Celebrating GIS in Arusha

Open day on map making and GIS at the Conservation Resource Centre, 14 November

The Conservation Resource Centre (CRC) is a small (but helpful!) non-profit educational organisation based in Arusha that works with students and researchers in science and conservation.

If you’re interested in learning about using maps, using a GPS, or making your own maps, the CRC is hosting an informal ‘open day’ for World GIS Day on the 14th of November, which will be an opportunity for hands-on use of GPS units, a chance to talk to people who use GPS and computerised mapping professionally, and to learn about free and open-source applications for making your own maps.We will have a small computer lab set up with GIS applications, and a chance to use several models of GPS units.

Location: The Solomon’s Flat building, at the Anglican Cathedral Church (click for map).

Cost: Free! (but the CRC is dependent on donations and could always use the help).

Schedule:

• 0900-1200: come anytime in the morning for an informal ‘hands-on’ with GPS, and to see demonstrations of mapping systems including Quantum GIS and Google Earth.
• 1300-1430: Presentations by local organisations using GIS mapping, including businesses in Arusha and field conservation work.
• 1500-1700: Lecture & computer lab – Introduction to QGIS – a free, easy-to-use mapping application. We’ll help install QGIS on your Windows, Mac or Linux laptop and you can take a set of free data for Tanzania to use with it.

Contact the Centre (workshops@tzcrc.org) if you have any questions – karibuni wote!

For Arusha the imagery covers the area east of a north south line going from the Nanenane ground up towards the Philps area. Although the imagery is rather grayish it still serves as an excellent basis for tracing of buildings and roads. The below maps have been made after spending an hour or so tracing industrial buildings east of the Nanenane ground and the Institute of Accounting in Arusha.

An example of editing in progress using the OpenStreetMap tool Potlach is seen below. Image below has Serengeti Wildlife Research Station in focus.

OpenStreetMap in edit mode with the Serengeti Wildlife Research Station area.

All in all openStreetMap is open for business and conditions are excellent for mapping in parts of Arusha as well as the Serengeti.

A version of this article was posted back in August 2007. Since then the body of literature on Tanzania in Wikipediahas continuously been growing. Both the English and the Swahili articles. The number of Swahili articles as of today number 24.126. The articles cover a wide number of themes, many of the not directly related to Tanzania.

Wikipedia on Tanzania

This is the overarching article covering history, demography, media, culture, regions politics and more. There is also a small chapter about biodiversity in Tanzania:

Tanzania has considerable wildlife habitat, including much of the Serengeti plain, where the white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus mearnsi) and other bovids participate in a large-scale annual migration. Up to 250,000 wildebeest perish each year in the long and arduous movement to find forage in the dry season. Tanzania is also home to 130 amphibian and over 275 reptile species, many of them strictly endemic and included in the IUCN Red Lists of different countries.

The article could definitively be better. I’d like to se information about the number of bird species with a reference to the Tanzania Bird Atlas. Reference to regulations and institutions relevant to biodiversity could also be useful. Listing some of the controversies over the later years is also an interesting background to biodiversity in Tanzania. Not shedding light to some of the outstanding research projects in the area is in my view a serious deficiency.

Who knows, perhaps time has come for a separate wikipedia on Biodiversity in Tanzania.

Plains Zebra (Equus quagga) and Blue Wildebeests (Connochaetes taurinus) in Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti, Tanzania, Africa (Photo: Wikipedia/Gary)

The geography of Tanzania

The article contains a multitude of Tanzania facts. Facts are often somewhat related to the use of sources. The nay source of information in this article is the CIA world fact book. Using only one source may not be a problem, but a lot has been written about Tanzania. More sources are available. A similar article for Kenya has six sources.  For South Africa the number is eight. The quality may not be in the number of sources, but considering the wast body of research, travel books, encyclopedias and other reference books available it is a bit surprising that only the CIA world fact book has come to use.

List of protected areas in Tanzania

The protected areas should be fairly common knowledge among the members of the TZGISUG list. The wikipedia list of Tanzanian protected areas lists 16 national parks. Tanzania National Parks lists 15 mainland national parks – the difference lies in Wikipedia listing the Jozania Chwaka Bay National Park on Zanzibar.

In the Wikipedia presentation some of the historical background, areas and wildlife for the parks is also presented. The article might need some refinement.

Regions of Tanzania

The districts and regions of Tanzania are kept in separate articles:

• Regions
  The regions page is missing information about sources. Primary source in other countries for similar information is usually the national bureau of statistics.
• Districts
  The respective districts points to individual pages containing lists of wards and other related information. Source information is missing on this article as well.

Other articles

Here are links to some other articles on Tanzanian matters:

• History of Tanzania
• Economy of Tanzania
• Transport in Tanzania
• Demographics of Tanzania
• Culture of Tanzania
• Music of Tanzania
• Politics of Tanzania
• Swahili language

List and other information

A page aiming to list all Tanzania related topics has also been made.

