Community Stories
Protecting resources, traditions, citizens and the environment through mapping
- 2009
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Date:
December 2009
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Geo Coordinates:
16.854381,74.564172
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KML Link:
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Behind the Project:
Shelter Associates improves life in slums
Whether you live in a rural area or a bustling city, chances are you can find your home on a map. But what if your location lacks basic amenities like water, toilets, sanitation and even streets? This is the reality facing up to 15% of the population of the Indian city of Sangli, where Shelter Associates are using Google Earth to improve life for those who make their life in these urban areas.
One of the main obstacles to effective and inclusive urban planning in India is an
absence of comprehensive, detailed information about slums and their residents. This
lack of quality information is a major reason behind the failure of urban
municipalities to include slums and their inhabitants in their planning schemes.
Enter Shelter Associates, an NGO that works with the urban poor to facilitate slum
rehabilitation, resettlement initiatives and infrastructure projects. In Sangli,
Shelter used Google Earth to marry data with mapping to create a fuller, more
accurate picture of the city's slums. The result is the Slum Directory, a powerful
tool for integrating low-income settlements into the city’s development plans.
“When Google Earth was launched it was like an answer to our prayers, because remote sensing images were far more accurate, easier to understand, and suddenly opened up a whole new world in viewing spatial data.” – Pratima Joshi, Executive Director, Shelter Associates
Shelter Associates isn't just helping map the slum in order to foster the citizens' better access to basic human needs. Using Google Earth and GIS, they're also surveying communities without access to toilets and, through an innovative scheme which asks families to match 30% of the cost of a latrine, introduced 105 toilets into the Shivrai Nagar community. Now both men and women are training each other in the use of Google Earth to improve conditions in their community.
