PLUS Stories

We focus on informal settlement/slums/deprived neighbourhood mapping, using earth observation methods. From where we started, we have seen considerable research in this area over the last decade, but there seems to be a gap in addressing societal information needs. The relevance of our research stems from the problem that often, in many countries, official maps/statistics are outdated or entirely lack data about informal areas, making them ‘invisible’ or what we would call, ‘missing spaces’.

As researchers, we often also fail to understand the local conditions. Figure 1 shows how poor our assumptions may be on what works and what does not work in deprived urban areas. During the COVID-19 outbreak, guidelines of the Global North are formulated without considering the reality of the Global South. In this case, the simple fact that purchasing a mask or access to basic sanitary facilities are luxuries restricted to people with adequate resources only.

Over the past months, we learned a lot in the interaction with local community leaders – on what is needed and what not OR what can work and what not. The creation of data for any purpose related to these areas, should first not only be creative in terms  addressing the needs and conditions but also–- understand the implications of data. We should also understand why timely and accurate data on deprived urban areas are needed and comprehend the massive data gaps in any global datasets.

Research needs to take the mapping forward into more dimensions for understanding deprivation as a multi-dimensional phenomena, for example, integrating tenure information. Current research focuses also focuses on this aspect, with which, we envision, better tenure security can be insured.