Urban Crowd Mapping for Social Good

1. Translating Idea into Action
Management Consulting
A Smart Urban Solution…
Crowd Mapping :: for Social Good

2. Crowd Mapping
By the People
For the People
Of the People

3. • Participatory Mapping
• What can be mapped
• Current Scene
• Limitations
• Incident Reporting System
Agenda
• Incident Reporting System
• Stakeholders
• Implementation Plan
• Achievements
• Benefits
• Case study – Disaster Preparedness
• Screen shots

4. • Making maps together means piecing together collective
experiences, discovering patterns, and arriving at a
collective understanding of the root causes of these
shared experiences.
• Early examples of maps include sharing paths to good
hunting grounds and clear water sources.
Participatory Mapping
hunting grounds and clear water sources.
• This does apply in day to day Modern Life to improve the
quality of life, in some form or the other.
• Says strictly NO to the Tacit Knowledge.
• Based on the principle of ‘Crowd Sourcing’.
• The Crowd retains the Ownership of information.
• Many all together different ideas come out from the
people, those are directly related to their daily life.

5. A lot many features can be mapped, as,
• Water logging areas, open drainages & waste water outlets
throughout the city.
• Education & Health facilities.
• The quality & quantity of safe & pure water availability.
• Illegally dumped garbage & debris in public places.
What can be mapped
• Illegally dumped garbage & debris in public places.
• Environmentally polluted & hazardous locations.
• Potholes & unsafe road patches, indisciplinery parking etc.
• Health hazardous areas like mosquitoes reproducing locations,
dengue prone areas, stray dogs annoyance etc.
• Transport infrastructure catering to the City
• Irritating noise polluting locations in social/private events
• Encroachments on roads & footpaths for various reasons
• Various crimes, those take place in City pockets

6. • A handful financially sound ULBs (only), those can afford
capital investment, have got developed mobile apps based
complaint registration/grievances system.
• The ULB procures the system abided by its processes.
• A user may upload a photograph and its geo location. He must
be physically present at that location (probably!)
• Many ULBs sought the long term objectives as per their
Current Scene
• Many ULBs sought the long term objectives as per their
designated duties, but short term objectives are often
neglected. Also, they are costly to implement, if a separate app
needs to be developed for such short time period.
• It is not known whether the ULB conducts awareness / training
campaigns to encourage citizens for active participation.
• If other govt departments (eg. Police) would possess their own
system, the citizens may also need to raise issues with a
separate app. This may create ambiguity among the citizens.
• There lacks an inclusive system for the City as a whole.

7. • One to one communication between the complainer & the ULB
is observed. Somebody registers the issue and other fellow
citizens are unaware of it. May cause multiplication of issues.
• Even If the issue gets resolved, a notification can be sent to the
user who has initiated the process and not published publicly.
This may cause a confusing situation for the people as well as
the machinery who takes the action.
Limitations
the machinery who takes the action.
• The complaints and their status (verified, photographs of
action taken etc) are not available through a centralized web
platform for public viewing. (Hon. High Court guidelines)
• If the system is developed as tailor made, it often lacks the
flexibility and becomes difficult to extend and scale up.
• A citizen must possess a smart phone to get the app installed.
It is injustice with the people to dictate them to raise the
complaint only by one particular (glamorous!) method.
• The issues can not be visualized on the backdrop of city map.

8. • Web based system to view & process reports sent from crowd.
• Reports can be submitted by,
– Email to portal specific address
– SMS to portal specific number
– Filling Online Form from within the portal
– Receiving a designated #hashtag specific tweet
– Android mobile phone app (under development)
Incidence Reporting System
– Android mobile phone app (under development)
• Reports can be submitted in various categories for filtering.
• Reports can be marked as verified, action taken, etc.
• Reports display the information on city base map & timeline.
• Users can comment on reports to strengthen the cause.
• Powerful Alert system to receive notifications about incident.
• The reports can be downloaded in CSV file & can be opened in
MS Excel or GIS software for advanced analysis.
• Additional static map layers can be added in KML format.

