Three Hundred Students to Map for Flood Resilience in Dar es Salaam

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and Ramani Huria, supported by the World Bank and partners are launching a brand-new adventure with Ardhi University today! Three hundred Urban Planning and Geomatics students from Ardhi University in Dar es Salaam are participating in a community mapping project in July and August. We will be mapping in 35 wards of the city, with an emphasis on the data needed to improve flood resilience. With the increasing impact of climate change and urbanization, urban flooding increasingly disrupts and threatens the lives of people in Dar es Salaam.…Read more

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.   Explaining Ramani Huria’s work to attendees at GIS Day PHOTO CREDIT: Ramani Huria 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…Read more

Mapping Dar es Salaam’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Facilities

WaSH is a collective term for water, sanitation and hygiene. While each is a separate field of work, they are interdependent in nature. After flooding, communities are very vulnerable to outbreaks of disease such as cholera. Building off a foundation of ongoing response efforts for this in Dar es Salaam, Ramani Huria has started a rapid sanitation mapping campaign within the city’s wards, mainly focusing on public toilets. With the well-trained Ramani Huria team available, this is approached by dividing the team into two groups with two different methods of data collection but…Read more

Participating in Dar es Salaam’s Cycle Caravan, Mapping Bicycle Routes

Each year, 5th June marks World Environment Day, a day for raising global awareness to take positive environmental action to protect nature and the planet Earth. This year’s Sunday 5th June saw UWABA (Umma wa Wapanda Baiskeli; or “Public Cycling Community”), a cycling community in Dar es Salaam in cooperation with European Union, organizing the cycling caravan. This is to support low carbon transport, to promote environmental alternatives to high carbon transport as well as putting emphasis on the presence (or absence) of bicycle roads/routes in the city. With the motivation to do…Read more

Community discussions on flood prevention at recent Tanzania Red Cross workshop

Ramani Huria was honoured to be part of a recent workshop organised by the Tanzania Red Cross Society as part of their project Zuia Mafuriko (Prevent Flooding). The workshop took place over two days, January 19th-20th 2016, and drew together a variety of stakeholders who play a role in flood prevention in Dar es Salaam. In addition to the Ramani Huria team, participants included members of Community Disaster Preparedness and Response Teams, Kinondoni Municipal council Executive Director, Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA), and Ruvu Water Basin Authority. Through the workshop, the various stakeholders shared…Read more

How to: JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor)

JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor) is a desktop application to conduct mapping activities, the data from which can be added to OpenStreetMap (OSM). It is an open-source editor, written in Java. While initially, the interface may seem daunting compared to some other editors, JOSM offers many features which are extremely useful and isn’t too difficult to master. Another major benefit of JOSM is that mapping can be done offline, unlike with other editors such as iD or Potlatch. This has been very useful when mapping Dar es Salaam as our mappers do not always…Read more

How to: Data collection tools

There are many data collection tools you can use to gather the information required to make maps, depending on your needs and resources. Working in Dar es Salaam, the Ramani Huria team have developed a systematic approach to collect data from a variety of sources and allowing us to have develop accurate & sophisticated maps. In this how to blog post, we will give you information about the tools we use specifically to map flood-prone wards of the city and the collection of data for flood resilience. All the data collected with these…Read more

How to: HOT Export Tool 

The HOT Export tool is a tool created by Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) that allows you to create custom OpenStreetMap (OSM) exports, you can download up-to-date maps for GIS analysis or use in GPS devices and/or smartphones. The OSM data available from the tool is updated at one minute intervals so very accurate and a number of file formats are available for exporting data in, including Esri SHP, Garmin IMG, Google KMZ, OSM PBF and SQlite SQL. Some of the features include the ability to: create customized maps with tags and markerstranslate maps…Read more

A Day in The Life of a Dar Es Salaam Mapper: Mapping Drainage in Chang’ombe

*Guest post by Kathryn Davis, Columbia University* January 14th, 10:30 am. We arrive in Chang'ombe ward (an industrial area in Dar es Salaam) after weaving in and out of traffic in the project bajaj (rickshaw) through different neighbourhoods. Johannes Peter, a seasoned mapper with the Dar Ramani Huria project, takes another look at his drone imagery printout of the area and indicates that we’ve arrived at our starting point. He starts the OSMTracker app on his phone, ready to start work (the tracker app helps him to geolocate, and take pictures of interesting…Read more

How To: OSM Tasking Manager

Throughout the world, many people contribute to the collaborative community of OpenStreetMap. For anyone who is interested in volunteering their time to map unmapped parts of the world, OSM Tasking Manager is a great way to find projects to assist on. OSM Tasking Manager (https://tasks.hotosm.org) is a mapping tool designed and built to coordinate mapping by Humanitarian OSM Team volunteers, making it easier for mappers to work together and avoiding conflicts in areas in the process of being mapped. The purpose of the tool is to divide up a mapping job into smaller…Read more