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What team structure will best meet your aims; who should be involved, what roles do you need; who is making decisions and who are you accountable to?
The answer to this question of who should be involved could vary wildly. Perhaps it is just you and your mobile phone, or perhaps it is going to involve thousands of people across multiple countries working together to compile a mass of data. Most of the partners we have worked with directly are somewhere in between, often a community or group of communities with a dedicated team of collaborating to collect data.
However even the projects we have partnered on directly, which might look superficially very similar, have set up their project structures in very different ways, sometimes out of need and sometimes out of preference. So here are some things to consider.
Are there any traditional or other authorities that should be consulted before you start, or who should be involved in some role? This is particularly relevant if you are collecting data from indigenous lands (your own or belonging to others) and/or might be collecting potentially sensitive data.
Who is your project accountable to and how can you ensure you meet their needs? The answer to this might be the traditional authorities mentioned above, or it could be particular sectors of your community, funders, the future generations or others. Consider how to keep them up to date with project progress if relevant and how to produce materials they will find accessible and useful.
Do different members of your community hold different knowledge that you want to ensure is represented. How can you honour and involve these people and their knowledge? Think here about women, elders and young people in particular, and how to ensure they are involved in the work and that they are not simply used to extract information from. Then depending upon the details of your project other groups might arise: traditional healers; skilled artisans; storytellers; health workers etc.
Consider the ownership of the project: If the project is meeting needs identified by your community, or collecting data intrinsic to them or their future consider how to ensure the community feels involved in the work and feels ownership over any results. Mapeo was built to try and facilitate community ownership of both projects and data by having a simple interface that could be explained to people without data collection training and people who might be non-literate or unused to computers or smartphones. Involving people at different stages of the project, including the planning phase can help increase this feeling of ownership, as can keeping the data locally, providing frequent feedback and reports back on what is happening, and creating outputs that people can use themselves or see at work.
What other stakeholders or people with interest or authority do you want to involve? Perhaps there are people who it would be useful to involve because they could help the project reach its goal such as local authorities, law enforcement, press, park rangers. Think about what role they might have in the project, whether they are consulted about things in advance or are simply informed and kept up to date with project progress. Consider too if there are people you want to keep the work and data secret from due to security or other considerations.
Who is going to collect your data? Unless yours is a solo project you are going to need to work with a team or teams of people to collect your data. This will be particularly necessary if you need to cover a large area of land, have time constraints or need different skills on your team. Think about the composition of the team and how you are going to build it - is it something people will volunteer for or will they be asked? Do you need to ensure diverse representation and if so how will you do this? Do you want to involve as many people as possible or have a small team that moves around?
What other roles do you need? If you are working with a team or teams of data collectors or mappers you are likely to need someone to coordinate them, help plan trips, collate the data they collect, analyse it and prepare any reports or outputs. This might be the role of a single coordinator, or you might need multiple ones due to the number of people involved or because of cultural or political sensitivities or the way the project ownership is set up. You might also have people involved in training, decision making, liaising with external bodies, helping with legal and communications work etc.
What skills do people need? We hope Mapeo is to learn and use, but if you are working in a team and want to collect comparable data people will need some training in how to use the app, and how to use it in the way your project needs. There might be other trainings necessary such as training in basic smartphone usage if people aren't accustomed to it; training in taking good photographs that illustrate what you want to show; training in gps; drones; video; audio recording; oral history recording; GIS software etc. conflict resolution, de-escalation etc depending on the details of your project.
Create a project protocol: Writing a protocol, if possible in a collaborative manner, which lays out any different roles within the project, their relationship to the data, agreements about use and ownership of data, any payments that are being made, what will happen to equipment and data at the end of a project etc. can be a way to keep things transparent and accountable and help avoid issues during and after the work.
Why collect information? What is the aim of your mapping, monitoring or data collection, what is your goal or desired end product or result?
So you want to start collecting information, perhaps you are going to be making a map, or perhaps you want to collect evidence of impacts on your land or gather other data or information. The first question to clearly ask of yourself or your community is WHY? What is it that you hope to gain or change or learn through the project?
