. LEfSe analysis was performed to determine differences in relative contribution between microbial communities within and between groups. Subjects with AE and viral infection were found to have more abundant communities of Pseudomonadales (Moraxellaceae) (LDA score 5; p<0.05), while those AE without virus were found to have more Bifidobacteriacea (LDA 3; p<0.05). Heat maps of bacterial communities clustered by weighted UniFrac suggest microbial composition initially separates between AE and CS cohorts. However, viral detection noticeably alters the microbial composition and further separates each cohort into those with and without infection. In our pediatric population, the bacterial family Moraxellaceae was most related to AE during viral infections. Furthermore, viral infection was associated with compositional shifts of the microbiota within each cohort (AE and CS). Taken together, our data suggests AEs are increased during a viral infection that happens concurrently with an upper-respiratory tract that is composed of specific bacterial communities, such as Moraxellaceae.

Research on Teachers’ Knowledge Sharing Features Based on Departmental WeChat Group

The article analyzes the knowledge sharing process and behavior of teachers in the network professional community through social network analysis and content analysis. A semester of interactive data is selected as a sample in the college WeChat group. It analyzes social network structure of network professional community knowledge sharing and the interactive relationship from the aspects of community map, density, centrality, cohesive subgroups, core-edge, etc. The article analyses that, teachers’ knowledge sharing in departmental WeChat group presented the characteristics about complexity of shared subjects, unity of shared knowledge, missing interactions and sharing potential.

Community mapping and vegetational analysis of the mangrove forest in Calabanga, San Miguel Bay, Philippines

Mangrove forests in Philippines have been noted for years to be continuously dwindling in terms of forest cover and diversity. The reasons behind these unfortunate events are the unabated illegal activities in the mangroves albeit the enforcement of laws and policies pertaining to its conservation and rehabilitation. For several decades, the Philippine government had been implementing programs and projects aiming to bring back the once pristine and productive mangrove areas through reforestation of denuded areas in the country. However, assessment is needed to evaluate whether these efforts have positively impacted coastal areas. This paper presents the current vegetational condition of selected reforested mangrove areas in Calabanga, San Miguel Bay, Philippines. Fifty-six (56) quadrats measuring 10x10m were established strategically in four (4) randomly selected rehabilitated mangrove sites. The overall results show that ten (10) mangrove species were recorded andRhizophora apiculataandRhizophora mucronatagot the highest importance values of 111.59 and 105.96 respectively. This only shows that mono-specific mangrove species were considered during the rehabilitation of the areas set aside the environmental parameters affecting survival rate and the ecological diversity of the mangrove forest. A framework was developed to guide the local government in developing their sustainable mangrove management plan.

The Urban Data Justice Case Study Collection

Cities in the global South are being “datafied”, with increasing presence of digital data of all kinds: from mobile phones, remote sensing, ground-level sensors, community mapping, etc. This has created growing interest in “data justice” in urban locations: the way in which data intersects with questions of social justice – who wins and who loses from the new digital datasets and data flows, and the relationship of data to power and inequality; particularly for those already marginalised in the physical city. This collection presents ten case studies of urban data justice; analysing from a data justice/rights or critical data perspective an initiative or phenomenon relating to growing availability and use of data in urban areas in the global South. These case studies – covering Latin America, Africa and Asia – highlight themes of increasing resistance to datafication among marginalised urban communities; of the way in which social processes and structures shape datafication and its impacts; and of the need for longer-term, qualitative actions that truly listen to the concerns and priorities of these communities. The collection also outlines a future research agenda on urban data justice in the global South.

Fit for Purpose Community Mapping in South Africa

Communal areas in South Africa invariably lack cadastre and other information needed for sustainable planning. Usually land ownership is unclear and only limited state capacity exists in providing basic services infrastructure. This paper describes community mapping as a participatory means to encourage development. The impact of community-based mapping is assessed and if participatory methodology can fulfil its well-known objectives. Reflections on two community-based mapping projects facilitated with residents show that in these circumstances, community-based mapping is effective in bringing about change. Flamingo Crescent is an urban informal settlement located in Lansdowne, Cape Town. Informal settlements such as these are high density and organic, making service delivery difficult due to the lack of space. Re-blocking is an in-situ method of upgrading an informal settlement so that basic service and access can be provided. The Goedverwacht Moravian Mission Station in the Western Cape has no internal cadastral boundaries and therefore the spatial framework is fuzzy and confusing. The objective of the study is to use a mapping technique that is economically viable, fast and at an accuracy determined by purpose rather than technical and legal requirements for formal land registration. Findings spotlight some of the advantages of community-based mapping during these projects by assessing their impact using critical outcomes of participation, empowerment and ownership.

