Another Reality Zap

One of the goals for SDI-East Africa has been to improve service between the UN bodies in this part of the world and their "external" (a.k.a. non-UN) partners. One of the early potentials has been the Nairobi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Not only are they major user of geo-spatial data but their extensive field operations mean that they need to share and coordinate on common needs with the likes of UNHCR and OCHA.

So, back on March 26, I noted that we were to be heading off to build some capacity at ICRC. This we then did and, so impressive were the results that we were invited back on Monday to get Geoserver running on a publicly-visible web site. And this is where the proverbial hits the fan, not over technical issues but institutional ones.

ICRC are very rightly concerned about the integrity of their global network operations. These are coordinated from Geneva and are subject to policies originating there. The network administrator's here in Nairobi operate and manage a "black box" that proxies for users on the unsecured portion of their LAN, but does not provide any means for announcing a web service per se. (ICRC Nairobi do not have their own web site, for example). So although Java, Tomcat, Geoserver and the PostgreSQL spatial database back-end could all be installed and demonstrated to be running, there's no way that an outside user could address that machine and see the services.

This, for the first time in the course of the SDI-EA exercise, exposes and instance of where an institution has a programmatic imperative to publish data and is prepared to establish and maintain the services to make this possible, but runs afoul of higher-level institutional policies. I doubt that this will be the last such instance. For ICRC Nairobi it raises two potential courses of action, one being to get ICRC Geneva to review and revise their network policy, the other being to see an outside host for their outward-looking services. Most fundamentally, though, it demonstrates how moving into a web services framework can (and probably will again) expose tensions between different aspects of institutional philosophy. It will be interesting to see how ICRC choose to resolve these.

A Satisfied Customer!

I know this is likely to come across of blowing one's own trumpet but, on the other hand, when there's a happy and satisfied customer who sees further potential and value flowing from their first foray into this interoperability stuff then that's an important message to get out. Part of the hope of SDI-EA since the outset has been the idea that being able to take incremental steps and demonstrate success every step of the way is key to ensuring management support and community acceptance for these SDI-type activities. Maybe we start seeing justification for that approach.

Anyway, the short version of the story is that UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) prepare periodic reports based on field asessments of the movements of internlly displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia. As you know from the news hundreds of thousands have fled Mogadishu in recent months and the humanitarian agencies and NGO's scramble (sometime literally) to keep their supply lines up to those in need. UNHCR have distributed the location of the IDP camps as lat/lon coordinate pairs coded in Excel sheets and/or as accompanying maps.

What DEPHA (the Data Exchange Platform for the Horn of Africa, www.depha.org) offered to do with some support from UNEP was take those data and publish them as an open-standard Web Feature Service. One consequence? The same data can be output as KML and viewed via Google Earth. And our man at UNHCR is very happy about this, and sees real utility in not only having a new vehicle for communication but also for integration with other types of data. Download http://www.depha.org/maps/Somalia/previewmaps/idpSomalia.kml or try the WMS at http://www.depha.org/maps/Somalia/previewmaps/idpSomalia.kml, or try the WFS at http://dewa03.unep.org:8080/geoserver/wfs?request=GetCapabilities&service=WFS&version=1.0.0

As an aside, a colleague here at UNEP who saw UNHCR's data coming up last Friday was very quick to see the potential for integrating with his existing ArcIMS service depicting refugee camps across Africa. He was even more impressed when he saw that he didn't need to copy and integrate the data but could just link them in via the WFS interface. Yea. Interoperability. Getting our own back yard in order.

Now all we have to do is get the IDP data showing up in the context of UN Habitat's urban areas data and I will be glad to say that this humble little SDI-EA effort will have passed a major milestone.

PS FAO, UNEP and DEPHA are contemplating a (couple of?) hand-on session(s) for technical types where we'd actually set up a network and have practitioners bring their data, set up their own WFS's and start interoperating at least on a local scale. As usual there's no budget or blessing for this but we figure that we can scrape together enough PCs and network gear and a meeting room for half a day to make it work. The whole session would not take more than a morning, starting from scratch with the server intllations (takes about 10 minutes), setting up the spatial databases, and transforming existing static data into exciting dynamic content being integrated across institutional boundaries. Think of it as a "train-the-trainers" exercise; if we're successful then, who know, maybe RCMRD might offer to host a followup at Kasarani, or add such offerings to their schedule of courses.

