J.J. Verplanke

Variability of quality of life at small scales : Addis Ababa, Kirkos Sub-city

Urban quality of life (QoL) is becoming a subject of urban research mainly for western and Asian countries. Such attention is due to an increasing awareness of the contribution of QoL studies in identifying intervention areas and in monitoring urban planning policies. However, most studies are carried out at city or country level that can average out details at small scales. In this paper we present a case study where the urban QoL at small scale is measured and its variability is evaluated for Kirkos sub-city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The study is based on data from a household survey and some secondary data. Geographic information system (GIS) is applied to extract proximity information (e.g., distance to school facilities) and visualize the spatial distribution of QoL. Statistical methods such as factor analysis are applied to establish an index of objective QoL while coefficient of variation is applied to evaluate spatial variability of subjective QoL. The results of this study reveal that the subjective quality of life (QoL) scores show large variation in the sub-city. The mean QoL score also indicates that the respondents in the sub-city, on average, are dissatisfied with the quality of their life. Respondents with higher education level and income are on average, however, more satisfied with their QoL in the sub-city. The results reveal that the lower the QoL in the Kebele, the larger the variability of QoL within the Kebele. Such indicates how aggregation at large scale can average out the variation of QoL at small scales. The results reveal the presence of QoL variability at small scales. The comparison between the subjective and the objective QoL at Kebele level indicated a state of dissonance, adaptation, deprivation or well-being. Such results suggest that the two measures do not always indicate the same level of QoL.

Citizen Surveillance of the State: A Mirror for eGovernment?

This paper discusses, conceptually and empirically, the role of geographic ICT (geoICT) and virtual globes (e.g. Google Earth) at the interface of public policy and citizens. Our preliminary findings from on-going field work in an Indian city and in Zanzibar suggest that virtual globe technology can potentially transfer to citizens surveillance power, traditionally held by the government. Starting from the traditional electronic government framework, where bureaucracy acts as a filter between policy makers and citizens with grievances, we outline an emerging framework where commercial virtual globes act as mediators between policy-makers and citizens. We show that the emerging framework holds the potential of allowing citizens concerned, in our case, about the quality of water services, to influence policy makers directly. The virtual globe acts as a mirror to the traditional eGovernment framework and lends a different societal visibility both to public services provision, and to localized citizens’ needs.

A Shared Perspective for PGIS and VGI

This paper reviews persistent principles of participation processes. On the basis of a review of recent interrogations of the (Public) Participatory Geographic Information Systems (P)PGIS and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) approaches, a summary of five prevailing principles in participatory spatial information handling is presented. We investigate these five principles that are common to (P)PGIS and VGI on the basis of a framework of two dimensions that govern the participatory use of spatial information from the perspective of people and society. This framework is presented as a shared perspective of (P)PGIS and VGI and illustrates that, although both share many of these same principles, the ways in which these principles are approached are highly diverse. The paper ends with a future outlook in which we discuss the inter-connected memes of potential technological futures, the signification of localness in ‘local spatial knowledge’, and the ramifications of ethical tenets by which PGIS and VGI can strengthen each other as two sides of the same coin.

A Geographic and Mixed Methods Approach to Capture Unequal Quality-of-Life Conditions

The aim of this chapter is to present a methodological approach to map unequal quality-of-life and citizen’s self-perceived living conditions. The objective is to critically explore new approaches where the combination of multiple sources of information collected via mixed methods offers new insights at the same time as raises new challenges. This chapter draws from various case studies carried out in the global South and North. All the cases made use of adjustments of our framework that combines measures of objective and subjective quality-of-life in a mixed method approach. Although the cases are located in cities of different countries, the results show the emergence of similar questions and concerns related to the construction, use and validity of the collected information and poses new questions about what knowledge can be derived from it. The results also show the policy relevance of mapping and explaining self-perceived quality-of-life conditions for targeting and implementing remedy policies.

Wicked Water Points: The Quest for an Error Free National Water Point Database

The Water Sector Development Programme (WSDP) of Tanzania aims to improve the performance of the water sector in general and rural water supply (RWS) in particular. During the first phase of the WSDP (2007 to 2014), implementing agencies developed information systems for attaining management efficiencies. One of these systems, the Water Point Mapping System (WPMS), has now been completed, and the database is openly available to the public, as part of the country’s commitment to the Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative. The Tanzanian WPMS project was the first attempt to map “wall-to-wall” all rural public water points in an African nation. The complexity of the endeavor led to suboptimal results in the quality of the WPMS database, the baseline of the WPMS. The WPMS database was a means for the future monitoring of all rural water points, but its construction has become an end in itself. We trace the challenges of water point mapping in Tanzania and describe how the WPMS database was initially populated and to what effect. The paper conceptualizes errors found in the WPMS database as material, observational, conceptual and discursive, and characterizes them in terms of type, suspected origin and mitigation options. The discussion focuses on the consequences of open data scrutiny for the integrity of the WPMS database and the implications for monitoring wicked water point data.

Monitoring Rural Water Points in Tanzania with Mobile Phones: The Evolution of the SEMA App

Development professionals have deployed several mobile phone-based ICT (Information and Communications Technology) platforms in the global South for improving water, health, and education services. In this paper, we focus on a mobile phone-based ICT platform for water services, called Sensors, Empowerment and Accountability in Tanzania (SEMA), developed by our team in the context of an action research project in Tanzania. Water users in villages and district water engineers in local governments may use it to monitor the functionality status of rural water points in the country. We describe the current architecture of the platform’s front-end (the SEMA app) and back-end and elaborate on its deployment in four districts in Tanzania. To conceptualize the evolution of the SEMA app, we use three concepts: transaction-intensiveness, discretion and crowdsourcing. The SEMA app effectively digitized only transaction-intensive tasks in the information flow between water users in villages and district water engineers. Further, it resolved two tensions over time: the tension over what to report (by decreasing the discretion of reporters) and over who should report (by constraining the reporting “crowd”).

Robustness of rule sets using VHR imagery to detect informal settlements - a case of Mumbai, India

Robust monitoring approaches for informal settlements using very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery can deliver essential information for supporting the formulation of pro-poor policies. Such information can complement census methods or participatory approaches. With the increasing availability of VHR satellite imagery, detection of the informal settlements benefits from the conceptualization of location-specific knowledge in the form of a locally-adapted generic slum ontology (GSO). In this study, we developed the local slum ontology for Mumbai, India, by incorporating local knowledge with image-based proxies. Then, we translated the local ontology into a rule set using Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) to identify informal settlements by using spectral, spatial, geometric and texture measures. The method was applied to three subsets of a Worldview-2 imagery. The robustness of the initial rule set was analysed with the help of membership functions. The results showed that the normalized difference ratio of near infrared (NIR) and blue band and grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) features are most effective in all three subsets in the identification of informal settlements. The results suggest that the rule sets developed in this study can potentially be applied to other study areas of Worldview-2 imagery for informal settlements identification.