Intersection of Migration and Local Governance: Lessons on Methods and Research Design

A recent study interrogating the ways in which municipal authorities in South Africa are governing their mobile communities demonstrated that there is potential for both conceptual innovation and methodological rigor when integrating the cross-cutting systems of migration and local governance. However, this integration also posed a number of challenges that were apparent both during the data collection phase, as well as when the diagnostic tool was designed. The process of implementing this research raised methodological and conceptual questions about how these two areas of work intersect. This paper aims to reflect not on the results of the study itself, but on the methodological process issues that can lay a foundation for a better understanding of how to study the intersection of two interdisciplinary fields. This research took place in five South African municipalities in Limpopo, Gauteng, and Mpumalanga, selected because they reflect a broad spectrum of migration dynamics and demographic patterns. An institutional ethnography approach was drawn on, which included mixed methods fieldwork with document review, key stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and community mapping took place in all five municipalities, taking an inductive approach to developing a diagnostic tool, which was applied retrospectively based on the data gathered. This paper found that resolving a number of divergent conceptual issues is important to effectively interpret results around the intersection of the cross-cutting fields of governance and migration. This methodological reflection is important on its own, but it will also help ensure that future initiatives around strengthening local governance, or making systems more responsive to the needs of migrants, are on solid conceptual, methodological, and practical ground.

Risk Prediction of Theft Crimes in Urban Communities: An Integrated Model of LSTM and ST-GCN

Urbanization has been speeding up social and economic transformations in urban communities, the smallest social units in a city. However, urbanization brings challenges to urban management and security. Therefore, a system of risk prediction of crimes may be essential to crime prevention and control in urban communities and its system improvement. To tackle crime-related problems in urban communities, this paper proposes a model of daily crime prediction by combining Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM) and Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Network (ST-GCN) to automatically and effectively detect the high-risk areas in a city. Topological maps of urban communities carry the dataset in the model, which mainly includes two modules — spatial-temporal features extraction module and temporal feature extraction module — to extract the factors of theft crimes collectively. We have performed the experimental evaluation of the existing crime data from Chicago, America. The results show that the integrated model demonstrates positive performance in predicting the number of crimes within the sliding time range.

Knowledge Mapping of Virtual Academic Communities: A Bibliometric Study Using Visual Analysis

Knowledge Mapping of Virtual Academic Communities: A Bibliometric Study Using Visual Analysis

Contesting the Social Spaces: Gender Relations of Literary Communities in Yogyakarta and Surakarta

This research seeks to map the gender relations within literary communities and their contestations in gaining social and financial capital in Yogyakarta and Surakarta social spaces. The presence of literary communities in these spaces, on the one hand, explains the local and specific self-identities of the communities, as well as their heterogeneity in gender relations. In particular, this research maps these communities' differences in expressions, trajectories (visions for the future), themes, narrations, language, and networks based on their gender relations. The Geographic Information System (GIS) method is used to map and explore the gender issues in these literary communities. By understanding the mapping of these literary communities, the dynamics of the social spaces used by these communities can be traced synchronically within a specific period. It can also be followed up when the database is used diachronically over time. This research finds that social spaces that enable open narration are insufficient to ensure the equality of women and men. Flexible domestic spaces for women are also necessary to ensure women to be active in creating the trajectory of the literary communities since they have capacities to do it.

Infusing Inuit and local knowledge into the Low Impact Shipping Corridors: An adaptation to increased shipping activity and climate change in Arctic Canada

Ship traffic has nearly tripled in the Canadian Arctic over the past decade and additional growth is expected as climate change continues to increase navigability in the region. In response, the Canadian Government is developing Low Impact Shipping Corridors as an adaptation strategy that supports safety and sustainability under rapidly changing environmental conditions. The corridors are voluntary maritime routes where services and infrastructure investments are prioritized. While a large amount of data from different sources were used to establish the location of the corridors, important local and Indigenous knowledge from Arctic communities has yet to be considered in much detail. The Arctic Corridors and Northern Voices (ACNV) project was established in response to this fundamental gap in knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to outline perspectives and recommendations for the corridors from 13 Canadian Arctic communities across Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homeland) that were involved in the ACNV project through a series of participatory community mapping workshops. A summary of the recommendations for the corridors that emerged from communities is presented including spatial representations for: 1) preferred corridors, 2) areas to avoid, 3) restrictions by season, 4) modification of vessel operation and 5) areas where charting is needed. The findings of the study further reiterate the vital need for meaningful inclusion of northern voices in the development of Arctic shipping policy and governance.

