The “Waterproofing Data” project has won the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize 2023 in the category “Outstanding Societal Impact” for helping to protect residents of flood-prone areas in Brazil. In 2018, Joao Porto de Albuquerque from the University of Glasgow initiated the project in which HeiGIT is also involved. The main goal of this project is to build sustainable, flood resilient communities in close collaboration with local citizens and institutions, such as Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN). The project aims to complement the weather data used in flood management research with data collected from citizens, as their knowledge on floodings and respective coping strategies helps to develop several strategies to tackle the problem.
The project utilizes three methods to close gaps in flood-related data: Tracing existing data and visualizing its flow, involing citizens into the generation of new local data by means of surveys and participatory mapping, and integrating citizen-generated data with other data using geo-computational techniques. Allowing to easily create and digitalize paper maps, the SketchMapTool is one of the services enabeling citizens to participate in the “Waterproofing Data” project.
The Waterproofing Data mobile app is another tool that was developed during the project. With this app, citizens can also engage in participatory mapping, as well as record daily rainfall, flooding events and their impact on communities. Currently, more than 410 ‘citizen scientists’ in Brazil have used the Waterproofing Data app, proving its effectiveness: Thanks to their participation in Waterproofing Data activites, two ‘citizen scientists’ from the city of Jaboatão dos Guararapes were able to put their knowledge on flood risks into practice, alerting other citizens in time and saving their lives.
In response to the awarding of the ‘Waterproofing Data’ project HeiGIT Scientific and Managing Director Alexander Zipf says: “We are very glad about the project being honored with the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize and that HeiGIT could contribute to sustaining the project’s success. This success, meaning the successful rescue of human lives, is owed to all people who cooperatively worked on the project, meaning that this award most importantly honors the helpers on site, the ‘citizen scientists’. They have demonstrated what people are capable of when they are given low-threshold opportunities to actively help preparing for natural disasters.”
The idea of the Sketch Map Tool is based on experiences from research about flood risk perception including participatory mapping with Field Papers(https://fieldpapers.org/?locale=de) in various case studies (Klonner, Usón, et al. 2021). These studies show the need for the combination of analogue and digital mapping to bridge the gap between involved stakeholders and facilitate data collection and analysis. The Sketch Map Tool prototype combining map creation, quality analysis and georeferencing was developed during the Waterproofing Data Project ((Klonner, Hartmann, et al. 2021), (Porto De Albuquerque 2023), (Klonner et al. in preparation)) and refined through feedback from case studies, for example, in Mozambique (Klonner and Norze 2023). The Sketch Map Tool was developed to provide an easy-to-use and inclusive tool for capturing local knowledge and enabling usage in geoinformation systems.
Klonner, Carolin, Maximilian Hartmann, Rebecca Dischl, Lily Djami, Liana Anderson, Martin Raifer, Fernanda Lima-Silva, Lívia Castro Degrossi, Alexander Zipf, and João Porto De Albuquerque. 2021. ‘The Sketch Map Tool Facilitates the Assessment of OpenStreetMap Data for Participatory Mapping’. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 10 (3): 130. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10030130 .
Klonner, Carolin, and Jeantyl Norze. 2023. ‘Sketch Map Tool’. In Evaluating Participatory Mapping Software, edited by Charla M. Burnett, 149–66. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19594-5_7 .
Klonner, Carolin, Leonie Schuchardt, Maximilian Hartmann, Lima-Silva, Fernanda, Anderson, Liana, Cunha, Maria Alexandra, Mohammed Rizwan Khan, et al. in preparation. ‘Bridging the Gap for Improved Disaster Risk Reduction: How to Combine Authoritative Data and Local Knowledge’.
Klonner, Carolin, Tomás J. Usón, Nicole Aeschbach, and Bernhard Höfle. 2021. ‘Participatory Mapping and Visualization of Local Knowledge: An Example from Eberbach, Germany’. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 12 (1): 56–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-020-00312-8 .
Porto De Albuquerque, João. 2023. ‘Waterproofing Data Project: Participatory Flooding Maps for Flood-Prone Neighbourhoods, 2020-2021’. UK Data Service. https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-856620 .