The more detailed an answer you can give to this question the better set up you can get; making sure anyone involved in the project is working towards the same goal and being able to determine the best methodology for meeting it.
For example, if you want to make a map – what is your map for, what impact do you want it to have for you, your team, in the world, etc. Perhaps the map is the end product, or perhaps just one step in a longer process, or maybe the main aim is building relationships, and the map is the means to bring people a focus for working together.
What if you don't know yet? Perhaps you know you want to gather data about something that interests you but are not yet sure how you are going to use it. Don't worry, you can refine your aim and build on your project as you go along and learn more.
And remember - all plans change and it is impossible to predict everything in advance. There will be unforeseen outcomes, some beneficial, some possibly challenging, of your project. However having your main goal in mind as you begin to plan your methodology and define what information you are going to collect sets you up to meet any challenges, and welcome any positive changes, in the best way.
It might be too early to start thinking about outputs, but if you already have a sense of what these might be then they might give some useful direction to your planning process. By output we don't mean the goal or results of your project, although these might overlap, we are referring particularly to concrete materials that result from your Mapeo project.
For example these could be:
Printed map / maps: These might be for an external audience such as the government or a legal body, or they might be for the community itself to use for other purposes. If you are planning on creating a map then consider what information you can show on the map - perhaps you spend a long time collecting stores which then are hard to find space for, or you collect so much information that the map is hard to read.
Data reports: You might want to produce regular reports on the data you collect, or wait until the end of your project and then produce a report with all the data or the highlights. Do your reports include quantitative data that you want to analyse and present in a particular way or is it mainly qualitative data that will need editing or compiling before presentation. Thinking about these can help you to organise your teams and data collection so that you have the data when you need it, in the right format.
Alerts: If you are collecting evidence of something that needs fast action then having an alert system built into your methodology could help. Mapeo Mobile can export datapoints to WhatsApp and other apps so you could potentially send alerts of illegalities straight to law enforcers for immediate action.
Interactive webmap: This could be a good output if you are hoping to build a campaign and want to share some of the project with the public or media - or even for your own community such as for an educational or storytelling resource. It also enables different kinds of information to be present than on a printed map as you can include videos and audio more easily. However it may involve a level of technical expertise or budget beyond the scope of your project, and it is definitely not the right output for every goal.
You may be keen to jump in and get started with data collection, however spending a bit of time upfront thinking through how the project will run, the methodology, team set-up, logistics of gathering data, and how the data collected or created with Mapeo will be used can save you a lot of time and avoid problems and issues later on.
This guide does not aim to give you a blueprint of how to run your project. There are so many different uses of Mapeo, some of these we (Digital Democracy) can imagine, some of them we can't, and each one has its own particular needs, priorities and local contexts. What works in one place might need to be set up very differently for another place, even if the desired outcome is very similar. And likewise what works somewhere at one time, might have to be adjusted for another time as local situations, politics, etc. change.
Hopefully spending time thinking through the questions below will enable you to create a process tailored to your needs and project, and give it the best possible chance of success.
We are going to run through the following questions:
Why collect information? What is the aim of your mapping, monitoring or data collection, what is your goal or desired end product or result?
What outputs do you want? If you already know that you want to build an interactive story map, or produce a quantitative report or file a legal case, this can help shape your project design.
Who should be involved? What project structure will best meet your aims, who should be involved, what roles do you need, who is making decisions and who are you accountable to?
What are the parameters or limiting factors you are working with? This refers to your geographical context, infrastructure, accessibility to areas, budgets and equipment availability, time constraints, security risks, etc.
Is Mapeo the right tool for you? We think Mapeo is great :) but we know that it has limits and it isn't the right tool for every job. We want to make sure that if you choose Mapeo you understand what it excels at doing and also its weaknesses, to make sure you are set up in the best possible way for success in your project.
Mapeo was co-developed with community land defenders in the Amazon. We have tested, piloted and received feedback on it from people around the world using it for a variety of purposes, and we hope it can serve a wide range of needs. However it is built with the needs of land and rights defenders at its heart, and therefore this guide, and many of the materials produced for Mapeo are also built with these needs at the forefront.