9. • (Local) (Self) Government. -- (ULB)
• Various other Line & Government Departments
• Various government schemes
• NEWS papers & other Media
• City level / National / International NGOs
• The Corporate Sector (as Social Responsibility)
Stakeholders
• The Corporate Sector (as Social Responsibility)
• Educational Institutions
• Civil society groups
• Political Parties
• Trusts & Foundations as prospective donors
• The People

10. • A presentation is made to Hon. Municipal Commissioner.
• If the ULB gets convinced about this, it will initiate its own
procurement process. (time consuming..).
• The ULB will have its own eligibility criteria for the vendors
which might be rigid & restricted.
• The ULB will purchase the system & associated services and
Implementation Plan - I
• The ULB will purchase the system & associated services and
thus becomes the Owner of the system and the data it collects.
• The ULB will introduce the system to the citizens, manage all
the media coverage and create awareness about the system.
• The ULB will train its staff about receiving the alerts and
completing the process cycle after taking necessary action.
• The ULB may or may not publish the related statistics through
media/own website etc.
• The role of common citizen is just to submit a complaint.

11. • We deploy the system in Cloud and introduce it to the ULB.
• The ULB need not initiate the procurement & purchase process
and gets the ready to use solution. This saves the procurement
time, efforts, administrative costs etc.
• The ULB will pay for a basic set up cost and further charges are
based on pay as per use basis. If the ULB intends to use the
system for 3 months (i.e. encroached pandals on roads in
Implementation Plan - II
system for 3 months (i.e. encroached pandals on roads in
festivals), payment will be made for that much period only.
• The ULB will own the system & underlying data.
• The ULB officials will receive alerts automatically, once the
report is submitted. Then they can take necessary action and
complete the process.
• The ULB may or may not publish the related statistics through
media/own website etc.
• The ULB can use the system in future, without payment of set
up cost, on pay as per use basis, within a year.

12. • We deploy the system in Cloud and introduce it to the ULB.
• The ULB need not initiate the procurement & purchase process
and the ready to use solution will be available free of cost.
• This crowd mapping platform will be survived & sustained by
Crowd Funding and other external funding mechanisms.
• The ULB will not own the system & underlying data.
The ULB officials will receive alerts automatically, once the
Implementation Plan - III
• The ULB officials will receive alerts automatically, once the
report is submitted. They may or may not take the necessary
action and complete the process. (They will obey their boss!)
• We will have to take efforts to create awareness about the
system through media and encourage people to submit reports
• We will have to find out & encourage volunteers for
verification of the submitted reports. Although a trusted
person (NGOs?) can submit the report directly to the system.
• There will be many stakeholders, other than ULB, who will be
continuously contributing in some form or the other.

13. • We can refer to Hon. High court decisions to ULB, if the ULB
has not met necessary compliances towards this.
• We should convince ULB that how difficult it is to deploy such
systems for short term events & take ownership.
• We need to encourage citizens to submit more & more reports.
The role of print/electronic media is crucial.
• We need to encourage the volunteering efforts to verify the
Key points towards Success (In our context)
• We need to encourage the volunteering efforts to verify the
reports (through media and coordinating with ngos, civil
society groups etc), especially increasing trusted volunteers.
• As more & more reports will be submitted & no actions from
ULB are reciprocated, medial will take note of this and the ULB
will have to take cognizance of all this.
• Lastly, the matter should be presented to Hon. High Court, that
despite of the people contributing to the information via
publicly available platform and honouring Hon. Court decision,
no action from the regulating authorities is being taken up.

14. • The City will get its own inclusive platform to raise complaints
from its citizens, for their own social good.
• Security of the citizens is maintained. ULB or Police will not be
able to know the identity of people who has raised/verified the
complaint, which matters to many of them (in our context).
• The ownership of the information collected will be with us and
not with any govt agency. It may happen that, in conventional
Achievements
not with any govt agency. It may happen that, in conventional
system, people may opt for RTI to receive information from the
ULB, Police etc, which they themselves have submitted.
• If it gets the custody of Hon. High Court, then the things will
get much easier and people will come forward to submit more
& more reports.
• Transparency is maintained in the whole process while
accountability lies with the enforcing & regulatory agencies.
• Technology will not be a barrier while submitting reports
(Android phone is must to install an app!).

