An original collaborative and humanitarian mapathonexperience was held with the aim ofmapping informal settlements in Bogotá, in Colombia.
It was all part of the master’s thesis by Maria Alejandra Rojas Bolanos and Silvia Raviscioni, two civil engineering students at Politecnico di Milano who are carrying out their research at IMM DesignLab, under the supervision of Professor Massimo Tadi.
This investigation into the redevelopment of these shanty towns had the ambitious goal of proposing a solution to a worldwide phenomenon that affects many cities globally, namely the proliferation of illegal residential settlements due to rapid urbanisation.
The time and resources required to map areas for study purposes, however, are often disproportionate to the results obtained.
The idea therefore was to set up collaboration with the PoliMappers, a group of volunteer students from the Politecnico, part of the international network YouthMappers as first European local chapter, who aims to form a new generation of mappers, promoting in their activity the culture of free and open-source software. This collaboration proved to be extremely worthwhile.
In this way, after a crucial first phase of data collection in the field with the application of Mapillary by the NGO Techo, the group, with the coordination of Chiara Ponti and Federica Gaspari – respectively president and faculty advisor of PoliMappers – and with the support of the Colombian local chapter YouthMappers Semillero Geolab UdeA, organized an online mapping event in OpenStreetMap environment that involved 70 people from the Politecnico and beyond.
The meeting on 26 March was also part of the innovative “Collaborative and Humanitarian Mapping” course, from the Passion in Action catalogue, which is supported by the MSc in Geoinformatics Engineering and coordinated by Professor Maria Antonia Brovelli. It wasattended by 61 students of the Politecnico di Milano.
The excellent result achieved means this experience is now a pilot project for voluntary mapping that can be replicated in other sectors where the Politecnico is conducting research into territories, such as Dakar, Maputo and Quelimane.