Colombia: A coalition of international partners has announced that Ecocitizen World Map Project, a powerful online crowd mapping tool designed to explore, understand, and measure holistic urban health from a citizen’s perspective, will be launched at the upcoming 7th World Urban Forum (WUF7) in Medellín, Colombia. The forum is scheduled from 5-11 April.
The Ecocitizen World Map Project consists of two interwoven elements. One enables and encourages citizens to participate directly by taking a short online survey—powered by crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi—ranking their cities and neighbourhoods along fifteen conditions outlined by the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Initiative.
Another provides on-the-ground training in pilot cities to students, citizens, and public officials, using Esri’s mobile GIS technology in combination with online tools and educational materials to assess, measure, and plan for increasing the health and resilience of urban systems and to identify barriers to improving quality of life. Inaugural pilot cities include WUF7 host Medellín, supported by a grant from the OAS’ Sustainable Communities in the Americas Initiative, as well as Cairo and Casablanca, supported by a grant from Eye on Earth.
Led by non-profit Ecocity Builders, USA, in collaboration with the Organization of American States, Esri, the Association of American Geographers, Eye on Earth (a partnership of UNEP + Abu Dhabi Environmental Data Initiative) along with local academic partners, NGOs and community organisations, the public-private partnership was developed to facilitate simple individual snapshots of a community’s social and environmental health as well as more sophisticated local and regional training and geospatial analysis
The project will be presented by Ecocity Builders, AAG, Esri, OAS, AGEDI, and the US Department of State at the “Building Resilience and Equity Through Citizen Participation and Geodesign” session on 10 April at the UN Habitat City Changer Room. It will also be showcased throughout the conference at the Esri Geospatial Pavilion. In addition, a training event titled: How to use mobile technology to measure urban equity will be presented by ITC-University of Twente, the Netherlands, Esri, and Ecocity Builders on 9 April.
Source: Ecocitizenworldmap.org
