November 22, 2012
We spent this week with Peruvian partners in co-development and training sessions, hosted by CEPES. This is a data-rich and data-diverse environment, where partners prefer to refer to "land transactions" than "land deals". Often land titles are traded between Peruvian investors, and this is something they would like to be able to track, in addition to concessions and other transactions.
Much of the data on mining and forestry concessions is already available in georeferenced form, and groups like Propuesta Ciudadana and Cooperacción use it. Rich context layers like those of native and peasant communities are available, like those from Instituto del Bien Estar. Other groups like CEPES have really good qualitative dossiers on certain sectors or regions.
The added value of the Observatory is both that it can combine these data sets and allow users to analyze with context layers, but also that it can potentially increase participation and engagement via comments and other crowdsourcing functions.
Partners gave us input about to create a custom Peruvian version of the Observatory - including some interesting additional attributes like taxes paid by investors, and how to improve the user interface. They also warned us that one of the major problems with existing mapping platforms (and there are many!) is that they do not load fast enough on slower internet connections outside of Lima.
Our next step is to make an exhaustive list of all geospatial data related to land transactions, and context layers, and prepare these for eventually loading into the Land Observatory. Partners will work on a formal agreement as to how to coordinate activity on the Land Observatory in Peru.
We're also excited to be participating in Escuelab's Open Street Maps day on Saturday, and meet members of the mapping and geek community in Lima. More on Escuelab's site and you can follow the action on the hashtag #MappingRaymi.