A community measures their recovery and demonstrates resilience by collecting data.
Cooperating in the project were local community, city universities, public support, and private organizations to collect data for the community.
Primarily, the objective was to document the condition, occupancy and maintenance to conduct spatial analysis (aka map making) in the Lower Ninth Ward as a part of Hurricane Katrina recovery assessment.
Problem:
Lacking independent, community centered and transparently collected data, stakeholders were unable to make funding and investment decisions.
Without relevant and current data, the residents and community organizations were unable to fully demonstrate the scale and scope of recovery of the area.
Solution:
First, 30 domestic and international student volunteers were trained in survey methodologies. During the Summer of 2010, they documented over 9,000 parcels in the Lower Ninth Ward and Holy Cross neighborhoods.
Then, these volunteers headed inside to complete the data entry in the least expensive way possible – manually updating a database designed for low-error data capture.
An independent community based collaborative with transparent methods, empowered a community to demonstrate their full breadth of recovery and resilience.
Public Private Participation & Maps (aka Geographic Information Systems, or GIS) for community data
Click here to learn more about the project from one of the supporting organizations.