• Index of Tanzania related articles

Conservation in Tanzania is a dedicated Wikipedia category:

• Conservation in Tanzania

Closing remarks

The general impression from reading the articles mentioned above is that it is necessary to review some of them. Their sources are too few and the texts are too narrow. Get involved and rewrite articles where you have enough knowledge. Use sources and make the Tanzania Wikipedia better!

I have taken a look at the memo and in this article I will try to focus on any Tanzanian sources of data in most part using Kuns memo. I will also throw in some reflections of my own on historical aerial photographs and what lies ahead of us. Aerial imagery is the basis for mapping, animal counts, agricultural planning/management, military surveilance and much more. The ideal imagery contains enough information for them to be georeferenced. This makes it possible to use them as a basis for comparison with more recent imagery. Other may only represent glimpses into the past life and nature of Tanzania.

Kuns memo is a 7 page document, but it still representsn an interesting and inspiring read. As I read questions popped up. Who had reason to take aerial photos in Tanzania? Which areas did they cover? When did they do it and why? While trying to answer some of these questions it is evident that he is but scratching the surface of something which needs more research. As he himself concludes more work is needed.

According to Kuns national institutions with archives of aerial photos are:

• Department of Maps and Surveys
• Tanzania National Archives
• Institute of Resource Asessments (IRA)
• The National Museum
• Maelzo (National Information office for Dar es Salaam)

International sources are more sketchy, but the following sources are mentioned as relevant:

• The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (1.352 boxes of imagery from 1947 to 1978)
• Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House
• The Royal geographic Society (RGS)
• The aerial Reconnaisance Archives, Scotland

For complete links to the above sources I recommend you take a look at the original document linked up below:

• Towards an Inventory of Historical Aerial Photos of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda

Aerial imagery has up until quite recently only been available by aeroplanes. We are however seeing that DIY drones with autonomous control equipped with cameras may be usefull for mapping and other “domestic” uses. One such tool is produced by Event38:

• Aerial Mapping Airplane E382

Only the future will tell which place the drones will have in Tanzanian GIS. But it is clear that aerial imagery is soon becoming a tool which will be available for more of us all at a lower cost.

Slightly off topic I wold like to round off with a link to Ben Wilhelmi’s webpage. In a recent book offers a aerial photography with a more personal and artistic perspective. Read more about it by following the link below:

• Ben Wilhelmi: people in aerial photography, Tanzania

This posting is a walk-through of the different options for interacting through the TZGISUG website.

Registering as a user

Registration is done by finding the Meta-box in the right column. This one gives you an option to register, log in and retrieve list services (RSS).

Login and registration box

To register press “Register”. this will open a new dialogue box. Most of us are bogged down with too many usernames and passwords. Luckily there are some plugins in WordPress which simplifies this buy having Google, OpenID, FaceBook or other third parties doing the authentication for us. For you, the user, this means that your registration with those third parties is good enough for us.

Logging in

When you are done with registering you can log in. This is done by pressing “Log in” in the Meta box. On the  log in screen you are asked for your credentials:

To stop abuse we also ask the user to  do a simple calculation before logging in. In the above example we are asking the user to give us the result of two +1. The calculations are not predictable – but easy. To log in using Facebook, Google, Yahoo or similar press the relevant button.

Commenting

When you have logged in you are free to comment on postings and forums. The first time you post a message it will be reviewed. This is also to keep the spammers at bay.

Speaking from a personal point of view I appreciate greatly comments on my own writings. I will usually use the comments to update the posting removing errors and to make it more complete.

When you are signed in there is an option to follow a particular posting. This makes it easier for you to filter your inbox in a different way than what the mailing list allows for.

The forum system

The current forum system supports three forums; Announcements, FAQ and General. If you want to keep up to date on specific forums there is an option in the user settings where you can choose to receive emails whenever new postings are made:

Tweets

If you are tweeting all messages with the #tzgisug hashtag will be streamed in the right column. Short tips or websites of particular interest tweeted with the #tzgisug hashtag will therefore immediately be available on the website.

Getting involved

The TZGISUG community is about contributing to better use of spatial data in Tanzania. Part of this is methods, part of it is technology and part of it is communicating with peers to help promote good solutions. We are hoping that the TZGISUG effort and our forums can contribute to this.

We are now offering an addition to the mailing list on the TZGISUG website – a set of forums with the themes “Announcements”, “FAQ” and “General”. The mailing list will not be discontinued, but we encourage people to use the forum on the TZGISUG website for announcements and comments to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Our rationale is to focus our community somewhat. Basically we see the need to build a centralized knowledge base – strengthening the web site as a communication platform is one way forward. We also need to start thinking about how we can refine a meta-database on spatial data as well – while there isn’t much call for hosting data ourselves, maintaining a directory of ‘how-to-find spatial data’ IS probably worthwhile, and the forums will allow discussion about the various merits of the datasets.

This posting provides an overview of the changes. We will follow up with emails and a posting here tomorrow on how to use the new features. Follow this link to go to the forums:

• TZGISUG forums

As you can see we there is a forum for general requests. Users which prefer to use the forum for their discussions can post to this forum. The intention is not to have the 200+ mailing list subscribers stop using the mailinglist. But with opening for the odd messages to the website our hope is that this will recruit more article writers to the site.

