Foundational Projects
Climate Ready Cities
Climate crises are inherently geographic. Yet many of the places where people are most vulnerable to climate change lack representation on maps, meaning communities and decision-makers do not have reliable data to address the converging crises they face.
We are addressing climate data gaps by working with local communities and partners to take anticipatory action. We ensure their realities are represented on the map and that communities are involved in climate-related decisions that will affect them.
Transform Your City’s work has started and demonstrated its impacts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. This project will create the new and pervasive approach for Climate Ready Cities across all of West Africa.
See more of our work hosted by HOT and its impact across many world regions. >>
Know Your City 2.0
The KnowYourCity Campaign led by Slum Dwellers International in collaboration with our researchers at the University of Chicago was a massive demonstration of the power of informal communities to collect map and survey data on their current challenges and priorities.
We demonstrated that it was possible to create harmonized surveys and maps in over 5,000 settlements in 224 cities and 18 nations in the Global South, expressing the challenges of life in these underserviced environments and the needs of their populations.
TransformYourCity will develop a new campaign with precision mapping, and verifiable data across settlements and cities of West Africa. It will show but how such data can be used in bottom up processes of urban planning to spark inclusive development and resilience to climate change challenges.
Learn more about the first Know Your City Campaign at SDI’s webpage. >>
Million Neighborhoods Map
A decade of experience with bottom up community surveys and mapping by SDI communities, and improving remote sensing data allowed us to develop new quantitative criteria for the likely identification of informal settlements, specifically the lack of infrastructure access to buildings.
The combination of brand new exhaustive building datesets produced by technology (remote sensing + AI delineation) facilitated the creation of draft complete maps, and the identification of informal settlements at the level of street blocks. In turn, we have demonstrated that these physical features correlate strongly with measures of human development in demographic and health surveys.
The Million Neighborhood Map provides us with a draft complete map and a starter geospatial infrastructure that will be augmented and quality controlled for the first stage of TransformYourCity.
See the latest iterative version of the Million Neighborhoods Map for sub-Saharan Africa. >>