Spatial Collective

Recruiting Participants for Community Projects: Lessons Learnt

Primoz Kovacic — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 11:24:01 +0000

The first step in meaningful community engagement

Having worked at the intersection of community and technology for nearly 16 years across Eastern Africa and beyond, we can say there are few things more important than good community relations. Considering this connection between community and technology, we like to think that building and deploying tech is only 10% of the effort; the other 90% is everything else. Recruiting the right people can make or break a project, and we’d like to share a few lessons below based on my own observations throughout the years.

Why is recruiting the right people for the job so important? We know this is self-evident to everyone reading right now (it’s like saying the grass is green), but in community development, establishing the right connections and good relations really is everything.

Recruiting participants for community-based projects is not just a logistical task; it is the foundation for success. This is the moment when trust and ownership are either established or lost. Recruitment of local participants determines whether the community embraces the initiative or rejects it.

It all starts with community engagement; there’s no way around it. Before doing anything else, it is important to sit down with local leaders, community-based groups, and residents to listen, explain, debate, and align expectations. These initial conversations build trust, help clarify goals, and identify local realities that aren’t always understood by outsiders. If done well, community engagement ensures that the project’s parameters and people working on it are not seen as an external imposition but as a process that is co-created with the beneficiaries themselves.

Depending on the project’s goals, participant selection may focus on those with local knowledge and connections that strengthen the work, or it may open more broadly to the wider community. Whatever the approach, the process must be based on clear and transparent guidelines. Being open and honest about how and why people are chosen to work on the project helps reduce perceptions of favoritism or exclusion. This principle applies when working with government officials and local leaders, as it does with community members. That said, there are times when your hands are tied and you have to follow your partners’ recommendations just to keep the peace.

If recruitment targets the wider community, it should, wherever possible, make space for groups that are often underrepresented, such as youth, women, persons with disabilities, and others. In today’s world, jobs are hard to come by, and people on the margins are too often excluded from participation altogether. That’s why it’s important to create opportunities for those who usually don’t have them. Using well-established communication channels, such as local leaders, youth groups, churches, community organizations, WhatsApp groups, and family networks, the message reaches everyone with a chance to participate. Broad representation strengthens the project’s legitimacy in the eyes of the community.

Once participants are on board, it’s important to assess their skills, interests, and comfort levels so they can be matched to roles where they’re most likely to succeed. Some may be better suited for fieldwork, others for dealing with technology, some for community engagement, others for providing security, and so on. Taking the time to understand these strengths ensures people are put in situations where they can contribute meaningfully while building confidence and new skills. At the same time, the project benefits from having the right people in the right place.

During recruitment and when work begins, it’s important to create feedback loops by listening to the community, hearing from many diverse voices, and taking their perspectives seriously. Not every suggestion can be implemented (the project also has its needs and goals), but the initiative should acknowledge what matters most to the community and find compromises. What’s important is that people are heard and respected.

Finally, the privacy of individuals and communities has to be protected at all costs. If we ask people to share data and information about their lives and neighborhoods, it is our responsibility to handle it with care. That means collecting only what is necessary, anonymizing data wherever possible, and making sure communities understand how their information will be used.

In the end, recruitment is more than just filling roles. It’s about building trust, creating opportunity, and setting the stage for meaningful collaboration. Get this first step right, and the rest of the project has a much stronger chance of succeeding.

Homeground: When Data Finds You

Primoz Kovacic — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:43:09 +0000

A system that delivers the right information, at the right time, in the right place.

Imagine a system that curates and delivers information based on where you are, what you need, and when you need it.

That’s the idea we shared during the TED Countdown Summit in Nairobi last month. And it’s the heart of Homeground — our vision for a world where data doesn’t sit on dashboards, but moves with people. Like a public utility: always on, always near, always useful.

Let me show you where this idea comes from, what we’ve built so far, and why we think it could change the way the world works.

What We’ve Built So Far

At Spatial Collective, we work at the intersection of community and technology. Since 2012, we’ve helped governments, organizations, communities, and everyday people across Africa collect, manage, and use data that matters to them. We’ve:

Documented every house in Zanzibar using drones, helping residents secure legal land titles.
Trained hundreds of young people in Nairobi’s informal settlements to use computers, phones, terrestrial cameras, satellite imagery, and geospatial apps to support slum upgrading.
Used AI to map farms across Kenya and East Africa.
Deployed terrestrial cameras to document infrastructure in informal settlements.
Captured the social and economic impacts of large development projects, helping communities advocate for themselves and claim compensation.
Used participatory mapping and GIS to help communities protect their customary and indigenous land.
Even explored safety and security across East Africa’s border regions, using data to understand what drives people toward crime and extremism.

A hundred projects later, small and large, we’ve come to see these not just as data, maps, or metrics. They’re stories. Struggles. Solutions. Told through data.

What We’ve Found

After 13+ years of this work, a few truths have become hard to ignore.

#1. Data lives on dashboards. But people don’t.

Too often, data is collected, cleaned, and then parked in reports, PDFs, or dashboards. Sure, data has to live somewhere, but the people the data is about, and who could make the most use of it, often don’t know it exists, can’t access it, or don’t know how to make sense of it.

