GIS/ Mapping

This 45-page booklet is about the use of digital mapping tools in the Participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) movement. According to author Lindbaughm, mapping tools are growing in popularity and increasing in complexity. Many people begin with free tools available as internet services. For more detailed maps, GIS software, ArcView and a family of related tools provide both intricate mapping and linking functions for statistical data. The utility of mapping in emergency situations has spawned the GISCorps, a group of trained volunteers who can be deployed to assist in disaster situations, as happened in Tsunami-ravaged India and post-Katrina New Orleans. According to Lindbaughm, the need for mapping in the developing world has produced the response of open source spatial mapping software called Quantum GIS and MapServer. A programme called Wayfaring provides the opportunity to create free maps without any programming knowledge. The Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation was founded as a focal point for the participatory (GIs) movement (PGIS) and promoter of the open source geospatial tools.

This booklet contains seven case studies with full elaboration of the issues and methods used in their various locations. It also includes four summarised projects. The majority of the projects are illustrated with maps they produced and, in some cases, websites generated to disseminate mapped

Summarised projects are: mapped sites of chemical attacks with health data on families in mapped areas for the Washington Kurdish Institute, the Aboriginal Mapping network's resource management maps, boundary mapping for Indigenous people in the Philippines to gain land titles, an ocean defence campaign for Greenpeace, and Chicago crime maps.

Full case studies include:

• Collaborative forestry management in Ghana;
• The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute promoting participatory management of natural resources;
• Eyebeam R&D which used mapping to present political contribution data from the 2004 presidential election at its FundRace website;
• Human Rights Watch mapping to address locations of potential human rights abuses;
• Participatory voter registration mapping for the disenfranchised in Mississippi; and
• Tactical mapping as a tool for victims of torture to trace, clarify, and understand sources and networks of torture.

The document concludes with an appendix of web links to GIS tools.