Mikel parachuted in to Kibera last month – a holiday destination known as the “second largest urban slum in Africa” – to make sure it’s all mapped. The results have been impressive:
It includes a website, map data of course and social media including twitter and interviews:
The press release is worth a read:
Kibera remains a blank spot on the Kenyan map, though it holds as many as one million inhabitants according to UN-HABITAT. Its limited health and water resources, traffic patterns, and housing layouts remain largely invisible to the outside world and to residents themselves. Though many organizations have collected data on Kibera, the information is not yet shared as a resource for all to use. Map Kibera will fill in this gap by producing free, open-source digital map data using the techniques of OpenStreetMap, a user-edited map of the world. The resulting information will be freely available to residents, NGOs, private companies, and others interested in working with and for Kibera.
This would be a good place for bestofosm.org. Unfortunately the data is not there yet. What’s the reason for this? Poor Internet connectivity?
Mikel set up a separate OSM server for the purposes of this mapping initiative, partly because of poor internet connections, and partly to keep the data separate because it will be released to the public domain. It will also be put into OpenStreetMap though. Hopefully fairly soon.
It will happen soon .. hopefully by the end of December. Lots of data to massage before the import.