#2. Life experience differs — sometimes just meters apart.

Anyone who has ever stepped outside of their house knows this: life is lived differently across neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Some communities have reliable access to water, sanitation, waste management, electricity, education, healthcare, and safety. Others don’t. A farmer in Central Kenya needs different information than a youth in Mathare or a herder in northern Kenya. What’s relevant to me in a middle-class part of Nairobi isn’t the same as what’s relevant to someone just a few kilometers away.

#3. We’re no longer suffering from data scarcity — we’re living in data abundance.

Fifteen years ago, huge parts of cities and countries around the world were data “dark spots.” While those still exist, they’re shrinking. We now have more data than ever before.

#4. What we need is better data delivery.

Whether you’re a young person in an informal settlement, a government official managing water services, or someone just going about their day, we need to deliver data based on where people are, what they need, and when they need it.

What’s Possible

That’s where Homeground comes in.

It’s our in-house initiative to prototype a system that curates and delivers useful, contextual information in real time. Based on location, need, and timing.

Picture this:

A young person in an informal settlement gets real-time job alerts in the vicinity of their neighborhood.
An informal worker receives information about broken infrastructure that they’re qualified to fix.
A farmer in rural Kenya gets crop health updates just in time to save their harvest.
A community comes together to visualize needed infrastructure in real space using AR, before it’s even built.

These aren’t just ideas. We’ve already tested some of them:

FixMyCommunity (2014): A community marketplace for local problems. People reported issues. Others voted. Local fixers, such as plumbers, electricians, etc., could step up to solve them.
Mtaa (2020): A hyper-local chat app launched during COVID. It connected people within a 300-meter radius — neighbors who’d never met — at a time when connection mattered most.
Homeground Housing App (2023): We aggregated Nairobi rental listings from hundreds of scattered sites into one, map-based platform, to help people find a home.
AI + AR for Urban Planning (Now): We’re experimenting with tools that let you describe needed infrastructure, generate it in 3D with AI, and drop it into your neighborhood using augmented reality.

None of this is sci-fi. We’re building it.

Where We Want To Go From Here

We believe data should behave like a service: accessible, contextual, and actionable. Our long-term goal is to unlock a new way of seeing, to blur the lines between digital and physical worlds, so people don’t just look at data, they move through it.

Whether we build this use case by use case, or through some AI-powered engine that filters and curates data in real time, we’re exploring both.

Here are a few of the questions we’re working through:

What kinds of data already exist but never reach the people who need them most?
How can we design data delivery around people’s environments and preferences, not just interfaces and dashboards?
What would it look like if relevant data appeared around you as you walked through your neighborhood?
How do we filter for relevance? Manually, per use case? Or can large language models help us scale this?

We don’t have all the answers, but we’re excited to explore them through Homeground: a world where data doesn’t just sit. It moves.

The Power of Location

Primoz Kovacic — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:11:52 +0000

Why Location Data Matters More Than Ever

Location-based services (LBS) are transforming the way we interact with the world. Using geographical data, these services provide personalized, real-time information that enhances experiences across various industries. Businesses use LBS to deliver targeted content, while individuals rely on tools like Google Maps for navigation. From marketing and entertainment to urban planning and emergency response, LBS have become essential to daily life.

The global LBS market is growing rapidly, driven by increasing smartphone adoption, expanding IoT networks, and the growing demand for location-based data. As mobile networks and IoT technology advance, LBS will become even more precise and powerful. This trend is expected to continue, with significant growth in sectors of retail, logistics, healthcare, development, transportation, intelligence, and smart cities.

LBS are already reshaping industries. Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Bolt optimize routes for drivers, while retailers such as Google Maps, Yelp, and Apple Maps use geofencing to engage customers in real time. Logistics companies like DHL and FedEx rely on LBS to streamline supply chains, while smart cities use real-time tracking to improve public transportation systems through applications like Moovit and Citymapper. In conservation, organizations like Save the Elephants track wildlife movements to protect endangered species. Furthermore, LBS go beyond commercial applications. Event organizers, museums, NGOs, and city governments are also using LBS to improve engagement, efficiency, and decision-making.

LBS also play a critical role in development. Organizations like the IFRC and FEMA use them to manage emergency resources during disasters, while the WHO and CDC rely on LBS to track disease outbreaks, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cities use LBS for urban planning and infrastructure management. In agriculture, location-based platforms provide farmers with real-time weather and market insights, while mobile money services such as M-Pesa in Kenya use LBS to expand financial inclusion, allowing underserved communities to access banking services.

The impact of LBS is only just beginning. As technology advances, new applications will emerge, solving challenges we may not have even considered yet.

At Spatial Collective, we’ve explored and experimented with LBS in various ways, from developing a text-messaging app that connects users based on geographic proximity, experimenting with search engines enabling location-based apartment hunting, and providing real-time, location-specific data for development workers and communities. We’ve used LBS to design and visualize 3D digital objects for urban planning and creating solutions that display property boundaries. These examples only scratch the surface of what’s possible.

Spatial Collective’s Micro-locations Concept

LBS have the potential to unlock new economic opportunities, improve public services, and drive social progress. Now is the time to think creatively about utilizing this powerful technology for the greater good.

