By Ellysa Gonzalez
When you need to get somewhere in Lubbock, a map is a few clicks away on mobile devices and computers.
Ellysa Gonzalez for The Hub@TTU
But not every country in the world has that luxury.
Nayara Vasconcelos, a Texas Tech University senior from Angola and a participant in a program called Mappers Without Borders, said few people are using geographical information systems (GIS) in her home country.
“A lot of people that actually do it are people from other countries that go there,” she said. “And sometimes there is data, but it’s mostly classified. It’s not for the public.”
Texas Tech recently received a $1 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s GeoCenter to help fill those data gaps in other countries and encourage interest in GIS technology through the Mappers Without Borders program. George Washington University and West Virginia University are also participating in the project.
Nayara Vasconcelos
The USAID grant will allow the group to create mapping support for all the organization’s programming.
Vasconcelos said she has first-hand experience with the effects of having no mapped paths in her home country.
Navigating through villages, particularly larger ones, can get confusing, she said. A guide who knows the area is a necessity.
“There’s a lot of places where there’s just no maps,” Vasconcelos said. “In some places you stop and ask people for directions. They have to tell you, ‘When you get to that tree or that building, turn right.’”
Julia Kleine, a Tech engineering senior and Mappers Without Borders participant, said she has traveled through multiple developing countries with similar mapping complexities.
Julia Kleine
“The sad thing is when you work in some of these areas, you don’t know where the roads are,” Kleine said. “If there is an issue, if there is a crisis, there’s no way to alleviate those people without knowing where the roads are or where the people are.”
Kleine said Mappers Without Borders’ goal is to create maps and develop a visual representation of geographical areas lacking such data.
The first project to help develop student interest in the program was a mappathon open to all students and faculty to build maps of Mozambique, an African country where malaria is common.
Patricia Solis, a research associate professor of geography and director of the new program, said the data gathered from the event will be used for the President’s Malaria Initiative, a project between USAID and the Peace Corps.
“There are a couple of villages that they know are really missing a lot of information, where they know malaria is a serious problem,” Solis said. “The government has allowed a special license for a very high resolution of satellite imagery so that we can use that really good imagery and create this data.”
Patricia Solis
The data will be useful when USAID and the Peace Corps plan a campaign to spray against mosquitoes, which carry malaria, she added.
But Mozambique is just a start, Solis said.
“I can’t tell you which projects we’re going to do in the course of the five years,” she said. “Wherever USAID works, that’s where we’re going to be.”
About JOUR 4350