15. • Information submitted by the people will be available to them
without any restrictions, processes etc.
• The complaint gets visible throughout the City on backdrop of
the base map for citizens to view. It is possible to visualize that
the noise polluting area is within 100 meters of hospital, school.
The encroached pandal is on the road with high traffic.
• All the complaints will present global view of the City.
Benefits
• All the complaints will present global view of the City.
• The data collected by people will be available to people free of
cost. Anybody can submit as much data, as well as can receive
data for further analysis.
• As more & more information gets reported without the identity
of the originator, there will be automatic check on illegal,
indisciplinery activities and action can also be taken in bare
minimum time.
• People will definitely adopt their own platform rather than any
restricted one.

16. • Innovative, affordable, precise, open and dynamic mapping &
data collection is useful for disaster risk management decisions
in a data driven decision making process.
• Disaster prone geo features like old buildings, vulnerable and
unsafe living environments.
• Local expertise & stakeholders map the geo features and their
Case Study - Disaster Preparedness
• Local expertise & stakeholders map the geo features and their
vulnerability attributes though crowdsourcing.
• Detailed information about roads, buildings, schools & health
infrastructures, and population to help develop land use plans,
contingency plans, evacuation routes, and plans for
distribution of aid to affected vulnerable households in an
informed and effective manner.
• The data collected is openly accessible to other government,
non government agencies for their own assessment, reuse, &
can be complemented & enhanced by other applications.

17. • Background
• Local OSM presence in Kathmandu for Open Cities
Project funded by the World Bank.
• The latest satellite image was acquired by Digital Globe
and deployed in just 48 hours.
Nepal Earthquake
• Fine grained base map data was digitized for Kathmandu.
Later 4,500 volunteers from all over the world joined
mapping exercise for quake affected region in Nepal.
• Mapping was done for,
– Collapsed buildings
– Emergency shelters / camps
– Land slides
– Stolen sculptures / idols from collapsed temples.

18. Number of reports received

19. List of Reports

20. Detail Report

21. Submit New Report

22. Submit New Report

23. Registering for Alerts

24. Our Role

25. • Documenting the Scope of Work & Data Model design
• Identifying key groups for outreach & partnerships
• Defining project scope & objectives
• Building the project team
• Assessing & preparing existing resources & mobilization
Our Role
• Assessing & preparing existing resources & mobilization
• Software Deployment in Cloud
• Conducting workshops & trainings
• Resources management & scheduling tasks
• Logistics & managing the data collection process
• Implementing measures for quality control
• Reporting to authorities
• Maintaining the supporting systems

26. • Create awareness about OSM by organizing workshops.
• Awareness sessions for Government / ULB / NGOs etc.
• Marking a local OSM presence on a world map.
• Team building, community mobilization & technical
expertise with state of the art tools & techniques.
Our Role…
expertise with state of the art tools & techniques.
• Installation & configuration of fieldServer to collect the
real time data sent from fieldMaster Android App.
• Make available the fieldMaster Android App and the
necessary Digital Forms in shortest time period.
• Stakeholder Training & Capacity Building.
• Generate & distribute the real time maps.
• Necessary technical maintainence & support.
• Role of catalyst in Urban Development & Planning.

27. • (Local) (Self) Government. -- (ULB)
• Various other Government & Line Departments
• Various government schemes
• NEWS papers & other Media
• City level / National / International NGOs
• The Corporate Sector
Key Partnerships
• The Corporate Sector
• Educational Institutions
• Civil society groups
• Political Parties
• Trusts & Foundations as prospective donors
• The People

28. • Ability to contribute to a free and open map that makes
detailed, relevant data available to everyone.
• Access to high-quality geographic data to drive their
operations and strengthen informed decision making.
• Increased capacities to update, maintain, and use key
datasets by
Benefits to the Partners
datasets by
– Sharing skills and knowledge with other local collaborators.
– Interacting with a global community of mappers and
technologists to gain exposure and education on new
mapping tools, methods, and skills.
• Use of innovative approaches and cutting-edge
technology that strengthens both data collection and
management processes while reducing costs.

29. Praxis Management Consulting
Thank You
C-2, kamdhenu Riddhi,
Lane No. 4, Mahatma Society,
Kothrud,
Pune – 411038.
Cell : 91-9923429150
Email : info@praxis.org.in