Why Urban Planning Needs AI and AR

Primoz Kovacic — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:23:05 +0000

Using Technology to Build More Inclusive, Smart, and Resilient Cities

Urban planning shapes how we live, work, and move within cities. At its best, it creates economic opportunities, promotes social connections, and ensures that infrastructure, housing, and public spaces serve everyone. But as cities grow at unprecedented rates, urban planning struggles to keep up. Population growth, climate change, and rapid urbanization stretch resources thin, leading to housing shortages, infrastructure gaps, and widening inequalities.

In many cities, development is uneven. Take Nairobi, for example. Some areas modernize quickly, while others lag, impacting access to basic services. Clean water, sanitation, electricity, access to education, waste management, emergency response, and law enforcement vary widely. Some neighborhoods enjoy reliable services, while others barely get by. At the same time, informal settlements keep expanding, highlighting the deep inequalities in urban development.

Urban planning needs to evolve alongside cities. Other industries are already transforming through technology, so why should planning be any different? Traditional methods still rely on static maps, outdated data collection approaches, and slow bureaucratic processes that often fail to reflect the real and immediate needs of communities. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) can make a difference.

AI can analyze vast amounts of data, from traffic patterns, and climate risks, to population shifts, giving planners deeper insights and helping them make smarter, faster decisions. It can predict the impact of new developments, model future scenarios, and even automate time-consuming processes. AR, on the other hand, makes planning visual and interactive. Instead of relying on maps and reports that many people don’t have access to or don’t know how to use or interpret, AR lets communities and decision-makers see and experience proposed changes in real-time and in the real world.

Transforming Nairobi’s Slums with AI-Driven 3D Designs and Augmented Reality, Photo by Spatial Collective Limited

More importantly, technology can be a tool for inclusion, not just efficiency. For years, advanced technology and technical knowledge have been reserved for a few — the so-called “professional class” — those with access, resources, and expertise. But today, technology such as AI and AR can give everyone a voice in shaping their cities. By making urban planning more participatory, these tools can bridge the gap between experts and everyday citizens, ensuring that decisions reflect the needs of the communities they impact the most. Technology can unite people through a shared vision of the future. It can bring communities, planners, and decision-makers together, helping cities become more inclusive, efficient, and resilient.

The real question isn’t whether technology will reshape urban planning, it already is. The question is: Will we embrace it in time to build cities that work for everyone?

Sitting Around the Fire

Primoz Kovacic — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 11:40:55 +0000

The Power of Participatory Approaches in Documenting Pastoralist Communities

Pastoral societies are among the most dynamic and adaptable populations in the world. With an estimated 240 million people living in these communities across sub-Saharan Africa, their experiences are far removed from those of others. Not many can relate to a lifestyle that includes moving across vast, semi-arid, or arid lands, living off the land and their herds while navigating environmental changes, wild animals, bandits, shifting borders, and changing administrations. This way of life demands a level of improvisation that can only be understood through lived experience, passed down through generations. These experiences shape culture and influence decisions on everything from family structures and household formation to social hierarchy, governance, and beyond.

So, how do we bring their unique experiences closer to those who have never lived in such a way?

One approach is using storytelling and participatory map drawing. By putting communities at the center of the research process, this approach ensures their voices are not only heard but become integral to the study itself.

Spatial Collective facilitating participatory map drawing in Tana River County, Kenya, to document and understand community land ownership

“Sitting around the fire,” though often overused, is a perfect metaphor for this approach. It represents informal, communal gatherings where stories are shared, and knowledge is passed down. It’s how communities worldwide have preserved and transferred vital knowledge for millennia.

Through conversations and pattern recognition via participatory map drawing, these stories can be given both spatial and temporal context. The maps capture locations that hold meaning to the community and document interactions with the environment and other groups. This process builds trust between researchers and the community by valuing their knowledge and experiences, ensuring that the documentation is culturally relevant, rich in context, and locationally precise.

Ultimately, the beauty of participatory approaches lies in their ability to connect researchers and communities in a collaborative process through stories. This approach preserves the richness of cultures, helping us better understand the complexities of each other’s lives.

The Essence of Community Mapping

Primoz Kovacic — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 10:23:27 +0000

Beyond Buildings and Roads

Spatial Collective team with community members in Taita Hills, Kenya.

Community mapping initiatives are often considered tools for empowerment. Also known as participatory mapping, community mapping is a process where communities gather data and create maps representing their local knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. This approach includes social, cultural, and environmental information, and goes beyond traditional mapping.

However, in recent years, many initiatives that call themselves community mapping focus solely on mapping buildings, roads, and public amenities, leaving out the more complex social, environmental, and cultural dynamics. While mapping physical structures is important, it only scratches the surface of what community mapping can and should be.

Community mapping is a deeper process than that of conventional mapping. It involves documenting people’s relationships, their links to the land, and their perceptions of both built and natural environments. It aims to understand people’s movements through space and time, the decisions they make, and what drives them, uncovering community dynamics, and documenting various types of governance initiatives. This human-centric approach reveals the complex pattern of a community’s life and its interaction with the environment.