Vegetation mapping using hierarchical object‐based image analysis applied to aerial imagery and lidar data

AbstractAims: The primary objective of this study is to map the distribution and quantify the cover of vegetation alliances over the entirety of San Clemente Island (SCI). To this end, we develop and evaluate the mapping method of hierarchical object‐based classification with a rule‐based expert system.Location: San Clemente Island, California, USA.Methods: We developed and tested an approach based on hierarchical object‐based classification with a rule‐based expert system to effectively map vegetation communities on SCI following the Manual of California Vegetation classification system. In this mapping approach, the shrub species defining each vegetation community and non‐shrub growth forms were first mapped using aerial imagery and lidar data, then used as input in an automated mapping rule set that incorporates the percent cover rules of a field‐based mapping rule set.Results: The final vegetation map portrays the distribution of 19 vegetation communities across SCI, with the largest areas comprised of California Annual and Perennial Grassland (35%) and three types of coastal sage scrub and maritime succulent scrub, comprising a combined 53% of the area. Map accuracy was assessed to be 79% based on fuzzy methods and 61% with a traditional accuracy assessment. The accuracy of tree identification was assessed to be 81%, but species‐level tree accuracy was 45%.Conclusions: Semi‐automated approaches to vegetation community mapping can produce repeatable maps over large spatial extents that facilitate ecological management efforts. However, some low‐statured shrub community types were difficult to differentiate due to patchy canopies of co‐occurring species including abundant non‐native grasses characteristic of complex disturbance histories. Species‐level tree mapping accuracy was low due to the difficulty of identifying species within poorly illuminated canyons, resulting from sub‐optimal image acquisition timing.

Implementation of a Community-Based Hybrid HIV Testing Services Program as a Strategy to Saturate Testing Coverage in Western Kenya.

Knowledge of HIV status is the entry point for linkage to prevention, care, and treatment, and the first step toward achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets. Most countries rely on proxies for estimating testing saturation, including periodic population-based sampling and yield (number positive among those tested). We conducted a community-based "Hybrid" HIV testing services (HTS) program to identify persons unaware of their HIV-positive status. Homa Bay County, Kenya; July-September, 2016. We conducted community mapping, household census, multi-disease community health campaigns (CHCs), and home-based tracking. HIV testing eligibility was based on 2015 national guidelines. The previously unidentified fraction (PUF) was defined as the proportion of newly identified persons living with HIV (PLWH) out of all previously identified and newly identified PLWH. The Hybrid HTS program reached 28,885 persons in total: 25,340 residents and 3545 nonresidents. There were 19,288 persons reached through CHCs and tracking. Of 11,316 individuals eligible for HIV testing, 9463 (83%) accepted testing, including 1230 (13%) first-time testers. There were 115 newly identified PLWH of 1589 total HIV-positive persons, representing a 7.2% PUF. Of 93 newly identified PLWH at the CHCs, 68% initiated same-day antiretroviral therapy. The Hybrid HTS program identified persons previously unaware of their HIV-positive status, thereby enabling linkage to care and same-day treatment and reducing onward transmission risk. An approach focused on identifying persons unaware of their HIV-positive status in combination with ascertaining the PUF has the potential to better target testing strategies to identify >90% of PLWH in a community.

Convolutional Neural Networks enable efficient, accurate and fine-grained segmentation of plant species and communities from high-resolution UAV imagery

Recent technological advances in remote sensing sensors and platforms, such as high-resolution satellite imagers or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), facilitate the availability of fine-grained earth observation data. Such data reveal vegetation canopies in high spatial detail. Efficient methods are needed to fully harness this unpreceded source of information for vegetation mapping. Deep learning algorithms such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are currently paving new avenues in the field of image analysis and computer vision. Using multiple datasets, we test a CNN-based segmentation approach (U-net) in combination with training data directly derived from visual interpretation of UAV-based high-resolution RGB imagery for fine-grained mapping of vegetation species and communities. We demonstrate that this approach indeed accurately segments and maps vegetation species and communities (at least 84% accuracy). The fact that we only used RGB imagery suggests that plant identification at very high spatial resolutions is facilitated through spatial patterns rather than spectral information. Accordingly, the presented approach is compatible with low-cost UAV systems that are easy to operate and thus applicable to a wide range of users.

Using Participatory Visual Methods in the Study of Violence Perceptions and Urban Space in Mexico

The contribution investigates the experience of using visual participatory methods of data collection, auto-photography and community mapping, in the context of urban planning, violence and insecurity problems in Mexico. Two case studies examine peripheral communities in the cities of Aguascalientes and Culiacan where different manifestations of violence are present. The contribution explores the potential of participatory visual methods in capturing perceptions of violence and makes the case for their use in planning processes, as more appropriate methods are needed to capture perceptions of violence and insecurity in urban areas. The rationale, methods and results of community mapping and auto-photography are discussed, as well as some potential challenges and theoretical limitations.

Addressing Geospatial Preparedness Inequity: A Sustainable Bottom-up approach for Non-Governmental Development Organizations

Keywords: geospatial preparedness; OpenStreetMap; NGO; information management; development; sustainable;

Effects of Community Mapping Activities in Classrooms on Preservice Teachers’ Dispositions toward Educational Uses of Geospatial Technologies

Effects of Community Mapping Activities in Classrooms on Preservice Teachers’ Dispositions toward Educational Uses of Geospatial Technologies