In part because of its design process, and the partners with whom Digital Democracy has worked, we often refer to community and collaborative processes. Mapeo can definitely also be used by individuals, and a variety of different teams, but many of our partners are using it in local, frontline community contexts, and so the language of this guide centers them. We also understand that communities are not homogenous and mean different things in different places, and hope that you can read between the lines where necessary to extract the useful parts of this guide for whatever it means to you.
This guide draws on work from our team over the last two decades in indigenous and community land rights and defense. However indigenous and marginalized communities have been defending their land for centuries. There are many projects and initiatives from which the development of Mapeo and the methodologies suggested here have been guided, received inspiration and learned. This reference guide does not aim to provide an exhaustive list of such projects, but at the end of the guide there is a Reference Section which highlights some materials from other sources and initiatives which may be of help to you in planning your project.
All the examples included in the guide are just that, examples. We hope they are helpful and provide some context and illustration to the processes described, but are not intended to be taken and copied as 'out of the box' methodologies. As we hope this planning section will describe, context is everything, and methodology should be carefully considered and adapted to best fit the needs of the project and particular community context.
In the pages below you'll find a collection of resources to support in getting a Mapeo project started.
Security & risk assessment (Coming soon)
Creating user protocols (Coming soon)
Additional information on running trainings in Mapeo can be found in Mapeo trainings.
What are the parameters or limiting factors which you are working with? This refers to your geographic context, infrastructure, accessibility to areas, budgets and equipment availability, time const
No two Mapeo projects will look the same even if they have the same aims and are using the same configuration. There are so many factors which will influence how a project is run including timeline; budget; technology; landscape; seasons; climate; culture; social and political context; etc.
Whilst we can provide some ideas here, any project should be tailored to your particular context taking into account answers to the following questions. Thinking through these questions in advance will also be useful if you ask for help to put together a mapping project from an ally or other organisation.
Is there a particular urgency for the work, a date you need to produce a map or collect data by? If there isn't an internal deadline, are there significant dates external to the project that you might want to work towards or include within your calendar (eg. visits by authorities to the area, International meetings such as COP or UN Working Groups, World Social Forums etc.).
Think about what the land looks like and how you plan to travel around. Some projects might be focused on a small area in town, where people can just travel around on foot on paved roads, other projects might cover tens of thousands of hectares and require travel by river, up steep hills, into swamps etc. Perhaps there are areas you want to access that are off limits (eg. National borders or Industrial installations can have no-go zones around them, or have rules about using GPS or drones etc) Drawing a quick sketchmap of the the area you plan to work within, and marking any significant landmarks, access routes, barriers etc. can help you plan out how you or your team is going to get around and how long this will take, and help identify any challenges you might encounter ahead of time.
If you plan to collect data at a particular time of year consider how the season or climate might affect this. For example the dry / rainy seasons might impact how easily you can move around the land, and might also impact the type of data you can collect (for example travel by river might be easier in the rainy season, but travel by road or foot might be harder); likewise some operations or activities you want to map or monitor might only occur at certain times of year (eg. illegal logging is linked to seasons, as are fruiting trees and fish/animal movements).
Do you have or need a budget, and if so how much? Do you intend to pay people to take part or is it volunteer-led? If you don't already have a budget are there parts of the work that are going to need funds such as for purchasing equipment, travelling around or for any meetings you intend to hold.
Mapeo Mobile works on Android phones & tablets and Mapeo Desktop on Windows/Mac/Linux operating systems. Whilst essentially you might just need one smart phone for your project (which you might already have in your back pocket!), depending upon your plan, and particularly if you are going to work with teams in complicated environments you might need to think about other equipment such as spare battery packs if you are doing multi-day trips in remote areas; usb or hard drives for backups; trekking and medical kits for teams; waterproofing for tech that might be exposed to the elements etc., large sheets of paper, marker pens and notebooks for community workshops.
See equipment list for a list of things partners we have worked with have found useful.
Unfortunately, many frontline defenders are targeted for their work, often risking their lives to defend their peoples rights, lands and futures. Please consider your own safety and that of anyone else involved in the project and take what measures you can to identify risks ahead of time and mitigate them where possible, whilst doing the work that you need to do.