Our most successful projects have been those that focused on this more human-centric approach. Here are a few examples:

Documenting Community Land Rights in Southern Kenya

In Tana River County, Kenya, we worked on a project to document community land rights. This wasn’t just about marking boundaries on a map, it was about understanding the deep, often complex relationships people have with their land. We recorded resources they found valuable, including sacred sites and religious locations, natural features, and natural resources, as well as stories of inheritance, pressures, and inter-communal agreements that have shaped the community’s landscape. These were some of the first maps of community land ever created in Kenya. This kind of mapping helps protect these rights and ensures they are recognized and respected by authorities.

Community leaders identify resources through map drawing and narration.

Land Adjudication in Zanzibar

Following our community land mapping project in Tana River, we worked in Zanzibar with the Commission for Lands to delineate and document individual properties for issuance of title deeds. Moving from traditional paper-based techniques to digital technologies such as drones, tablets, and cloud-based solutions, we engaged with property owners, their neighbors, and government officials to accurately map properties and people’s relationships to the land and community. This modern approach not only accelerated the adjudication process but also reduced the cost per title, resulting in the successful documentation of 1,000 landowners and the issuance of land titles by the government.

Citizens of Zanzibar City receive government-approved certificates of occupancy.

Impact of Development Projects on Livelihoods in Lamu

In Lamu, northeast Kenya, we documented how the construction of a new port affected the livelihoods of local populations, including fishermen, pastoralists, farmers, traders, and those in the tourism sector. Our mapping efforts extended beyond the physical structures of the port to include the social and economic impacts it created. We documented fishing routes, fish landing sites, pastoralist routes, watering holes, natural habitats and protected areas, agricultural areas, and other resources vital to communities’ livelihoods. After this initial data collection, we superimposed the port’s location and its amenities onto the maps, revealing potential future conflicts. The communities used these maps to advocate for compensation from the government. This type of initiative helps us promote more inclusive and sustainable development practices.

Fishermen use GPS to trace their fishing routes, fishing areas, and landing sites.

Perceptions of Safety in Informal Settlements

In informal settlements in Nairobi, we mapped people’s perceptions of safety and collaborated with local leaders to document individual instances of crime. This involved gathering stories and experiences from residents about areas where they felt safe or unsafe, understanding the reasons behind these perceptions, and pinpointing hotspots and difficult-to-navigate areas. This type of mapping was crucial for planning interventions that improve safety and security in these communities.

Using mobility mapping, residents of Nairobi’s informal settlements indicate the safety and security of different paths and locations within the area.

Waste Collectors in Mathare

In Mathare’s informal settlements, we collaborated with more than fifty waste collectors, primarily youth groups, to understand the dynamics of waste management in areas lacking formal services. We investigated who provides waste management, the clients they serve, their earnings, their beneficiaries, service areas, financial supporters, links to the government, whether they offer recycling services, and their use of technology to coordinate activities. This mapping highlighted the crucial role these informal workers play in the environmental management of cities, maintaining cleanliness and promoting sustainability in their communities despite the lack of formal recognition or support. The data was subsequently presented to the government with solutions to improve service delivery, including the introduction of more trucks for waste collection and removal.

Environmental management story-based reporting system developed by our company — Spatial Collective.

Lessons Learned

Successful community mapping should go beyond the documentation of physical structures or natural features. It should look into the heart of the community, capturing the human relationships, cultural narratives, and socio-economic characteristics.

Here are some of the lessons we learned from our past experiences that showcase the potential of human-centered community mapping:

Community mapping should capture the social, cultural, and economic community dimensions to provide a holistic view of the community.
By documenting relationships and narratives, we gain a better understanding of the community’s needs and dynamics.
When people share their knowledge and stories, the data becomes a powerful tool for advocacy and change.
By considering the livelihoods of populations we can mitigate potential risks and future conflicts.
Understanding, recognizing, and supporting existing governance initiatives — both formal and informal — can improve service delivery, environmental and resource management, and sustainability.
Embracing technological advancements and a technology-agnostic approach can significantly improve the data quality.
Community mapping should not be an end in itself but a means to generate actionable insights.
The collected data must inform policy, guide interventions, and drive positive change within the community.
The collected data must provide concrete evidence that communities can use to engage with authorities, demand their rights, and influence policy decisions.
The most successful community mapping projects involve collaboration between community members, local leaders, government officials, and experts. All of our most impactful projects have had this link well established.

Final Thoughts

We recently had a conversation with a very talented young mapper and developer from Kibera, often referred to as sub-Saharan Africa’s largest slum. We discussed how Kibera has been mapped ten times over in recent years, yet the area still looks much the same as it always did. It’s hard to see how these initiatives improve the settlement. This raises an important question: Are organizations collecting the right data for the right purpose?

It might sound critical, but nowadays, every development organization that has heard mobile phones can be used to collect data is jumping on the bandwagon. This has led to an oversaturation of “community mapping” initiatives, producing both valuable and often questionable data that sometimes seems to be collected for its own sake rather than for meaningful action.