The content management system we are using now is called WordPress. It allows for blog-style postings in an straightforward way. Prospective posters will find an easy user interface for publishing their articles. Together with Howard I have produced a number of articles to the TZGISUG website over the years. It’s a better platform: after switching to WordPress, our focus and work on the TZGISUG website has increased. We enjoy this work, but would appreciate more people to bring their opinions to the table. In short we need insights and background documents to support the progress towards a better spatial data infrastructure in Tanzania. Topics in the forums will be accessible through the search engine powering the TZGISUG website. This way both postings and articles will be available when using the search functionality. As you have seen above the forum system offers integration with articles. For us managing the TZGISUG website, the benefits are many. The integration means that we can write a background article and add a particular thread from the forum to that article to provide further reference. Other benefits are:

• Spam handling;
• Search integration where searches will include both articles and forum postings;
• Access to discussions for outsiders looking for answers. The archiving features of the old ‘mailman’ setup are not optimal;
• Articles may point to forum discussions;
• Information to search engines which makes it easier to find Tanzania GIS stuff online using Bing, Google or other search engines;
• Anonymous statistics giving us an idea of the website use.

All current mailing list members will receive information about how to register on the TZGISUG website and set up their user account in a separate email to the mailing list. As before, it is possible to de-register and stop being part of the forum. Any postings you have done will then be assigned to an archive user.

We will probably have some room for improvement in the beginning of the new forum system. Bear with us if you find that the system is sending you un-necessary emails or if the layout is not exactly what you expected. Give us instead feedback, perhaps by commenting on this message, and we will try our best to make the system work for you. Discuss it on the TZGISUG mailing list or by responding commenting on this article.

Ideally data should be provided by its owners with appropriate meta data. We have decided to minimize our provisions of data because of this. You will find the sources not to be the original ones, but the files might still be useful.

Your input to this process is desired. Please use the commenting system to point us in the right direction for our effort to make an initial meta database for spatial data in Tanzania.

While using the data please please read through the following articles on this webiste which might be of particular interest for you:

• Licensing of spatial data – what does it mean
• TZGISUG website, a spatial data repository or not

Ideally there should also be a national coordinating office for spatial data on a national level. We are hoping that this list can be the start for a process towards a proper system. We have written about this on the page  GIS in Tanzania on this website.

Some years ago I prepared a hillshade model for Tanzania. It was fun and before I knew it I had prepared elevation models for seven more countries.

This article points to a file gallery where the files are available for download.

Hillshades area available for Botswana, Burundi, Madagascar, Tanzania, South Africa, Comoros, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Leshoto and Namibia.

OpenStreetMap, SRTM based hillshade and both of them combined.

Used as a semi-transparent layer in a map the hillshade represent an important element of a visually pleasing cartography. To get the best results it is necessary to work with the different layers adjusting transparency. The above example shows how Goma (Congo) and the area around can be represented. The OpenStreetMap (left) is added on top of the hillshade (middle) giving us the map to the right.

The hillshades are available for download below:

The elevation model being the basis for the hill shades were made based on the Shuttle Ratar Topography Mission (SRTM). the SRTM mission was a research project initiated to generate a global digital elevation model.

The files are compressed using 7-zip free utility. The files are compressed to around 30% of their original size.

Should you find that some of the files are not working or in other ways are not to specification please leave a comment below.

In this article we will give an overview of where you can download shapefiles based on OSM data and also how you can contribute to the project.

Downloading OSM shapefiles

The OpenStreetMap data “lives” within a huge PostGIS database. At regular intervals some of the data are exported and made available in other formats. The below link will take you to a fantastic place where you can download the Tanzanian data sets.:

• Geofabrik service for downloading OSM data

If you click around some you will also find sources for other parts of East Africa, or other countries/places.

Contributing to the OpenStreetMap project in Tanzania

The OpenStreetMap project in Tanzania needs your help. either by tracking the roads and paths you travel by, or by you digitizing on-screen using one of the many tools.

If you decide to contribute it could be a good thing to take a look at the country guidelines for contributions:

• How to map OpenStreetMap in Tanzania

The current map for Namanyere, Nkasi (SW Tanzania) from Google Maps (right) doesn’t have much detail at all.

Compare it to the OpenStreetMap data for the same area (second map). I had an afternoon free waiting at the Nkasi district offices and quickly put this together with GPS and some satellite imagery. All it needs is for someone to add the street names and some buildings and it starts to look really good.

Another great example of developing OSM data: the “Map Tandale” project in Dar es Salaam (with google maps comparison here).

Of course, that’s not always the case … here’s the same area in Njiro, where the community’s done work in Google Mapmaker and we’ve not done much in OSM (yet!):

If you want to compare map data for the same area, http://sautter.com/map/ lets you do transparent overlays of OSM over the top of Gmaps, Yahoo and others.