Hello HOTties, I am heading out to Kalemie/DRC (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-5.9223&lon=29.184&zoom=13&layers=M) in august to work on a cholera prevention program through water/sanitation (and possibly an associated vaccination program) with MSF (Doctors without Borders).
Cholera is endemic in the area, and a number of actions are planned, including distributions of portable water filters, and the revamping of (parts of) the water distribution network. Although I don't have details yet, I am convinced that a detailed map showing houses/buildings and the road network would be invaluable in improving the water distribution network. Given the waterborne nature of the disease, mapping the natural water streams would also be helpful, but this may be a lot harder from sat imagery. I recently spoke with Andrew Buck about it, and he suggested setting up a task manager job for it. Obviously a map of the whole town would be amazing, but initial focus could be on the banks of the Lukuga river (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-5.91326&lon=29.18621&zoom=16&layers=M) and the southern part of town (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-5.95177&lon=29.19123&zoom=15&layers=M) where MSF should focus its work (other NGOs are focusing on other parts of the city). The map would help a lot in defining optimal locations for water distribution points, planning/tracking progress of filter distributions, and tracking locations of cholera cases. As I will be in the field very soon, I'll be able to add field level info to the map, and hopefuly I'll be able to send some photos of OSM printouts in the offices :) Cheers, Laurent _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