Let us clarify: We fully advocate for widespread participation in development, knowledge sharing, and the democratization of technology, ensuring it’s accessible to everyone. We believe in the power people have over their own lives. However, as experts dedicated to sharing knowledge and supporting people and organizations in collecting and utilizing meaningful data, we are strongly against simplifying our work to the point of ineffectiveness. Communities deserve to learn from the best and have access to technology and methodologies that can drive positive change. By providing stripped-down knowledge and information, we are doing them a disservice. As professionals supporting communities, we must equip them with all the tools at our disposal to truly help them improve their lives.

Community mapping should be more than a technical exercise; it should be a tool for storytelling, advocacy, and empowerment. It should capture the fundamental quality of the community’s lived experience and translate it into actionable insights. We urge fellow practitioners to look beyond the physical structures and natural features and dive into the human stories that define our communities. Only then can we truly leverage the power of community mapping to contribute to meaningful change.

From Aerial Imagery to Machine Learning

Spatial Collective — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 08:10:53 +0000

Innovating Land Mapping and Accessibility for Sustainable Development

Spatial Collective, Radiant Earth, the Kenyan Space Agency (KSA), and PLACE collaborated on a pilot project to collect and curate labeling high-resolution agricultural data for open access and public benefit in Kenya. This post describes the practical steps taken by Spatial Collective during the project implementation, encompassing image, drone, and flight requirements, data collection, image processing, and image labeling.

Introduction and Background

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge of documenting rural land persists. According to some estimates, 60 to 90% of rural land remains unrecorded. Historical constraints include the high costs associated with acquiring data, including obtaining high-resolution aerial imagery, and limited access to technology. The scale of the task – Africa is a vast continent – and the commercial sector’s hesitance to share data openly further compounded this challenge. However, in recent years, a shift has occurred as technological costs have decreased, allowing governments and even individuals to collect essential data.

In response to this pressing need for accessible land imagery, our pilot project harnessed the capabilities of drones, advanced imaging sensors, artificial intelligence, and cloud-native data-sharing. Focused on Murang’a County, Kenya, our initiative aimed to capture high-resolution aerial imagery spanning both agricultural and urban land. The primary aim of the project encompassed not just capturing the imagery but also labeling it for the purpose of training machine learning models, automating the identification of field boundaries and building footprints.

Simultaneously, the project sought to democratize access to this imagery by making it widely available for all stakeholders. The collected and labeled imagery forms the basis for addressing governmental requirements for data, streamlining land surveys, guiding urban planning decisions, and enhancing agricultural policies. Furthermore, these resources are invaluable for analyzing aspects such as land use patterns, environmental impacts, socio-economic indicators, and resource sustainability, marking a significant step in filling critical gaps in land documentation and regional planning.

Step One: Image Requirements

Aerial imagery is the cornerstone of this project. Prior to conducting the data collection and labeling process for aerial imagery, it was important to understand the specific image requirements. Technical details included imagery in RGB format to ensure a natural color representation, images had to be georeferenced and have an average Ground Sample Distance (GSD) of 5cm or higher. Additionally, the images were required to be captured on clear days to minimize shadows and cloud cover, with a side overlap of 70% and a forward overlap of 80%. Ensuring a radiometric resolution of 24-bit (3 x 8 bits per band) was also essential to maintaining a palette of 16.7 million color values for accurate processing and analysis.

Step Two: Drone Selection

After understanding the specific image parameters, we had to select an appropriate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or drone. To effectively capture the required imagery, the drone needed to have several key specifications. These included a fixed focal, wide-angle lens with a minimum focal length of at least 55% of the sensor diagonal or 67% of the sensor width. Additionally, the drone’s camera was required to have a pixel pitch ranging from 4 to 6 microns, with image stabilization turned off. It was crucial for the camera to record the date and time accurately to the nearest second on the local time system while also documenting each image’s filename together with other essential EXIF data for cataloging and analysis.

Following these specifications, the choice was the DJI Matrice 300 RTK drone with a Zenmuse L1 Sensor. This drone was locally accessible, and, moreover, the selected drone complied with registration by the Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) and maintained appropriate insurance coverage. Spatial Collective partnered with Geo-Cart Surveys and Engineering Solutions, a Kenyan company that provided the drone and supported the project with aerial mapping.

Step Three: Drone and Flight Operating Requirements

For the drone to be operational in Kenya, we ensured that the drone possessed a valid UAV Registration Certificate and Drone Insurance. Additionally, the operators were required to hold a Remote Operator Certificate, along with a Pilot and observers’ Remote Pilot License. To conduct drone flights effectively within the region, we secured specific permissions. This included obtaining a Letter of No Objection from the local authorities, particularly the Murang’a County Government, as well as an Authorisation Letter for Drone Survey. The application to obtain the authorization encompassed an official request for drone mapping, delineation of the Area of Interest for drone activities, submission of a detailed flight plan outlining the number of days necessary for drone operations, and providing the names of pilots alongside their Remote Pilot’s License numbers.

Step Four: Area Selection and Data Requirements

Our primary focus was to create 1,500 buildings and 3,000 agricultural labels within the Kenol area in Murang’a County, meeting the specific data criteria essential for subsequent machine learning applications. Kenol area was chosen due to its status as a swiftly expanding region encompassing both urban and rural land uses, making it an ideal location for this data collection initiative. Moreover, Kenol provided ease of access for obtaining flight approvals from the KCAA, ensuring adherence to safety and operational guidelines. To meet the data requirements, approximately 10 square kilometers were identified as sufficient within this area for data acquisition and label generation.

