Mapping Guyana together...

Snap from Openstreetmap

A woman corrected the spelling of Princess Street in Georgetown  to Princes (pl of Prince) Street. A young man corrected the names of the streets which he rides along to get to work. He lives in A field Sophia and he drew  the bridge which he walks over when he has to catch a bus. He will  put in the bike path and the short cut to get to the road.

The GIS Collective is a group of people who are Geographic Information System (GIS) professionals. They have been finding different ways of commemorating GIS day over the last three years or so.

This year, they decided to hold a Map A Thon. People were invited to the University of Guyana campus. The CIT was made available. The group included students from St Josephs High School, the University and some other people like me who were curious about the whole mapping thing.

Vijay Datadin introduced the concept of Open Data and noted that 15 November, 2017 is a Guyana Open Data Day. Open Data is the concept of sharing data , usually in the public interest, and making it free and easy to access, reuse and analyse.

The OpenStreetMap project started in 2004 . The idea is that users can go and add or edit features on the map. There are controls in place to manage the data. Map data can be exported and reused in other applications.

It is a chance for people to put their homes on the map.  Two  of the minibus routes of Georgetown have been added by a user.  Yupukari Village in Region 9 has been mapped.

The internet connection was a bit slow, so the not everyone was able to save their edits and do their updates at the time. However, there is probably scope for some small community mapathons , now that there are ICT hubs and other places which are offering internet connectivity.

I am grateful to the team of volunteers - Malini Jaikarran, Dina Benn, Vijay Datadin, Edgar (from IADB/Mexico ) and others who arranged this session. 







View Larger Map on OpenStreetMap