2021-11-19 –, Room 2
Language: English
We will present the outcomes of the Cities Covid Mitigation and Mapping project from the US Department of State. Map Kibera and GroundTruth Initiative mapped impacts of Covid-19 in the sectors of education (school closings, and economic impacts on families and school staff), water (water shortages in the slums during key times in the pandemic), and sanitation (curfews and other disruptions to toilet access). The data in OSM shows how residents of informal settlements had uneven access to services and how Covid-19 caused major challenges beyond health impacts.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had many impacts beyond health - economic, social, etc. The Cities Covid Mitigation and Mapping (C2M2) project, from the US Department of State's MapGive initiative, sought to map and help direct policy around these secondary impacts of Covid in several countries globally. Map Kibera and GroundTruth Initiative worked to track these impacts in Nairobi, focusing on the themes of education, water and sanitation.
This talk will present the outcomes of the project, which focused on the mapping in OSM of schools, water points, and toilet facilities in the informal settlements of Kibera and Mathare. These updates to existing OSM data help show how the pandemic affected these sectors by looking historically at changes. Additionally, individual surveys about access to water during shortages and impacts of school closings and disruptions help paint a picture of how Nairobi's lower income residents have been particularly impacted by the pandemic. There is also a strong gender component to the impacts which will be highlighted.
The project used a combination of tools, which will also be presented: Kobo Toolbox for mapping and individual survey collection, OSM for map data, and data analysis in QGIS. The Kenya team was supported by many other team members from the C2M2 project for data analysis. Additionally, participants in Africa included Bukavu in the DRC and Pemba in Mozambique; we will briefly share their map outcomes as well. The "Africa Hub" which included Nairobi, Pemba and Bukavu showed that across the continent, economic and social impacts of Covid-19 on vulnerable groups were particularly challenging.
