Ramani Huria Celebrates GIS Day at the University of Dar es Salaam

GIS Day was held at the University of Dar es Salaam on Thursday 10th of December, with exhibitions taking place on campus at Nkrumah Hall. The day was an opportunity for Ramani Huria to showcase our ongoing work of community mapping for flood resilience.  

The day was attended by a range of academics including Dr Mwanukuzi, Head of Geography, University of Dar es salaam; Professor Ylisto, Head of Geography and Geology, Turku University-Finland; Dr Niina, HEI-GIS (Higher Education Institution) Project Coordinator from Finland; and a number of lecturers and students from the Geography Department at UDSM and the wider university community.

Ramani Huria gave demonstrations on our work, tools used by the project, such as GPS units, software used, such as JOSM and QGIS, and the use of capturing aerial imagery with the use of drones. The use of drones drew attention and attendees were impressed with the high resolution of images collected, included that speed at which imagery can be collected if urgently needed.

Many of those in attendance were interested in the open-source element of Ramani Huria’s work. The data we collect is all freely available and we use open-source software whenever possible in our work. This approach allows anyone to freely access our data and further develop it. 

While our initial motivation for Ramani Huria is to apply the data collected for flood resilience, there are many situations in which the data could be used according to the needs of the user. City planners and students were very interested in how the data collected could be used for academic purposes such as research and dissertations. 

Ramani Huria was grateful to the University of Dar es Salaam for including us in GIS Day and we look forward to participating in many more events on campus in the future.