Work Package 1
Geo-spatial mapping of health services in slums
Work Package 1 aims to map current health services and facilities and understand how these are used by people living in seven slums across Africa and Asia. Specific objectives for this work package are:
With the availability of very-high-resolution satellite imagery, the use of remote sensing methods for slum mapping has become increasingly widespread. However, current methods are not capable of a fully automatic identification of slums at a global level, largely due to the limited contextual knowledge, the diversity of slums across the globe and difficulties in capturing slum dynamics. To better capture such contextual factors, humanitarian and pro-poor organisations have been using collaborative methods for slum mapping based on crowdsourcing/Volunteered Geographic Information platforms (e.g. OpenStreetMap) with “ground-truthing” via enumerations and participatory mapping with local residents.
The combination of data digitised by lay volunteers based on optical satellite imagery with quality assurance mechanisms has been shown to be able to produce accurate geographic data that can be used in more precise spatial analysis. These methods can thus be profitably exploited to generate accurate geographic data about slums that will enable detailed spatial analysis of the current provision of healthcare services to slum residents and accessibility patterns.
This work will generate following outputs:
1. Accurate geo-spatial data about each of the slum sites at the building level, which will be stored in the OpenStreetMap database, available both for the other work packages of the project and open access to other organisations (e.g. for advocacy and pro-poor policy making).