Urban Thinkers Campus on Community-based Approaches to Data Collection

Our institute, together with the University of Colorado Boulder, the ITC Faculty Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), and UNITAC Hamburg organized an expert workshop on community-based approaches to data collections in informal settlements.

Despite the importance of informality in the urban development of the Global South, there is a great lack of data. The aggregates of UN-Habitat often rely on surveys or outdated census information and can at best be understood as a crude estimate, particularly as they do include any detailed geographic information. Consequently, our knowledge of the spatial distribution, growth dynamics, and characteristics of slum residents and housing units remain very limited.

At the same time, considerable advancements in spatial mapping have opened up new possibilities to create and analyze data. Citizen science, community enablement, and new technologies (e.g., Big Data, Cloud Computing, and AI) have also opened up new opportunities to generate qualitative data at scale. The objective of the campus is to unite voices from different sectors that aim at pushing the boundaries of data collection, ranging from community data to Earth Observation data.

We are thankful to the presentations of Nyambuga Kilion Nyowino (SDI), Dr. Dana R. Thomson (Ideamaps), Juan Manuel D'Attoli (RENABAP) & María Lucía Groos (TECHO Argentina), and Victor Marchezini (CEMADEN). The next edition on GIS approaches is scheduled for October 17.