PLACE

In today’s digital world, maps (including location data) power much of the modern economy. Governments use maps (through modern geographic information systems) to route police, fire, and ambulance services to people and communities in need. They use maps to plan smarter cities, to determine tax rates and bills, to identify public infrastructure needs and investment opportunities, or to conduct environmental clean-ups. Increasingly, governments must decide how best to upgrade public infrastructure, including housing that is resilient to today’s growing climate impacts. Africa is urbanising at a rate of 20% per year. This rate outpaces the availability of resources to manage it. Governments on the African continent lack staff and resources to map the areas. Africa has 3% of its total mass mapped and currently 80% of urban development in Africa is happening blindly without technologically informed approaches.

Ultra-detailed, up-to-date maps are an essential foundation for planning and implementing climate resilience and adaptation measures for urban areas (note that African cities will swell by three quarters of a billion people by 2050, according to the UN World Urbanization Prospects). For instance, mapping the exact populations and infrastructures that are vulnerable to floods, and under what conditions, is critical to building resilience into the massive urban expansion now underway throughout the developing world. That requires topographic maps that are accurate to centimetres, not metres; that show the current condition of roads and drainage, not a 10-year-old snapshot; and that show dwelling density and conditions down to the house level.

The problem is that this kind of data is not available for public use in the developing world. To maximise social benefit, detailed mapping data should be provided at the marginal cost of making a copy: essentially zero. But of course, the data must be financed in the first place. In the absence of public funding, however, private companies will not make this data optimally available for public purposes and may not even invest in it. Donor-funded mapping is sporadic and inconsistent. Cash-strapped mapping agencies in developing countries that receive donor-funded data may not make it readily available. As a result, many cities in the developing world lack current base maps.

GIF awarded PLACE a $460K grant in March of 2022 to support PLACE in establishing a legal data trust model for data collection in emerging economies, validate this model by mapping two populated urban areas in developing economies, and demonstrate the use of the data by government entities and the PLACE Community.