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Village Management Project

The objective of the "Village Management Project" is to enable managers in villages and small population centres to develop maps and associated data for management on a number of topics to assist in management analysis of changes in data over time. Most of this data would not normally be available without the carrying out of a census or other on the ground data collection exercise.All of the data is available free and the software used is open source. While the project was originally envisioned for villages in developing countries, the original tests of data collection and analysis have been carried out on First Nations territories in Canada.

The technical expertise required for the collection of the data from satellite imagery and converting it to maps is not particularly challenging. The use and analysis of the data can be more challenging, particularly in areas with larger populations.

The "Village Management" application has three main steps:

• The mapping of the desired area using satellite imaging available as open source at Open Street Maps. Step 1 OSM
• The use of the mapping to build basic maps of the locality using QGIS open source software.Step 2 Map
• The third phase uses QGIS to extract data from the mapping which allows the preparation of either spreadsheets or data-bases and provides data for assessing annual changes in various variables.Step3 Data

The Step1, Step2 and Step3 links in the lefthand column give access to instructions for the three steps required to undertake the online mapping, the creation of maps and the extraction of data. These pages are in the early stages of development, but  provide links to training material for each of the steps.  The three graphics below show a) a screen shot showing a portion of OpenStreetMap mapping on satellite imagery, b) a section of a map created from the OpenStreetMap mapping and 3) a smaller section of the same map showing buildings and their id codes which are used in the extraction of data to a spreadsheet or database.

The three graphics below represent the three phases of the project. The first graphic is a view of the completed online mapping of a small residential area on a First Nations Reserve in Canada. The second graphic is shows a map created from the OpenStreetMap data in the first graphic. The third graphic is a small portion of the second map showing buildings and the border of a residential area with the id codes used for extracting data using QGIS --the id codes for each of the buildings is in black text while the code of the encompassing residential area is in red text.