“Mapping project”

assignment
CCGL9061 – Digital Humanitarianism
Reminder: course projects
1. Crowd-sourced mapping project
for humanitarian purposes
• Creating better maps for a poorly
mapped region of the world
• Use of satellite imagery to locate
buildings
• Each group will spend a number of
hours mapping part of the target region
• Output for assessment: a poster
summarizing the situation of the
surveyed area, what has been done and
learnt during the process

https://www.spatialsource.com.au/latest-news/crowd-sourced-mapping-effort-for-nepal
Reminder: Mapping poster (1/2)
Main goal: Report on your experience of crowd-sourced mapping

Your poster will summarize the situation of the surveyed area, what and
how much you did, the difficulties you faced and what you learnt during
the process

Groups of 7 students

The posters will be submitted via Moodle (best option: pdf format)

Deadline: Sunday 3 November, midnight

Reminder: Mapping poster (2/2)
Content (14 points)
Quantity: Did you do the requested mapping? (4 points)
Clarity: Is the content of your poster easy to read and to understand? (3 points)
Quality: Is the content rich, accurate and interesting? (4 points)
References: Do you have sources enriching your work and are they well reported? (3
points)

Surface (7.5 points)

Formatting: Is your poster of good visual quality (nice images, good organization) (4
points)
Images/figures: Do you have meaningful and well-captioned images/figures? (2 points)
Language: Are your orthography and grammar good enough? (1.5 points)

The grade over 21.5 points will be divided by 5 to obtain a grade over 4.3 points
Some more details (1/2)
The tutorial associated to this lecture is about learning to use a mapping software
• Get ready for the assignment

About the groups:

• The groups are created by John within each tutorial class
• Students who miss the tutorial will be told by email the group they should join
• Some within-group variability (different faculties, different years of study…, different skills)

Expectations
• # of hours spent mapping in each group: # of members x 3 hours
• Group mates are free to divide the hours the way they want among them
• Each group, in addition to submitting a poster, will submit a paper signed by all group members
stating precisely who did what (to minimize free-loading)
Some more details (1/2)
About the regions to map:
• Each team can choose a map in a set of maps selected by John
• Diverse regions, different issues
• Each group is not only asked to spend time mapping, but also to look for information
about the country and the region, and the specific issue addressed by the mapping
project = try to go beyond the tool itself, and frame one’s efforts in a broader context

Survey of the mapping efforts

• Each time one saves additions/modifications to a map, they should enter two hashtags
• #HKU_DH2019 (to appreciate the global effort)
• #HKU_DH2019_1, #HKU_DH2019_2, #HKU_DH2019_3 (depending on the group) (to appreciate
the efforts made by each group)
• For each group, John and Christophe will check the number of hours spent and the
number of additions made to the chosen map
Learning and contributing
With this assignment, you will hopefully better experience what
humanitarian collaborative mapping means

But you will also get directly involved and contribute

124 students x 3 hours: around 370 hours… not bad for a collective effort

On November 6, to reflect on our work, we will have a Skype conversation

with a Jan Böhm, a “Digital Strategist with MSF Operational Communications
Unit in Geneva and Missing Maps Communications and Community
Engagement Manager”