News — 08 December, 2011
OpenStreetMap and Quantum GIS Training in Bali
On 5th "“ 6th December 2011, HOT came to Bali for another training. Here we were working with Australian Community Development and Civil Society Strengthening Scheme (ACCESS) and their partners. The training was held in Puri Dalem Hotel, Sanur. This time we trained 17 people from 4 different areas. They are from Bali, Lombok, Sumba, and Selayar Island. These people are facilitator and they wanted to map their areas based on their needs. So we taught them basic OpenStreetMap things such as how to collect data using GPS and Walking Papers, then how to edit data with JOSM, and upload it to OpenStreetMap. We also taught them step-by-step what they can do with the data that they already collected with GIS software Quantum GIS (QGIS).
- All participant trying to learn how to use GPS
All training materials are collected from learnOSM.org with additional things that still are to be added on QGIS tutorial such as how to join spreadsheet file with the shapefile and using eVis plugin for adding pictures into attribute.
Based on our experience for training people around Indonesia, we expect that there will be some unexpected problem that would occur during the training. This time, we were struggling with windows virus when we tried to distribute all software and copies of training materials. We would recommend ourselves for next training to make another media for transferring all materials besides using USB sticks, either a CD or DVD.
Anyway, the training went pretty well, even we though our time was short because there were a lot of materials that we had to go over. Our QGIS tutorial experience was teaching in Sumba, in each district (Bima and Dompu) spending 2 days with 4-5 participants. But this time, we did one and a half day for OpenStreetMap basics and 4 hours for QGIS. We were glad that they feel these OpenStreetMap and QGIS are very useful and applicable for mapping their area based on their needs and interests.
People from Lombok are more interested to map social and economic map. The only problem that they have is accessibility to some villages because the roads are still bad and they do not have good satellite imagery in several areas. People from Sumba and Bali more or less will do the same thing with different number of villages that they would like to map. But, people from Sumba wanting us to comeback for attending their follow-up result in next year. They want to apply OpenStreetMap with QGIS for mapping then they will present the map result to their local governor.
- Everyone is seriously paying attention for the training
There is one area that has problem, that area is Selayar Island, which has more than 10,000 km2 sizes. It does not have any point, line, and polygon on this island. Both Bing and Google do not have good satellite imagery. So, they are willing to propose a budget to their local governor to buy satellite imagery. We are really curious what would happen to this island after we gave them training. We hope that our efforts would keep their spirit to map the whole island.
Moreover, there is still a lot of work to support their mapping activities; we will keep in touch with them for technical issues and adding more guidelines in learnOSM.org.
- Greetings from all participants in Bali! (Thanks to Martha for this photo!)