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Proposed Projects

Zimbabwe / Mozambique

At the appropriate time, when it is safe, a pilot project will be undertaken in Zimbabwe more specifically around Matabeleland South and Mashonaland Central. The main project objective will be to determine and document the emergency aid workers needs with special reference to how food security mapping can assist humanitarian organisations. This will include documenting a detailed implementation strategy.

Once this has been achieved a pilot survey and mapping of humanitarian sectors in Zimbabwe will be undertaken. This will be according to standard guidelines set down by the United Nations Organisation for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Once mapped, these sectors will be overlaid and ‘hotspots’ discovered, where hunger is the worst.

A secondary objective will be to run tests on the mapping and communication system (ICMS) technology devised at Stanford University, to check that the electronic devices such as PDA’s (for data entry) and satellite phones (for communications), work individually and also in concert.

1.1 The project phases will be as follows:

• Proof of concept and user requirements analysis
• Document a detailed implementation strategy
• Software application development
• System testing
• Pilot survey and mapping of humanitarian sectors in Zimbabwe
• Training

1.2 Parallel to these phases will be a marketing function serving to:

• Build a range of survey contacts and information
• Disseminate project progress to donors and supporters via the internet

The pilot project will expand on the C-SAFE baseline data collection survey initiative jointly planned and implemented by World Vision, CARE and the Catholic Relief Services. This program was initiated due to the current food security problems experience in the southern Africa region.

1.3 The following primary humanitarian data sets will be captured and spatially referenced:

• Chronically malnourished children under five years old
• Acutely malnourished children under five years old
• Orphan locations
• Households with high dependency ratios
• Households with or without access to potable water
• Households employing various types of stress coping mechanisms
• Stocks of staple crops at the household level
• Schools with high drop-out rates
• Schools without adequate water/sanitation facilities

There would also be a significant amount of secondary data that will be captured such as estimates for HIV/AIDS prevalence, rainfall etc. The aim will be to overlay the abovementioned data sets to highlight hotspot areas of vulnerability.

1.4 The following examples highlight the value of technology in humanitarian circumstances.

• Subsequent to the war in Kosovo in 1999, the World Health Organization was given satellite based information that mistook dry grass for wheat and consequently ordered the wrong amounts of winter wheat. A properly assessed map for wheat would have prevented this measurable error. Until GMA has had the opportunity to document the ‘before and after’ affects of map services, Social Return on Investment estimates are speculative.
  
  
• In Ghana in 2001, the American Red Cross used handheld PDA technology to capture data from over 2,400 parents, on the measles status of children. It took them five days to train, deploy, capture data and analyze it using 30 data collection teams using PDA’s. If the exercise had been done using paper forms, there would have been data transcription errors, it would have taken weeks and it would have been much more expensive.