Cheers


Mick Wilson
Division of Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA)
United Nations Environment Programme
PO Box 30552 - Nairobi 00100, Kenya
Tel: +254 20 7623436
Fax: +254 20 7624315
Email: mick.wilson@unep.org
Web www.unep.net, www.unep.org

----- Forwarded by Mick Wilson/UNEP/NBO/UNO on 05/07/2007 04:19 PM -----
"John Marinos"
05/07/2007 03:12 PM
To

cc
, ,
Subject
Re: Fw: IDP settlement coordinates to be hosted by DEPHA..also onGoogleearth





Thanks John,

I think this looks great. Really. I will share with our HQ because they love stuff like this.
It seems I need to get an update to my ArcGIS before using the WFS files. Nevertheless, I think the information on Google Earth is super-cool.

In theory there is no reason we couldn't merge this GIS file with a whole bunch of attribute data - pop, major area of origin, whatever... I suppose that this can easily be updated on GE, right? We'll work on that when I'm back from leave.

Thanks again. Seriously this is really good.

Best,
JOHN

>>> John Mugwe 05/07/07 02:40PM >>>
Sorry all for that UNEP logo...It was just a proof of capabilities.

We have now a new kml file ( see attached ) which is also going to be
uploaded on by close of the day

(See attached file: idpSomalia.kml)

http://www.depha.org where anyone access it.

Best regards

John Mugwe

SDI-EA metastasizing?

If SDI-EA was a cancer then it's showing worrisome signs of spreading. This afternoon John and I are off to the Nairobi off of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to help them bring up a web feature service.

Part of the original design concept for SDI-EA was for 'clustering'. The UN gang recognized that we really are few in numbers and short on resources so need to focus on interoperation amongst ourselves but with the goal of reaching outward to our respective sectoral communities - environment agencies, departments and NGO's in the case of UNEP, humanitarian agencies and NGO's in the case of UNHCR and OCHA, and so on. What I did not anticipate was that this spawning of second-generation sites would happen so rapidly - it's just weeks since we went to FAO/SWALIM to get their WFS running, now they're the ones promoting similar services to the likes of ICRC.

Of course, in a perfect world, it would be someone from FAO/SWALIM who would do the hand-holding with ICRC - John and I have to adopt a Teflon Approach here because cannot take on an infinite of dependants and, besides, it's better to spread the skill as widely as possible to avoid single points of future failure. Still, I really like the idea of this development and am happy to encourage it and more like it.

Some ideas for Direction

I'd like to put in front of you some ideas about where we might take this SDI-East Africa effort.

A few years back Chris Holmes, Alan Doyle and I put a paper into GSDI-8 in Cairo (http://www.eogeo.org/Projects/gsdi8paper-folder/holmes-doyle-wilson-gsdi-8.pdf) that, amongst other things, posited the idea that amongst the reason why open source is a Good Thing in Developing Countries is that it opens up the possibility for what in Kenya we'd describe as jua kali software development or customization. In other words, the opportunity to adapt methods, algorithms or services developed in one part of the world and hack them to into a customized form better suited to local application requirements. Examples that I had in mind at the time included super lightweight map viewers that stripped out many of the bells and whistles that clog up narrow communications channels. Or targeted server-side applications that would return a useful list of information rather than a whole complex map when responding to geo-spatial queries like "What airfields are best located for servicing Town X?"

But these were just speculative musings at the time. What I am now wondering, given that amongst the SDI-EA listers we have academics, students and software developers, whether it's not time to see if there's any substance to this jua kali development notion. Can we, between us, find one or two tractable problems that could (say) become project material for students who would work with knowledgeable academics and programmers to apply best open-standards and open-source practices to come up with some nice, targeted, robust little web services meeting some real community need. If we could get some collaboration going between students at different schools in different countries then, hey, so much the better.

