Sketch Map Tool Exercise 3 - Role Play using the Sketch Map Tool in EVCA#

Characteristics of the exercise#

Aim of this exercise:

Explore Sketch Mapping in a roleplay, either in the perespective of a mapping facilitator, or as a partcipant and learn more about the challenges during the mapping.

Type of trainings exercise:

This exercise can only be conducted in presence training and is based on na role-play and discussions.

Focus group (GIS-Knowlege Level)

  • Planners/facilitators, as well as practitioners who are involved in the preparation of the field campaign or collecting the data themselves.

Beginners-level: no specific knowledge about QGIS/uMap required

Phase of participatory /community mapping

  • Participatory mapping

Estimated time demand for the exercise.

1h - 1,5 h

Available data and resources

Instructions for the trainers#

Trainers Corner

Prepare the training

  • Take the time to familiarise yourself with the provided material for the exercise and the Sketch Map Tool in general.

  • Check out How to do trainings? for some general tips on training conduction

Conduct the training:

Introduction:

  • Introduce the idea, the aim and the benefits of a Sketch Map. If you are focusing on EVCA you might use the EVCA Sketch Map Tool Slides

  • Provide access to the needed material.

  • Organize the groups (e.g. create breakout-rooms) and assign the groups with their case. The group sizes shouldn´t be too big, so everyone can contribute. For each case assign 2-3 participants the role of facilitators and 4-7 participants the role of community members.

Time for group work:

  • Check-in with the groups if there are questions or problems.

  • Prepare the presentation tool for the Wrap-Up.

Wrap up:

  • Take some time at the end to wrap up where the group will present their findings.

  • Summarize challenges of the participatory mapping approach.

  • Discuss benefits of showing results as a map

  • Leave time for open questions.

Background Information#

Enhanced Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (EVCA)#

In order to spatially assess and identify risk factors, the EVCA recommends to conduct a mapping activitiy throughout the process where community members jointly create a spatial map, hazard & exposure map and vulnerability & capacity map (see EVCA Toolbox). Mapping is done with paper and pen and generally on blank paper. The Sketch Map Tool has great potential to support a sustainable participatory mapping process by digitalizing the process while, at the same time, keeping it simple.

Benefits of the Sketch Map Tool#

During the data collection:

  • Maps provide orientation and can guide discussions.

  • With the sketching you achieve an immediate visualization of local knowledge.

After the data collection:

  • Displaying and sharing the result.

  • Integrate and analyse local knowledge in GIS-software such as QGIS

Step-by-step introduction for participants#

Exercise: Roleplay#

Particpatory mapping with the Sketch Maps is the key part of using the Sketch Map Tool. The usability of your collected data depends on the local knowledge of the participants and how it is captured by ‘sketching’ on the maps. The idea of this exercise is to recreate such a mapping session in order to learn more about challenges you could face during the mapping process.

  • The facilitators are doing an EVCA in one area of the prepared case and focus on creating an exposure and hazard map.

  • The community members are taking part in this mapping by providing information. However, they also have their own concerns or challenges they wish to adress during the mapping process.

1. Prepare for the roleplay#

Separate into groups: For each case study, there should be 2 groups:

  • One group represents the community members (4-7 particants).

  • One group represents the facilitators (2-3 participants). If your total group is too big, you can split and use the same case study twice.

  1. Read the case study carefully.

  2. Get into your role.

  3. Discuss with the other participants with your role (the community members or the facilitators) and perpare yourself. What do you need to do during the mapping process?

Tip

You can prepare your own case description fitting to your use cases for the Sketch Map Tool.

Facilitators

The group of facilitators will seperate from the rest in order to prepare their activity.

  • How do I best explain to the community why we do this activity and what is its added value, especially for them? How do I make them feel comfortable to share their information (concerning data protections, ethics)?

  • What do we want to find out when talking to the community? What do we want to map? What data do we want to collect?

  • What questions would we have to raise in order to get the right answers?

  • How can I help community members to orientate on the map?

  • What should be mapped and how should it be mapped? For this questions, take a look at the help page-subsection about Data collection in the field.

  • Familiarise yourself with the map. What can you detect? Are there any landmarks you can use for orientation?

Community members

  • Make some notes about the hazards and the exposures you think one could have encounterd in the past. Guiding questions could be:

    • Which areas were affected?

    • How often is this happening?

    • How severe was this hazard event? (e.g. how high was the flood level)

    • Which consequences could this have for individuals? (e.g. destrucitons of houses, lost livilihoods)

  • Distribute some roles: old persons, students, teachers, or other community members

  • Beyond that, give your roles some characteristics, you can be creative. Some ideas to start with:

    • very suspicious person, questions a lot if community should be part of this activity and if there is an added value for the community.

    • fearful character, wants to participate but is afraid of sharing information and its consequences.

    • old person that has lots of knowledge but cannot orientate on the map.

    • very motivated person that wants to map more that is asked for/needed.

    • Which other characters spring to your mind? Maybe someone who just moved to the place, has a lot of question to other particpants,…

2. Participatory Mapping Simulation#

Now it is time to show your acting ability.
It might seem a bit stange at first, but try to stay in your character. This can help you a lot to understand challenges and motivations later on.

The Participatory Mapping Simulation is led by the facilitators:

  1. Present the project and the activity that is planned (mapping project)

  2. Welcoming round: Everyone is introducing themselves shortly (e.g. I’m Sam and I’m running a small farm in the 5th generation).

  3. Start the mapping by showing the map and helping the community members to orientate.

  4. Try to map together.

The trainer will end this roleplay when the time is over.

3. Optional: Upload your created maps#

Upload your created maps and visualize the results in UMAP

Take a foto of your sketches or at least one sketch by loading them into sketch-map-tool.heigit.org. On the website, choose ‘Digitize your Sketch maps’ on the right. Upload all your sketches in .png or .jpg format. You can mark your sketches and simply drag and drop them into the window.

Now, let’s take a look at the results in order to understand the community mapping process. We will use the uMap website

Load your data

  1. Open the browser of your choice, navigate to the uMap website and click on the large green button: Create a map.

  2. You can load your data into the map frame by clicking on the upwards-arrow button in the toolbar on the right side of your screen. The Import data window will open on the right side. Click on Select file, navigate to the folder you downloaded from the Sketch Map Tool website and select the vector file (.geojson).

  3. Click on Open. uMap will automatically detect that the uploaded geojson-file is vector data. Click on Import to load your data to your map canvas.

  4. The detected markings of your sketch map should now appear in the map canvas. Take a look around by zooming in and out, or panning the map.

  • Compare detected markings with your physical map. Did the tool detect your markings correctly or are some markings missing?

  • Which markings got detected better than others? What can you learn from this session in order to make better markings in the future?

Tip

If you are further interested to customize your visualization in uMAP or to visulaize or even generate a printable map of your results in QGIS, have a look at [Exercise 4] where you will be guided through basic visualization in uMAP & QGIS.

4. Final discussion and conclusion#

  • Discuss your results and created maps. Are you satisfied with the map? What can you do with this results? What do you to change?

  • Discuss the challenges you encountered, as well as the potentials of conducting participatory mapping projects you recognized. What did you learn?

  • Discuss what you would do different in the future (e.g. use only one colour, etc.).

  • Discuss the importance of a well planned mapping process in order to have usable results and data.