Step Five: Data Collection

The data collection process involved several stages, including the Flight and Safety Plan, Flight Setup, Data Collection and Monitoring, and Image Capture and Storage.

The Flight and Safety Plan encompassed the detailed design of a flight plan, considering the area’s terrain and desired outputs. This plan involved identifying launch points to optimize operational efficiency while ensuring a continuous visual line of sight of the drone. Additionally, local authorities, such as the area chief and police, were informed of the drone operations to prioritize public safety during the flights.

Flight Setup was carried out using a Ground Control Station (GCS) that precisely positioned the drone while in flight. The drone platform, overseen by a Remote Operator/Pilot, facilitated remote monitoring to ensure compliance with operational parameters. Pre-programmed, the drone executed its tasks autonomously, occasionally requiring minimal user inputs.

Data Collection and Monitoring involved the autonomous implementation of a pre-programmed flight plan by the drone, remotely supervised by the drone pilot through a radio link. The pilot and observers maintained a constant visual line of sight throughout the operation.

Image Capture and Storage centered on the use of the onboard Zenmuse L1 sensor to capture images, storing them on the drone’s SD card. The drone, following pre-programmed instructions, automatically captured images at set intervals according to specific image specifications. These images were then transferred to an external hard drive for backup and subsequent post-processing. The overall outcome included the capture of 8,096 images, covering an area of 11.32 square kilometers.

Step Six: Image Processing

PLACE managed the image processing and storage. This included a series of steps to transform individual images into a singular, comprehensive depiction of the area through a process known as ortho-rectification. Ortho-rectification involves the geometric correction of images to eliminate terrain effects and distortions, resulting in orthophotos where measurements within the image accurately correspond to measurements on the ground. The post-processing phase required several procedures: uploading all individual images to a cloud server via File Transfer Protocol, establishing a cloud-based image processing server instance, and installing Agisoft Metashape Pro, a crucial photogrammetry pipeline tool. Using Agisoft Metashape Pro, the process involved calibrating images in accordance with the specifications of the Zenmuse L1 camera, aligning photos through Aerial Triangulation based on their respective capture locations, employing orthorectification algorithms to generate meshes and Digital Elevation Models, and producing a georeferenced orthophoto in Tiff format, which was made available for transfer and further use.

Step Seven: Labeling

Once the imagery was processed, the subsequent phase involved the final step of labeling the imagery. Labeling in the context of machine learning relates to the process of associating particular objects or features within the data, such as images, with relevant annotations. To facilitate this process, we utilized the Kili Platform. Two dedicated labeling teams were established: one composed of interns from the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) and other KSA stakeholders tasked as labelers, while the second comprised staff from KSA and Spatial Collective, serving as administrators responsible for ensuring and maintaining quality standards.

Ultimately, a total of 12,651 annotations were done for both buildings and fields. These annotations are instrumental in further training machine learning models, providing them with the necessary data to recognize and interpret various elements within the imagery.

Step Eight: Workshop

The final phase involved a technical workshop prepared and carried out by Spatial Collective and the Kenya Space Agency. This workshop included active participation from a variety of stakeholders, including representatives from the Kenyan and Murang’a governments, civil society organizations, universities, and the private sector.

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For more information on the project, get in touch with Charles Mwangi at the Kenyan Space Agency or Primoz Kovacic at Spatial Collective.

The Impact of Location-Based Applications

Spatial Collective — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 13:48:27 +0000

This blog post is the latest installment in our ongoing series, exploring how technology-driven location-based services can revolutionize community engagement.

Demystifying Location-Based Technology

The digital tools have the power to change the way we engage with our communities, offering customized experiences and enhancing our understanding of the world around us. Location-based applications, or LBAs, utilize a user’s location to provide relevant information, services, or experiences. These applications leverage GPS technology, geo-fencing, and proximity sensors to deliver tailored content to users based on their physical location.

The Promise of Location-Based Services

Working at the intersection of community and technology, we recognize the need for services that deliver relevant information directly to individuals in their current location.

Why do we think this is important? If we take as an example the city of Nairobi, it is well known that different geographic areas of the city enjoy different levels of development and access to public services. Delivery of clean water and sanitation, waste management, access to electricity, emergency services, overall well-being, environmental conditions, and even legal considerations vary throughout the city. Some areas enjoy uninterrupted coverage while others have scarce or no coverage at all. When considering investment in development, what works as a solution in one part of the city is often not applicable in others, making necessary the creation of a more location-centric approach.

For this reason, we are currently in the process of developing a location-based service engineered to provide access to publicly available data, delivering personalized, contextually, and locally relevant information and notifications, increasing engagement, and encouraging conversions.

