2026-06-27 –, Auditorium Language: English
OpenStreetMap is often built with strong community participation, yet too often, the communities whose environments are mapped don’t get to see or use the final products. In this talk, I’ll reflect on real experiences from Tanzania where maps were created to support flood resilience, litter monitoring, and public service access, and examine whether and how those maps were shared back with the people who contributed.
I will share lessons on what has worked, including printed maps shared through ward leaders, participatory validation sessions, and local cleanup initiatives as well as challenges around closing the feedback loop. I’ll also propose practical, low-tech strategies for making community maps more accessible, understandable, and usable by local people.
Amour Nyalusi is a GIS and open mapping practitioner passionate about using geospatial data to support community-driven solutions and evidence-based decision-making. He works at the intersection of open data, humanitarian mapping, and urban resilience, with experience supporting community mapping initiatives across Tanzania.
Through his work with OpenMap Development Tanzania (OMDTZ), Amour has contributed to projects focused on community mapping, disaster resilience, and improving access to spatial information. His experience includes coordinating data collection, managing geospatial datasets, producing maps and visualizations, and supporting communities and stakeholders in understanding and using mapping outputs.
He is particularly interested in exploring how mapping can move beyond data creation by ensuring that communities that contribute local knowledge also benefit from the information and decisions that maps enable.