For example:
Do you need to keep team members, or the names of people interviewed or otherwise involved in the project, or would it be better to involve the media and ensure there is a spotlight on the work?
Are there places you can avoid going to and questions can avoid asking so as to not trigger dangerous responses?
Do your teams need some kind of backup to keep them safe, a satellite phone, tracker or civil society accompaniment?
Data security
Sometimes it is not people that are at risk but data - consider therefore if you are collecting data that could be valuable to others and how you can best keep it safe.
Information can be sensitive in other ways too: perhaps only certain members of a community normally have access to it (but still want it documented) or perhaps it is information that the community does not want to make public.
Mapeo does not make any of your data public unless you choose to share it, you can create reports or export data which is filtered to exclude sensitive places or pieces of information, and you can share information with team members without it going online.
However there are other measures you can take to protect your information if needed, creating passwords for your devices ... what else?
Coming soon
Coming soon
When you have clarified the main goal for the project, the next step is to think through carefully what data you want to collect or create. This will not just be dependent upon the final goal, but also on other factors such as the time and funding available, the security situation, and any legal guidelines. So it may be a good idea to read this section again after reading the "What are your parameters" section.
Depending on your needs and capacity you may find that the default configuration and categories that come with Mapeo do the job well enough, or you might want to set up a custom configuration with your own icons and questions tailored to your specific needs. For more on how to do this, see Creating custom configurations. Perhaps, if your project is new and you are still figuring out what is needed, you may want to start collecting data using the default configurations, and learn from that process about what categories and questions you really need.
The simple answer to the question of what information to collect is probably quite obvious from your goal, but when you dig down the answer isn't always that easy. So if you need a territory map for a land claim then you probably need to collect information about territory use, as well as the territory boundaries or limits - but exactly what information do you need, what format should it be in, how much detail do you need, etc. And if you want to collect evidence of illegal gold mining, then you may want to collect georeferenced photos and answer a series of questions about the scale and nature of any impacts found, but what is the best way of framing questions to get you the answers your community and perhaps legal team need to evaluate what is going on and how to take action, and what should you be taking photos of exactly?
Collecting data can be a time-consuming and expensive process, and can raise expectations about outcomes. So thinking this through carefully in advance will help ensure you are a) not wasting your own or others time and resources collecting information that isn't going to be useful and b) not in the situation where you realize at the end of a month-long trip that you need to go back to all the places again because you forgot to collect a crucial bit of data.
Think about the following questions to further clarify exactly what data you should be gathering and how to set up any custom configurations:
First think about your goal and what you know of your needs. Brainstorm with any other team members or with the community about all the possible things you could collect information about, categories and questions, and then start organizing and refining.
If possible do some research by talking to allies, or looking online to see how other similar projects were set up and what data they collected.
Are there any rules, restrictions or guidelines that might determine the kind of information you collect and how to ensure it is usable. For example some governments/authorities might require data to be collected in a particular GPS format, or follow a particular information template, in order to be accepted or easily acted upon.
Might the data need to be used in a legal process, if so there may be specific ways of collecting it, or additional questions you ask, which will enable it to be used more effectively. If possible get local legal advice about this, as it will differ depending on the type of data and the country you are in.
Knowing how much information is too much. Once you start making a map or collecting information it quite fun... maybe a little too fun 🙂. If you have all the time in the world then this may not be a problem, but if people or lands are being threatened you may need to make compromises in terms limiting the data you collect to that which is urgently needed.
In terms of data types, Mapeo Mobile can collect:
GPS points: so you can georeference particular points and places, and gather data associated with them. When saving a GPS point in Mapeo Mobile you need to categorize it with an icon.
Photographs: photographs get tagged with the GPS point of their particular location - is this right? - as well as being attached to the place they are associated with.
Details fields: if you set up a custom configuration you can add any number of questions into Mapeo so that you could carry out household surveys, collect quantitative information or evidence, or likewise write down detailed stories. Your questions can be text fields for open descriptions; select one or select many.
Mapeo Desktop can display and manage the above data types and additionally you can create georeferenced points, lines and areas with a basemap in the background. These data types can similarly have questions or fields associated with them that you fill in, and which can then be used for analysis.