Local Tech Company, Open Solutions, Begins Mapping Exercise for Resilience Building
Open Solutions will on Saturday, January 21, 2023 embark on a mapping exercise to expand knowledge of communities and empower citizens to plan effectively to reduce disaster risk and build resilience. In collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Swiss Re Foundation and The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Open Solutions will compile data to measure risk and enhance Dominica’s capacity to respond to climate change impacts.
“This is going to be an asset to Dominica, and it is aligned with the Government of Dominica‟s objective to make Dominica climate resilient,” Chief Executive Officer of Open Solutions, Peter Ricketts said during a press conference to launch the „Open Data for Resilience and Risk Management Initiative: Open Cities Latin America and the Caribbean, Enhancing Mapping for Resilience Building in Dominica.’ “
The themes will be flooding impact, landslides and fires and our end product will be storytelling- knowing where past floods and other events have taken place from local knowledge and mapping both coping capacity and infrastructure quality, we will start to build a picture of where communities need to plan against remaining vulnerabilities.” Open Solutions has partnered with the Youth Emergency Action Committees (YEAC) to conduct the mapping exercise in Roseau, Coulibistrie and D‟os Dane.
We are hoping to empower the next generation of change agents in the area of disaster risk reduction and emergency response. We are pleased to assist in the area of geospatial data collection, which in turn will benefit our development work.
Mahalia Paul, Project Manager of YEAC
The project will allow a community of mappers to tell a story about resilience in key areas by mapping buildings and roads in selected communities and recording the historic evidence of emergencies. As part of the project, over 30 young people have been trained in simple mapping techniques, including the digitizing of images and surveying of people and places using cell phone apps. Open Solutions is also partnering with the Climate Resilience Agency for Dominica – CREAD, in its efforts to build strong communities, understand risk, and plan for the eventuality of disaster.
Open Solutions is a Dominican tech firm specializing in providing enterprise support for free and open-source systems (FOSS) as a cost-mitigating strategy to meet the financial constraints of clients while delivering robust solutions.
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