At the other end of the spectrum there are honking great problems out there, like reliable, accurate and up-to-date gazetteer and location data that are sorely needed in this region, but such tasks are far too ambitious for a small self-motivated group like this. No, what I'm proposing here would be far more modest, more targeted, more realizable with the resources we collectively have..... any ideas out there?

PS real work continues on building SDI capacity though, I have to admit, the focus so far is within the UN. This is no just because they're the ones who pay my salary but because I know the individuals to talk to, and we have some common problems that we will benefit collectively from solving. But the real reason is that Any Time Now we will have better direct connection to the internet service providers in the region and I want to have in place some nice, meaningful services working across agencies that will show that this SDI business is not just smoke and mirrors. Maybe at that stage our regional colleagues like RCMRD, the CG centres and some of the NGOS might stat seeing some real potential in SDI-EA.

PPS there will be joint presentation at the upcoming meeting of the Committee on Development Information in Addis Ababa by UNEP and FAO that will touch on SDI-EA and the sorts of institutional (an technical, but emphasising the institutional) issues that are already emerging as we try to get this SDI stiff working. I hope this will be an opportunity to get increased interest and engagement from the likes of some of the national mapping and statistical authorities.

PPPS I am no longer directly 'spamming' mailing lists such as osgeo, SiMAC or TZGISUG; this is not because I think their members are disinterested but rather that their most motivated members have already subscribed and, rather then risk annoying the rest of the community, that we can rely on the motivated ones to pass on news about SDI-EA as they see appropriate. The invitation of course remains open for members of other communities to get involved with SDI-EA and can drop me a line or register themselves at http://als.unep.org/mailman/listinfo/sdi-ea

Quick progress, slow reporting

The past week has been really, really good, except that it has taken this long to get around to describing it. (My colleague Johannes is now back in the office so there goes one excuse for slack blogging - I guess I can still blame the Easter break for some of the dead time).

But, anyway, we've actually made one tangible piece of progress towards SDI-EA: last Thursday, 5th of April 2007, can be encribed in the chronicles as the day that any two UN agencies here in Nairobi were able to share geospatial data services. Yes, FAO/SWALIM got their production WFS on-line at http://www.faoswalim.org:8080/geoserver and so along with UNEP's existing service at http://dewa03.unep.org/geoserver we are now able to separately and jointly serve data about Somalia to our colleagues in UNHCR, OCHA and the NGO community. The mugshot at left captures the info-warriors at their moment of victory [L to R John Mugwe (UNEP), Stephen Waswa (FAO), Mick Wilson (UNEP) and Craig von Hagen (FAO)].

The downside reality, of course, is that the comms links here in Nairobi remain a majors constraint, and the chances of anyone being able to reliably use these WFS's are pretty slim but at least a principle has been established.

And there are glimmers of hope on the horizon - this week's announcement of US$ 150 million support to kenya for broadband rollout has to help (sometime), plus the notion that the UN will real soon now be linked to the local ISPs exchange point, so at least internet traffic between UNEP and FAO won't have to go to Italy and back!

Another Gluey Week

Almost another week past and continuing frustrations, notwithstanding the on-going interest in the exercise. In fact, I guess that's is the frustrating bit - I keep getting positive and enthusiastic responses from some really interesting-looking players and feel that I don't have the time to followup quickly eneough or in enough depth. I guess I fear that enthusiasm will wane if I don't keep the momentum up. Anyway, I hope that my colleague will be back next week and progress will be not so "gluey" as it has been in recent days.

Not to say that there's not progress: John and I are again off to FAO/SWALIM tomorrow to do install geoserver and postrgresql on their production server so that -yay!- another UN-tagged OGC-compliant system will be running in Nairobi. Perhaps not terribly zoomily but at least here, hosting East African data in here East Africa. Then all we have to do is get OCHA, UN Habitat and UNHCR enabled and at least one small target will have been met; then we'll have to start the extension to our neighbours and partners our there amongst the CG, the NGO's and so on.

