Overall goals

The Hadjer Lamis area is very poor, and there is an unusual burden of disease and malnutrition amongst the population which contributes to high mortality in children under five years old. In order to better understand, assess, and respond to this, we need to know more about the population.

We are mapping villages and taking their names on the ground, but identifying all of the inhabited areas and counting the structures is much more efficient from aerial photos. Knowing where all of the villages are scattered through the savanna helps us to map them, and counting the buildings within each village gives us a quick and fairly accurate method to estimate population (important to understand the spread of disease and identify areas of highest need). Perhaps surprisingly, structure counts are often more accurate than asking how many people live in the villages.

The tasks at hand are:

• Find all of the villages in the area, and draw an area around them, tagging each as Land use, Residential.

• Map the structures in each village. This is done by tracing all buildings as polygons and tagging them as Building Features=Building (in iD editor) or building=yes (in JOSM) , or by simply counting them and adding a tag Structures with the appropriate number.

Village structure

Settlements in this part of the world are generally organised into extended family compounds, each containing a number of small shelters and often a few crops. You can see the outlines of the compounds as dark lines dividing the village in to smaller sections. The villages are generally more or less circular.

… See full entry

Overall goals

The Hadjer Lamis area is very poor, and there is an unusual burden of disease and malnutrition amongst the population which contributes to high mortality in children under five years old. In order to better understand, assess, and respond to this, we need to know more about the population.

We are mapping villages and taking their names on the ground, but identifying all of the inhabited areas and counting the structures is much more efficient from aerial photos. Knowing where all of the villages are scattered through the savanna helps us to map them, and counting the buildings within each village gives us a quick and fairly accurate method to estimate population (important to understand the spread of disease and identify areas of highest need). Perhaps surprisingly, structure counts are often more accurate than asking how many people live in the villages.

The tasks at hand are:

• Find all of the villages in the area, and draw an area around them, tagging each as Land use, Residential.

• Count the structures in each village. This can either be by tracing all of them as polygons and tagging them as Building, or by simply counting them and adding a tag Structures with the appropriate number.

• Trace the tracks and/or roads between the villages.

Village structure

Settlements in this part of the world are generally organised into extended family compounds, each containing a number of small shelters and often a few crops. You can see the outlines of the compounds as dark lines dividing the village in to smaller sections. The villages are generally more or less circular.

… See full entry

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