Students Complete Industrial Training – 228 Mapped Subwards and Action Maps for Disaster Management of Dar es Salaam

2018 has been a year for floods. In March, excessive rains in East Africa killed nearly 500 people. In July, Japan saw heavy downpours which led to widespread devastation with more than 200 deaths. In August, another 300 people lost their lives in Kerala, India during the worst monsoon in nearly a century. And just this month, Typhoon Mangkhut has killed over a 100 in the Philippines while the east coast of the United States has witnessed unprecedented flooding as a result of Hurricane Florence. In Tanzania, students from Ardhi University and the…Read more

Two Hundred Subwards of Dar es Salaam to be Mapped by University Students in the Next Six Weeks

On the 23rd of July 2018, Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team (HOT) began scaling up the World Bank funded Dar Ramani Huria project, training over 400 students who will map flood hazards in Dar es Salaam. This year Ramani Huria is working with students from the University of Dar es Salaam and Ardhi University, aiming to extend to other universities in following years such as Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro and the State University of Zanzibar.  The students participating in this summer’s program are from diverse academic backgrounds, including participants studying Urban Planning, Geomatics,…Read more

Community mapping for flood modelling 2.0

Dar es Salaam’s Ramani Huria 2.0 project is one of the most comprehensive community mapping projects currently ongoing. A large use case for the collected map data is improving knowledge on flood hazard, vulnerability and exposure, all three components of the risk framework. Mapping of the type, dimensions and state of the drainage network is an important component and has the potential to establish detailed flood inundation models that can be used to simulate floods at unprecedented scales. Earlier, we reported on the state of the drainage mapping after Ramani Huria 1.0. Now,…Read more

Mapping for EBOLA in DRC Congo: Creating spatial data sets to help responders in the field

“These people have never been mapped, nobody has ever cared enough about them to even know where their house is. So these houses that you have been tracing today, is the first time that anyone has ever cared enough about those people in that distant part of the Congo enough to know where they live and put them on the map. To be on the map is to be acknowledged, it is to be known, it is to be recognized, it is to be counted. It is for the world to know that…Read more

Using Cheap and Practical Devices to Measure Elevation

Ramani Huria and The World Bank are trying to figure out the best way to calculate elevation in Dar es Salaam so that it can be integrated into the flood model that is currently underway. Measuring elevation requires a series of complicated measurements.  At the end of April 2018, three Civil Engineering students from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands - Huck, Detmar and Martijn - arrived in Dar es Salaam to build cheap and practical devices to measure elevation. They will be spending two months in Dar es Salaam to work…Read more

Innovation Week 2018 – BUNI Hub COSTECH

On  May 24th 2018, the Ramani Huria team participated in the Humanitarian Development Innovation Fund’s (HDIF) Innovation Week exhibition at BUNI Hub Tanzania. The aim for this engagement was to showcase how innovation has helped Ramani Huria to conduct mapping activities in a more precise way,with minimal costs. The Ramani Huria philosophy, “local people, local tools, open knowledge”, encapsulates the power of innovation to equip local people with the information needed to transform their communities.  The innovations of Ramani Huria that were showcased at the event included: community mapping methods and the discovery…Read more

Impact of Ramani Huria showcased in a four-day workshop

From the 23rd to the 27th of April, Ramani Huria 2.0 organised a four-day workshop that convened critical stakeholders to engage in discussion on the progress and potential of community mapping methods in Dar es Salaam.  Participants The workshop was participated by university staff, government officials, ward leaders - including wajumbe, and community members. Participants were from departments or institutions that are directly or indirectly engaged with flooding.  PHOTO; Presentation Session Presentations Participants were first introduced to OpenStreetMap - a free editable map of the whole world where anyone can view and upload/download…Read more

Community meetings- For Flood resilience plan

Photo; Community meeting. On the 26th March 2018 the HOT Tanzania team conducted a pilot community meeting in Mbuyuni subward in Kigogo ward. The main objective of the meeting was to facilitate a discussion with different actors such as Mtaa Executive Officers  (MEO), Chairmen of the Subward, Councilors, Wajumbe leaders, Non Governmental Organizations and Community Based Organizations such as Tegemeo. Tegemeo provide education to the community on topics such as environmental education and how to support orphans - it operates nationwide. During this meeting, community members pinpointed assets that they considered to be…Read more

Flood Mapping

Since 2015, Ramani Huria has been tackling the issue of flooding in Dar es Salaam to reduce flooding and encourage sustainable water resource management. Now in the second phase of the project, Ramani Huria 2.0 is focusing on mapping the most flood prone Wards of Dar Es Salaam, such as Kigogo and Hananasif Wards, to produce flood extent information which will later be used to inform decision making and flood mitigation plans. The Ramani Huria team begin the community mapping process by introducing themselves to the ward officers, explaining the project and providing…Read more

Ardhi University Students and staffs trained on formalization of settlement

Localisation is currently underway to formalise the informal urban settlements of Dar es Salaam which currently comprise 70% of the city. Formalising a settlement is incremental in giving legitimacy to a community and in increasing the security of tenure of the residents and their land rights. Formalising settlements also allows for more detailed, sustainable city planning. Unfortunately, the current methods of data collection to understand these boundaries has resulted in inaccurate data and partial community engagement.  To help improve current data collection methods needed for localisation, the HOT Tanzania team recently provided three…Read more