Empowering Citizens Through Targeted Information

We have directed our initial efforts toward understanding the potential influence of location-based applications in informal settlements due to their limited access to data and public services. We believe that these initiatives have the potential to make a significant impact in such areas. For this reason, we have recently concluded a series of discussions with the residents of informal settlements to uncover insights into the type of information that matters to them. We found that having relevant information at your fingertips can have a significant impact on their day-to-day lives in several ways:

Healthcare Access: Quick and easy access to nearby health facilities, pharmacies, and medical services contributes to better access to health facilities and the well-being of residents by promoting timely medical attention, preventative care, reduced travel time, improved health outcomes, and overall peace of mind regarding healthcare accessibility.
Safety and Security: Knowledge of the closest police stations and security resources, fosters a sense of security by promoting quick response, deterring crime, encouraging community vigilance, enhancing personal safety, promoting emergency preparedness, reducing fear, encouraging community cohesion, protecting property, and ultimately improving the overall quality of life in the community.
Legal Awareness: Insights into local laws, particularly focusing on human rights, empowers residents with the knowledge and tools to protect their rights, advocate for justice, prevent exploitation, promote equality, increase civil engagement, demand accountability, and access justice when needed, leading to a more informed and empowered community.
Economic Opportunities: Exploring job openings within and around the neighborhood can reduce unemployment, stimulate local job creation, strengthen the local economy, enhance skills and encourage entrepreneurship, improve living standards, promote stability, and facilitate skills transfer, all of which contribute to the economic well-being and prosperity of residents and the community.
Community Bonds: Strengthening community bonds through the promotion of local youth and community-based groups encourages residents to form deeper social connections, appreciate diversity, establish support networks, engage in shared interests, collaborate on problem-solving, participate in community events, volunteer, empower youth and facilitate inter-generational interaction, and strengthen community resilience. These factors contribute to a more vibrant, cohesive, and resilient community.
Active Participation: Enabling residents to report community development issues contributes to neighborhood improvement by addressing infrastructure problems, promoting timely repairs, enhancing safety, fostering community engagement, ensuring transparency, addressing environmental concerns, benefiting property values, improving the quality of life, instilling community pride, facilitating data-driven decision-making, and empowering residents to take an active role in their neighborhood’s improvement.
Convenient Access: Providing a list of essential services, from plumbing to beauty products facilitates access to necessary services but also has the potential to boost local economic development by supporting existing businesses, encouraging entrepreneurship, fostering competition, and ultimately improving the quality of services available to residents.

Supporting Public Servants and Local Governance

Location-based data is a powerful tool that empowers public servants and local authorities to make more informed decisions and prioritize investments. With access to real-time and context/location-specific information, decision-makers can allocate resources more efficiently, respond rapidly to emergencies, develop tailored policies, and optimize service delivery.

As seen in the previous paragraphs, this data-driven approach extends to various sectors, including healthcare, public safety, environmental management, human rights, education and employment, and urban planning. It enhances resource allocation, policy effectiveness, and the overall quality of governance, ultimately leading to improved services and outcomes for residents.

Furthermore, location-based data supports the prioritization of investments. Decision-makers can target specific, and most in-need, geographic areas for infrastructure development, economic growth initiatives, social services, environmental conservation efforts, public safety measures, and disaster preparedness. This targeted approach ensures that resources are directed where they are most needed, encouraging equitable development, enhancing community resilience, and driving positive change in neighborhoods and regions.

Building Community and Driving Engagement

At the core of location-based services is the most important aspect of fostering community cohesion and collaboration. Through its inherent design that centers around a shared geographic location where people have common experiences, residents can easily connect, share ideas, express concerns, and collaborate on initiatives that have a positive impact on their neighborhoods.

Real-world case studies and user testimonials provide concrete evidence of the advantages of this approach, highlighting its capacity to transform communities. As technology continues to advance, location-based applications remain positioned for limitless growth and expansion. They stand as a catalyst for a digital revolution that empowers both individuals and authorities to enhance the quality of life within their communities, bridging the gap between residents and local authorities, and driving meaningful engagement.

Transforming Data Accessibility Through Location-Based Engagement

Spatial Collective — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 12:58:52 +0000

In this piece, we will mostly discuss the topic of data accessibility in informal settlements, however, accessing relevant data to make informed decisions about one’s life is a brother issue and touches on most aspects of everyday life.

In today’s digital era, data has become a vital asset in driving informed decision-making. From healthcare and education to transportation and entertainment, data provides valuable insights that enable individuals to make more informed choices, enhance efficiency, and improve overall experiences. It has become increasingly evident that in our interconnected world, data empowers individuals to navigate daily challenges and make better decisions in a rapidly evolving landscape.

On the other hand, undocumented communities, such as informal settlements, are often characterized by a lack of access to basic amenities and services, compounded by the limited availability of reliable data. Very little information is available on the quality and quantity of public institutions and amenities, public services, or on the population itself living in these settlements.

Extensive efforts have been made to document informal settlements in the past decades. Despite the wealth of data collected during these initiatives, translating it into tangible change for the communities has proven challenging. From our perspective, enabling data accessibility represents the crucial initial step, while making it actionable poses a more formidable challenge.

In addition to accuracy, the capacity of data to facilitate action relies heavily on the platforms used for presenting and delivering that data. The choice of platform plays a crucial role in determining whether data remains stagnant or becomes a catalyst for meaningful change. Traditional methods of data presentation, such as reports, printed maps, or static online dashboards, while important, often fall short in facilitating action and engagement. On the other hand, interactive and dynamic platforms, such as mobile applications and location-based services, have the power to transform data into actionable insights.

