I’ve been invited to go to Jordan to consult on a new OSM project involving Jordan’s Royal Scientific Society, the local Youthmappers chapter in Amman, and the Princess Sumaya University, coordinated/commissioned by the UNESCO research chair, Science Communicator Iain Stewart.

The location is Asraq (think Lawrence of Arabia, and ancient Petra; the area sometimes called the ‘Cradle of Civilisation’. Over the centuries, the area has been settled and travelled by many people - from silk-road traders to Moses’s biblical journey, incoming 11th century Druze, to modern syrian refugees.

The wetlands have different cultural significance and inspire/necessitate different cultural practices for many ethnicities, and the now desert has gone through climatic and human-influenced changes which exemplify one of Jordan - and the planet’s - biggest challenges: water supply.

As with so many Disaster Risk environemnts, the problem is compound in nature: climate change has turned once fertile wetlands into desert, whilst Jordan’s excellent record of refugee hosting has meant massive population growth. Result: decreased supply and increased demand for water supply.

I’m looking forward to working with diverse local voices to understand how OpenStreetMap might present some solutions, and am expecting a fascinating mix attitude, behaviour and shared-interest around Water Resource mapping and with Community Asset mapping.

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Well, after a lot of field activity, introducing OpenStreetMap to Ugandan rural, humanitarian and govenmental communities in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and through conference presentations, Namibia and Tanzania, I finally decided to write a chapter about ‘Motorcycle Mapping’ - a concept and practice developed by Ivan Gayton (and myself) in West Africa, and scaled into Uganda under my watch as Country Manager.

The book in which this chapter appears was expected to attract a relatively niche market, until COVID happened globally, and a newly-found interest in Data Ethics was born out of various scandals around government treatment of COVID data in the UK.

Free downloads of the book are available: https://www.sas.ac.uk/publications/mapping-crisis, and an abstract for my chapter can be found here: https://rupertallan.com/modalities-of-united-statelessness-chapter-9-abstract/

For nearly a year, the government outbreak effort extensively overlooked humanitarian knowledge and experience on how to manage COVID data in the UK, but it seems they are consulting Epidemiologists now (including MSF).

During the last few months, COVID figures have been making headlines in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, and OpenStreetMap now has an opportunity and support to map the South Wales Valleys. I feel fortunate to have lived and worked in the Valleys in the 1990s, and am excited to be part of this venture. At time of writing, there is every chance that Merthyr Tydfil will see african refugees working in its streets and alleys, helping its community to map their own vulnerability metrics.

Views are my own… http://rupertallan.com/post-ebola-mapping-in-sierra-leone-the-battle-may-be-over-but/

Missing Maps is currently engaged in motorcycle mapping of the entire border regions between Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Here is an excerpt from my trip report from the first recruiting and training mission to Sierra Leone. Trip Report - Phase One

MISSING MAPS – FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE, 29th APRIL – 8th MAY 2016

FIELD MAPPING COORDINATION by Rupert Allan

Purpose:

Training of Field Team Leaders in preparation for recruiting Volunnteer enumerators and performing Sierra Leone Mapping Project

Aims and Objectives:

As MSF consultant, deployed for the training of pre-recruited Field Team Leaders for the Missing Maps Border Project this training was designed to prepare FTLs for Volunteer Recruitment, to initiate the survey project, and to establish possible links and contacts by which to implement the phase two return visit. Prior to the trip, an important part of the project became the establishment of definitions of admin levels which could bring data-sets usefully in-line with those gathered in the Liberia and Guinea. Using FTL feedback,necessary adjustments were made in the field in order to leave a workable community survey prototype survey form as a guide for recruiting and training.

Day 1 (Wednesday, 4th May)

Red Cross Introductions (Abridged due to time constraints) Hand-over to Rupert Presentation: Missing Maps Introduction (the global picture) Descriptions and locations using and evaluating map-reading skills (‘Where am I from?’) Introductions to Smart Phones, Presentation two and Introduction to ODK Introduction to OSMAND and tracking Study Of Maps, Home Address and Admin Levels, and FTL Introduction to their ‘Territory’ Subsequent Discussion of Area Coverage for each FTL, and Personal Field Survey Boundaries to be completed as homework Discussion of Missing Sections in Survey and Listings, to be completed as homework

Day 2 (Thursday, 5th May)

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What an interesting Mapathon. A real brainstorm for policy on how to deal with how Neighbourhoods which cross wards will be mapped. Rob Scott showed us how to share ‘ways/relations/boundaries’ by using Overpass Turbo to export the admin levels into JOSM. Sarah Wise and Tom Hills took up the batten, which was not easy. Rob insisted that we work out these ways of tagging ‘Parcels’ of land with shared boundaries, and it was true that although little was inputted, we now have clear strategy. Below is a summary from email correspondence:

Hey Tom and Sarah.

Hope the following fits with what Sarah has down from last night here: osm.wiki/Missing_Maps_Epworth_Zimbabwe_Field_Mapping_2015_live

I will double-check once my emails are answered, but please feed back.

Great that you’re getting time to do stuff, Tom. This is indeed the issue that we came up against, and which led to that slightly esoteric venture into Ways, Relations and Boundaries. I am adjusting the levels a bit from yesterday. Also, I think it may be good to let those who want to just tag the houses and leave the boundaries. Better for the newbies like me. I’ll ask for feedback on this, tooo, from the community.

Sometimes, the away to find and address consists in upper levels, sometimes in lower.

In these cases, indeed the whole case of Epworth, we need to ‘live with’ gaps in the Address Chain at certain levels. Sometimes occupied by qualifiers, sometimes blank, because admin levels are not consistent in the addressing system. So let them be pushed and let’s create the space. Rule of thumb is to ‘shunt’ the values up or down to line-up and leave gaps in the value fields which become empty. This would be a true rendering. I think my team-mate Kieran would concur. (I will post and hope for confirmation.) So yes, option 3. Create a new level: ‘subdistrict’.

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We now have a considerable proportion of the body of Epworth Field Papers, and we are hoping to start inputting as soon as possible.

We ran into some interesting issues in Epworth, to do with security, permissions and consent. We are working on the Wiki page for the job, and on which administrative levels to use. Rather than using, or ‘imposing’ external frameworks onto the randomised address system, it was important to have datasets which reflected the ‘oral/institutional’ memory of those on the ground delivering or directing help. Epworth’s way of locating people for patient tracing (HIV and other ongoing treatments) is locked and protected in the memories of our workers on the ground.

This set of data has been carefully thought-out in order only to add to, and not to compromise, the well-being and resilience of this massively under-censussed and under-represented population.

Join us on 16th to get the data into JOSM and online.

Zimbabwe Blog: http://rupertallan.com/2015/05/23/harare/

We shall be playing with GPX traces, mapillary and Water Surveys on the night, and are still looking for the venue.