News — 31 January, 2012

Back, back, back to Sumbawa

This week Vasanthi, Emir and I returned to Bima and Dompu. It is always interesting when you leave someone with technology alone and then come back and see what they have done. Questions often have often built up, but usually some solutions as well. People don’t wait for your to return to move forward, they usually either abandon what they have been taught or adapt to their own situations and uses. Bima and Dompu were no different.

This week Vasanthi, Emir and I returned to Bima and Dompu. It is always interesting when you leave someone with technology alone and then come back and see what they have done. Questions often have often built up, but usually some solutions as well. People don’t wait for your to return to move forward, they usually either abandon what they have been taught or adapt to their own situations and uses. Bima and Dompu were no different.

In Bima the data collected was aimed at mapping projects for the local government. This was different than the workflows we discussed this time, but fit their own needs. By using GPS and JOSM they went and mapped each government project, then by downloading the data they were able to put this into a dashboard. By using GlobalMapper and some flash software called ‘Stat Planet Plus” they combined the data to create an interactive dashboard. This way the local government of Bima could see where they working and summarized data by village on those projects. It as great to see a locally built solution that was built on the skills we taught earlier in the year.

Dompu has been doing dedicated data collection by village. This had begun back in August when Jeff Haack joined them for a week to map Lanci Jaya. They’ve continued it and aim to map all 90 villages with financial support from the government of Dompu. Strong in data collection the important questions for them are making maps that are relevant to the citizens that live in those villages. We also worked further with them on the datastore, the software that allows separation of private personal data from OpenStreetMap data. Once the private data has been collected it can be downloaded and joined to OSM data to make poverty maps.

Both groups are well on their way and I suspect Dompu will map all 90 villages in no time!