More often than not, when it comes to addressing the unique challenges of informal settlements, initiatives tend to gravitate towards the traditional, static methods of data presentation. This may stem from factors such as distrust in communities’ ability to take ownership of their data, fear of empowering communities, or simply a lack of understanding regarding the communities’ technological capabilities and skills. Regardless of the reason, the conventional modes of presenting information often fail to effectively engage communities and facilitate real-time decision-making. One reason for this is that these platforms demand a certain level of familiarity and proficiency in interpreting information, which is typically associated with professionals. We need to adopt an innovative approach that embraces the digital age and meets people where they are.

We believe that there exists a more effective approach to harnessing the potential of data. Drawing inspiration from location-based marketing strategies, we can devise a solution that delivers personalized and contextually relevant information and notifications, increasing engagement and encouraging conversions. These types of location-based services offer a solution by leveraging the prevalence of mobile phones and the Internet in informal settlements. By harnessing the power of these devices, data can be made more accessible to communities.

Imagine individuals being able to interact with the data that surrounds them, gaining insights into their surroundings, and becoming active participants in addressing the challenges they face. Through targeted campaigns and notifications, augmented reality, tailored search engines, and similar approaches, individuals can be informed about specific data points related to their immediate surroundings. By providing accessible data, individuals become informed advocates for change. They can use these platforms to voice their concerns, collaborate with relevant stakeholders, and contribute to decision-making processes. This fosters a sense of engagement, ownership, and empowerment, as they gain insights into critical aspects such as infrastructure, healthcare, sanitation, security, and more. By transforming mobile phones and the Internet into platforms for data delivery, we enable individuals to engage with information and actively participate in initiatives aimed at improving their living conditions.

Furthermore, the ability to access and utilize data in the field can support public servants to make more informed decisions in almost real-time. Policymakers and authorities can have instant access to up-to-date data in the field, enabling them to address issues promptly and efficiently. Imagine a scenario where a public servant embarks on a field visit, equipped with a mobile phone containing a comprehensive display of all the key topics about their work in the area they are visiting. Imagine having detailed descriptions and locations of the prevalent issues, proposed solutions, and even commentary from the local community at their fingertips while they’re “doing the rounds”. This type of accelerated decision-making process can lead to significant improvements in the quality of service delivery and subsequently the quality of life within communities.

As we explore the potential of location-based services in development, we must also address and prioritize privacy and ethical considerations. Respecting data protection regulations and ensuring proper consent is essential. Transparency should guide the collection and use of location data, while data protection laws should govern the data restrictions, duties, and obligations of data controllers and data processors, maintaining trust between all stakeholders involved.

The era of printed maps and static dashboards as the primary means of presenting data about and to the communities is long-due for an overhaul. The location-based approach can be a transformative solution for development that addresses the data gap and empowers communities. By leveraging mobile technology and creating avenues for people to interact with the data, we can make information more relevant, timely, actionable, and more importantly, useful for the end user.

A mixed-method approach to solid waste mapping in Mogadishu

Spatial Collective — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:43:34 +0000

Last year, we collaborated with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and OSM Somalia to generate high-quality geographic data aimed at comprehending the extent and dispersion of solid waste sites in Mogadishu.

Managing solid waste is a multifaceted and intricate problem that necessitates a thorough comprehension of the ecosystem, involving various actors and factors such as social, economic, governance, environmental, cultural, and technological processes. Therefore, we carried out a mixed-method approach comprising a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to capture all pertinent data.

The digitization of satellite imagery played a pivotal role in this approach, providing a base layer for all other datasets. All buildings in Mogadishu were digitized. The digitized buildings, coupled with satellite imagery, served as a foundation for Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) held with representatives of 17 districts in Mogadishu. These FGDs enabled the identification of people’s perceptions, concerns, and ideas in a spatial context. The resulting data was used to develop detailed maps pinpointing areas that necessitate attention and intervention. The FGDs were complemented by Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) that provided valuable insights into the waste management ecosystem in Mogadishu. KIIs gathered top-down perceptions from formal governance actors, while FGDs captured the opinions and experiences of both formal and informal governance actors such as local government officials, community leaders, citizens, and even garbage pickers. This comprehensive approach allowed for a better understanding of the issue, and the resulting data can be used to develop effective policies and strategies that take into account the needs and experiences of all stakeholders.

Data verification was carried out through field visits and mobile data collection to ensure that the data collected was accurate and dependable. This validation ensured that the data collected through KIIs and FGDs, and the resulting analysis and maps, were based on trustworthy data.

Finally, all the data were merged for further analysis and map creation. The resulting maps and analysis provide a comprehensive understanding of the waste management ecosystem in Mogadishu and can be utilized to develop targeted policies and strategies that address the specific needs and challenges of the city.

In summary, the mixed-method approach adopted for mapping waste in Mogadishu provided a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the issue, and the resulting data can be used to develop effective policies and strategies that enhance waste management practices in the city.

Finally, hats off to the OSM Somalia members who carried out the fieldwork, sometimes under very challenging conditions! Their dedication is truly commendable.