Interactive Community Mapping: Between Empowerment and Effectiveness
As the project relied on community members, the absence of proper incentives limited the coverage and scope of the mapping activities. Further, due to the lack of government buy-in, the aerial imagery was underused. As a result, the ICM partially achieved the process-oriented objectives, but it performed weakly on the results-oriented dimension. The case of HOT in Indonesia followed a different path. Targeted collection of disaster-related data, coupled with reliance on skilled, semiprofessional mappers (CSO workers, urban planning students, and public officials) produced several results. First, the scope and coverage of the ICM project were considerably larger, as the project took full advantage of the CSO’s capacity and incentives to engage in the mapping activities. Second, its usability and sustainability were relatively high—data collected by HOT responded to concrete, well-defined information needs, and civil society and government stakeholders endorsed and supported the project. However, while it performed strongly on the results axis, HOT had to make trade-offs with regard to community engagement. By definition, its ICM process was less inclusive and participatory than the ICM in Kibera, for instance. Further, it did not necessarily empower the most marginalized or vulnerable groups in the community, thus abandoning a common raison d’être for many ICM endeavors. These trade-offs point to the challenge of attaining both process-oriented and results-oriented objectives as part of an ICM initiative. As figure 4.3 shows, initiatives that pursue “general-interest” objectives, manage to mobilize community members effectively, and take advantage of the existing civil society capacity score well on the process dimension. However, as they do not rely on predetermined information needs and only loosely engage the government, the resulting interactive community maps may often be underused. Initiatives that pursue specific goals, respond to predetermined information needs, rely on professional mappers, and establish cooperation with government officials are more likely to score well on the results axis. However, as in the case of HOT, they may be weaker on the participatory process dimension.
Conclusion The ICM process entails a range of trade-offs and challenges. One of the most difficult trade-offs is the need to choose between community empowerment and capacity building, on the one hand, and effective delivery and use of the map, on the other hand. As the objectives of ICM projects become defined, special attention should be placed on the enabling factors. The framework introduced in this chapter of factors for the success and sustainability of ICM outlined six broad enabling factors: a supporting information infrastructure, need for information, civil society capacity, government cooperation, community mapper incentives, and the quality of collected data. In chapter 1 of this volume, a broad framework of political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors for empowerment through ICTs was introduced. These more detailed enabling factors for ICM complement the STEP Closing the Feedback Loop • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0191-4
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