I decided to change the blog title from 'Making Trouble in Phnom Penh' to 'Making Maps Without Borders' given it seems the most poignant derivative of the " Without Borders" meme started by MSF.

Similar to the last update, it's been an eventful two weeks. I finally got out of the office and visited three relocation sites in the southwest of Phnom Penh. I visited Choeung Ek, a killing field, the same day. They sent people there from the infamous Tuol Sleng/S21 prison in the middle of Phnom Penh, right near where I'm staying. There has also been a lot of activity to do with our web map, Urban Voice, with most of my efforts devoted to preparing datasets for upload and suggesting improvements for our web development team to implement.

The five maps mentioned in the last post have almost been completed. The main improvement over the last set was to make some minor changes to the legend, reduce the typeface size of the landmarks etc. The number of communities that have been threatened with eviction was also incorrect in the first map, hence much time was spent this and last week getting the full dataset and turning it into something acceptable for my mapping program. Turns out our organisation knows of 53 such communities in Phnom Penh, stretching back nine years or so up to now. This is interesting because a community might be threatened with eviction once, but then nothing comes of it. Perhaps it would be good to investigate what percentage of the threats are empty like this.

Regarding the web map, we have had many meetings and presentations about it, although mainly spreading the word amongst fellow NGOs so far. For example it was the subject of an evening at Hackerspace and also a Drinks by Design event. These generated some helpful suggestions about how to improve the map, and hopefully will generate traffic to the site when it's open for business in early 2012. The main point of it is to provide a means for locals to submit points of interest (POI). By engaging citizens in the production of the map, it is more likely to reflect their experience and use of the city. This way we can get detail on areas commonly skipped in the generalisation process of creating a typical city map. For example, none of the street network of urban poor communities is on either OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. We have both of these as base layers on Urban Voice and citizens can use them to see where to add streets or POIs. I'm thinking we can use the data they submit to then add it to OpenStreetMap and/or Google Maps, since both accept publicly submitted data (OSM, Google (Google even crowdsources 3D building modelling!)) Admittedly this is double handling but our site might be simpler for users. Honestly if I'd've been here from the start I'd be pointing everyone at OSM via a video tutorial for their base/reference layer edits (for example streets) and only using our site for events or demographic information like the eviction sites. But it's probably easier for people to do it all via the same interface, we'll just work out an automated way to submit the base data received to OSM.

We also use the site to share the spatial data we have collected, for example the urban poor communities threatened with eviction will be on there soon (got it up on the demo site tonight though which was satisfying). Similarly, it is envisaged that other NGOs will submit geographic datasets to us so that the site can be a hub for such data. I note, however, that we have some competition here in Open Development Cambodia, which funnily enough was also coded up by the same web design firm, House32! Honestly, I think the only real advantage of our site over that ODC map is the crowdsourcing function... I'd've simply added that to it rather than using the Ushahidi platform but I'm obviously late to the party. Sometimes I wonder if it's because Ushahidi is kind of hip in the development world at the moment, but that might be being a bit cynical.

The site will provide the option to view more than one layer of information at a time (uncommon for web maps developed using the Ushahidi platform). People can already do this here by filtering on certain categories then hitting the map button up the top, but it currently only retrieves a subset of the points... the dev team seem to think they've found a way around it. Given how much they've done on it, it should get some favourable attention from Ushahidi when it's up.

My main task on the site, as mentioned above, has been to get GIS datasets prepared for uploading. So far I've done datasets for high rise building developments, eviction sites and sites threatened with eviction. I've also made a data entry template in Excel, although will work on creating a form in Access so it's even easier to enter for other staff members to submit information. I think you're probably bored with Urban Voice by now, but suffice to say there's been a lot of wrangling with spreadsheets other staff members have already set up to try to get the data into a suitable format. It takes a while sometimes, and I think that aspect of things won't be getting any better since I'm just supposed to work out a method before handing a process over to staff for them to complete.

Regarding statistics teaching, I got a bit further by deciding which basic stats concepts I'll try to help staff learn. This is driven by the first year stats reader from Flinders Uni that I thankfully brought with me. I can use the lecture notes and all of the prac materials in there and we will start on Tuesday 6/12/11 with the first workshop. I think this will also end up being a good method for me to pass on some tips to the team about using Excel, like how to write formulas.

I should also mention the visit to the relocation sites. The ones we visited were not very far away, some are right on the outskirts 20km from the CBD but these were perhaps 10km out. They contained some relatively established looking houses. You can see some of them in the photos I've uploaded along with this post. It was great to go there and ask them some questions about what it's like to live at a relocation site. We found that generally the streets are dirt. The leader at the first community advised that they were responsible for the upkeep of the roads. This meant that they would have to pay the $US40/sqm for a concrete road down the side of the community. This appeared badly needed but given it was 100m long, quite expensive for them. Another interesting fact was that only 30% of the people relocated had remained at the site. The rest had sold their properties and left. Despite this, the leader said that the site was in fact better than the one they came from closer to town, as there was plenty of work nearby (especially garment factories) and facilities were good. This was interesting to encounter in my first site visit, as up until now I'd been of the opinion that relocation sites were always bad. Certainly some of them are, like the ones on the edge of the city, but some of them are ok.

You will see in one of the photos there's a cultivated plot along the boundary. This was only at one of the sites though. I also saw people preparing their mobile food stalls before heading out selling on the street. One of the things being prepared was some form of intestines. I think probably pig. I had pig intestines for breakfast one day. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what these little slices of tough grey matter were. I thought they might have been some poddish vegetable that was cut up. Then a workmate came in and told me what it was. I'm kind of proud to have eaten it, although not as proud of eating the spider!

Making Trouble in Phnom Penh

Regarding non volunteering (I like that heading too much to let it go to waste!), I bought a moto - a Suzuki Big Boy! I love my bike. Went for a ride with the boys out to Kean Svay, east of the city. This has a nice resort type place with a pool, where we caught up with some people from Resource Development International Cambodia (RDIC) who are volunteering there. I found my bike is pretty impractical around town and I'm forever riding the clutch. There's always going to be a trade off for getting something a bit more stylish. I'm glad I didn't get a Daelim or similar, might as well enjoy myself and do some longer trips. I also found a swing dance class which was a lot of fun although they could do with about 6 more fans in the hall... I have also done 7 Khmae lessons so I'm starting to be able to cobble sentences together. I just need to practice more. Over the weekend I went on my first river cruise, a boat party organised by friend of a friend. This was pretty leisurely. We basically just floated out across the Tonle Sap, around the corner into the Mekong then back again. But it was nice to see the city from a different perspective.

I have the Angkor Wat bike race coming up this weekend. It's a fundraising event for Village Focus, so if you've any spare change hit this link, scroll down and click Waters, Wilfred and follow the prompts. The form is a bit clunky, you'll have to put "Wilfred Waters" in as well, you'll see the spot. I'll let you know how it goes in the next update, hopefully it won't be more photos of injuries!

Till next time,

Wil