Lusaka City Open Drone Mapping project

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development is currently working with the University of Zambia and other stakeholders, including JICA, to plan, implement, and evaluate ambitious urban development plans. The plans cover a diverse range of issues and sectors, including urban planning & unplanned settlements, land management & titling, environmental management & climate change, infrastructure & transport planning, water, sanitation & drainage systems, and waste management.

For all of the above use cases, high-quality aerial imagery is considered a foundational data set for everything from planning to implementation to monitoring and evaluation. The data is initially needed at a city scale, but the capability to repeat and adapt the data collection is also important, especially for change detection and monitoring.

Slum Dwellers International REDAA project:

Communities in informal settlements in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa are embarking on the implementation of urban ecosystem restoration projects. These projects, designed by local community members seek to reverse degradation and promote sustainable restoration and conservation approaches.

In each country, three community members will be trained to fly low-cost drones and use open source software to generate aerial imagery of the degradation / restoration project locations. Being able to fly and generate imagery on a regular basis will give these communities valuable baseline and comparison datasets, so they can track the progress of their projects and communicate the challenges and the impact in a data-informed, and compelling, manner.

JICA on why existing satellite data falls short: "Some satellite data is free of charge, but when we look at very detailed data, it will cost a lot, and the resolution is not enough for us to design specific infrastructure." — Yuki Chika, JICA Representative

Our Approach

HOT’s open drone mapping approach builds capacity in local community groups, organisations and institutions to leverage free and open source software and low-cost, lightweight drones in order to create high-resolution, professional grade aerial imagery. This approach makes the creation of necessary data as accessible as possible to diverse stakeholders and means that high quality imagery can play an impactful role in urban development projects, even when the budget can’t stretch to commercial products and suppliers. The imagery can then be hosted openly, and for free, on OpenAerialMap where other collaborators and partners can access and use it, creating additional value and a digital public good asset.

Outcomes

1. High quality imagery data integrated into planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation processes in urban development projects in Lusaka.
2. Community groups, academic institutions and government entities have the ability to generate and access high quality imagery as and when they need it.
3. SDI REDAA restoration projects use aerial imagery to conduct high qualty monitoring and present compelling evidence of impact.
4. An open drone community of practice is formed in Zambia, shepharded by the National Centre for Uncrewed Aircraft Systems.

Deliverables

• High quality 2d aerial imagery for 200-250km2 of Lusaka
• 12 SDI drone pilots trained in the acquisition, processing and hosting of open aerial imagery
• 5-10 local Zambian drone pilots on boarded onto the open drone methodology
• Local government capacity built for accessing and using the imagery in their work.