We've also been boosting DEPHA (the Data Exchange Platform for the Horn of Africa - see http://www.depha.org ), up to an including getting a large chunk of high-value data for Mogadishu that the local humanitarian agencies really want but cannot afford at 160 Mb for the download plus the need to be able to host a geo-database. Fingers crossed we'll see this content (courtesy of UNOSAT) on air early next week. Strike another blow for intra-UN cooperation and brotherhood.

The SDI-EA effort also got a heathy boost being covered in the latest of GSDI's SDI-Africa newsletter. I suspect that's where the recent flurry of sign-ups to the tsk have gotten their inspiration. May this not be the last such time where we have good stuff to report!

Meanwhile, and most interestingly I feel, the one group from whom I've had least success in visibly signing onto SDI-EA are my erstwhile UN colleagues! I know they're interested and collaborative but for the life of me I just cannot get them to declare their interest publically, before the very communities that we're supposed to be impressing with out One-UN-ness.
I guess I'll just have to keep badgering them. Strange, really.

UNEP, SDI and empowering citizens

Well, today I am UNEP's online expert-for-the-day (see http://www.unep.org/experts/ for the mugshot and capsule bio.) and have actually already received a question! A citizen here in Kenya asked

Practically speaking, how can UNEP agencies engage the public in an empowering way? That is to say, from what I have observed, UN agencies act more at the policy / political level, engaging more with governments and other agencies than with the lowly man on the street. This is not particularly effective, since it is the public who at the end of the day make decisions that affect the environment and, directly or indirectly, governments (even non-democratic ones). So what would you suggest to UNEP in order to really engage with the public?"

An expurgated version of my response is given below. Please note that I actually believe most of this stuff. I believe that SDI-EA really is a step towards addressing country-level and regional needs in parallel with the systemic and global requirements of the UN as a whole.

Your question touches on what is obviously a very broad topic, and I trust that you'll understand if my reponse seems a bit blinkered by my technological perspective. Part at least of the answer to your question lies in the area of public participatory GIS (geographic information systems), a global effort involving academe, NGOs and individuals across Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular, looking for better ways to use the riches of information technology to gather and understand the concerns and aspirations of indiviuals and communities, and how best to support and empower their ability to articulate and coomunicate these to governments, donors and others (see http://ppgis.iapad.org/ppgis.htm for a better decsription).

UNEP's (and other UN agencies') involvement in and promotion of spatial data infrastrcucture development is a step in the right direction, as yet not reaching the mwananchi-in-the-street but plausibly getting there. Take an example from Kenya's recent past - the attempted excision of part of Karura forest by influencial individuals. The 'grab' was thwarted by a group of citizens including Wangari Mathai. At that time is was not feasible for those activists to quickly get hold of satellite images that would provide the before-and-after evidence needed to build their case - they would have had to contact a specialist centre like RCMRD, ICRAF or UNEP, the data would had to be requested, moneys would probably have had to change hands, and weeks later the data would arrive in Kenya by mail, have to be processed by specialists and, finally, the pictures made available to the press or whoever. Of course, by that stage, the damage would have been complete and the protest useless.

These days it's already possible that -anyone- with access to the internet could go to NASA's geoBrain site, select on a map the area around Karura, and in the space of an hour or so have downloaded just the pictures they needed - no impossibly-huge masses of data to move, no need for specialist equipment, software or staff, no paying of bills outside the country, and no waiting for months. The message can be delivered graphically and forcefully in time to be useful. This all is possible because the right technical standards and protocols are agreed and in place - the barriers to acces are (slowly?) coming down. That's what SDI's are all about. Part of UNEP's job is to encourage this process - both within the UN systems and amongst our partners and the Governments - and to continuously create awareness of the opportunities that are opening up.

Yes, of course, Kenya and many other countries are a long way from universal access to the internet. Of course telecommunications are slow, expensive and unreliable. But, still, it only takes for one individual in any advocacy group to be able to use the web, to get be able to get to a cyber cafe, and to -know- that these types of solutions can be used via the internet.

I'm sure there are lots of other UNEP-driven activities that do strive to empower the average citizen, but this is one domain in which I feel qualified to speak.