Discover how we are working **locally** yet contributing globally

Kathmandu Living Labs has been fully committed to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our work, over the years, has contributed to the following SDGs.

Our Commitment to

Goal 3: Good health and well-being

Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation

Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Goal 10: Reduced inequality

Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities

Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production

Goal 13: Climate action

Goal 15: Life on land

Goal 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions

Goal 17: Partnership for the goals

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Organization is the key to efficiency. The Tasking Manager, initially created by and for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), is a tool that organizes a mapping project into manageable, time-efficient activities and brings efficiency to mapping efforts, specially for humanitarian purposes and crisis response. Allowing you to identify locations that require mapping and the areas for verification, it makes the distribution of duties to large groups of mappers easier. Additionally, it enables control over the development and uniformity of the completed job.

Like every FOSS project, the Tasking Manager tool has its own community. Recognizing that Tasking manager is more than just a software as the community that helps in improving, maintaining and especially using it are the foundation behind its impact. In 2020, HOT adopted a new direction towards a more community focused, inclusive and collective-centric approach to their technology. As a result, the Tasking Manager Tech Collective was established with a goal of making Tasking Manager, a project led by the community and amplified by hot_tech {HOT Technology Team). 

In February 2022, KLL was officially announced as the first organization to be a part of the tech collective, handling the Tasking Manager's maintenance. As an avid user of Tasking Manager, KLL was excited to become regular contributors to the tech collective. Every month, there are monthly collective meetups that allow us to hear concerns and experiences from the community and KLL with hot_tech identify and prioritize the most urgent issues raised by the community. KLL has been able to work on 70+ Github issues so far bringing updates and features that have provided value to the community. To know more on the highlights of our tech collective journey so far, please visit: https://blog.kathmandulivinglabs.org/tasking-manager-six-months-update-blog/ 
For more details on what happened in any particular month, monthly blogs are posted in the OSM community site.

Keep using Tasking Manager to map for people in need!


Tasking Manager

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After the catastrophic consequences of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake measuring 7.8 in the Richter scale, the Government of Nepal conducted a massive door-to-door survey in the 11 most earthquake-affected districts. The survey aimed to collect both building damage data as well as socioeconomic data of the residents. Over the completion of the project, 760,000 buildings and 3.6 million residents were part of the final dataset. But, as is the case with such available micro-data, the information was large and complex to be of any direct use to its potential users.

Kathmandu Living Labs built an open Earthquake Data Portal so that end users can conveniently access and practically visualize the micro-data. The portal allows a user to easily explore and view the collected data and infer relationships between them. It provides rich map and chart interfaces for the users to visualize data. Users can also download those visualizations as well as the underlying data to generate their own charts. Advanced users can even download the entire dataset to perform their own analyses and generate their own visualizations. The portal also provides information on each table and its data columns.

The portal is the first one in Nepal to arrange and present data according to the new administrative boundaries as per the federal structure of the country. As the original data was collected according to the older administrative boundaries, this rearrangement of the data has added to its usefulness and usability in the changed context. KLL handed over the portal to the National Planning Commission. You can check out the Earthquake Data Portal [here.](http://eq2015.klldev.org) 

Nepal Earthquake Data Portal

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The issues of governance are too big an issue for any single individual or organization to solve. It requires a concerted effort from a number of different actors - one of these actors capable of making an impact is today's youth. These youth shape, and are shaped by, their region's quality of governance.

So, a platform that creates an opportunity to learn from the experts, collaborate with like-minded youth, and expand their networks is quite helpful especially at this stage, where their access to such resources are limited.

With the Techcamp on Good Governance, we aimed to improve regional integration and enable good governance in the South Asia region by instilling values of regional cooperation, collaboration and dialogue among its youth actors.

Hence, there exists a natural space for an intervention to:
first identify, gather and organize active youth actors working in the region;
then upgrade their cross-cutting skill sets that will help them to pursue their good governance goals; and create and sustain a regional network of youth actors, mentors, experts working on good governance. This program achieved all of three of these.

In the duration of Techcamp, we managed to engage 1100+ South Asian youth from 5 nations (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) through 8 virtual bootcamps on technology, youth and governance. A selective fellowship of 50 proactive participants also went through 6 ideation camps (skill-development virtual events) aiding them to develop and execute projects impacting good governance in their respective regions.

Simultaneously, it was also clear that local governments, who have increased power and responsibility to choose and act on their own agenda in the federal system, require advanced data handling capability to adequately measure their progress. This allows them to improve decision-making and planning, driven by data.

Although the responsibilities of local governments have increased, their capability needs to increase too. OpenStreetMap, the world’s largest geospatial information database, a tool that can be used for today’s local governments to connect geospatial dimensions proved to be a viable alternative to better local-level governance and planning.

KLL recruited local students in three municipalities to collect data on assets such as hotels, hospitals, schools, fuel stations, water networks, etc. in the field to create the most comprehensive geospatial database of the metropolitan city yet. The data then became freely and openly available after being mapped in OSM and stored in Geonode, an open repository to store geospatial information. The resulting data thus created could be used by municipalities, local institutions, and tourists to understand the location-based distribution of the city’s critical assets and infrastructure. 
These use cases help in urban planning, adding value to the economy and disseminating visual information publicly.

To further aid the success and long term sustainability of the initiative, we trained the local population (through students) and IT Officers in various municipal and ward level offices in Mithila Bihari, Namo Buddha and Rupa Rural Municipality.  


Regional TechCamp on Good Governance 2020

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The 7.8 magnitude earthquake of 2015 devastated a large swathe of Nepal. The Government of Nepal (GoN) initiated a survey to collect comprehensive housing assessment data. However, the survey had multifold challenges. Not only was there a need to collect comprehensive information about each record but there was also a need for real-time validation. Creation and operation of a cloud infrastructure to host a large amount of data was also a challenge. Finally, there was also a need to seamlessly transfer the data to relevant government partners for dissemination and use.

KLL provided end-to-end technical assistance to the government in surveying, hosting, validating, and dissemination. We provided three key solutions to address the complex challenges in this project. 1. Housing Reconstruction Data (HRD) Collect: Through HRD Collect, a mobile app, we collected and transferred data to a government owned central server. This app could be used offline to address connectivity issues. 2. MIS System: The system facilitated real-time validation of the collected data and exported the data in various standard output data formats. We collaborated with Ona Inc to set up the server-side data collection software. 3. Monitoring and Visualization Tool: We deployed this tool to monitor real-time progress of the survey.

KLL mapped 31 earthquake districts across Nepal. Over 3000 surveyors were deployed to assess damages of 1.05 million buildings. 5.08 million people were reached, and 9.34 million photographs were captured during the survey. The robust data collection and management system designed and built by KLL handled over 10 Terabytes of data.
 


National Housing Reconstruction Programme

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Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal with an estimated population of around half a million people. Gifted with tremendous natural beauty, including magnificent views of the Himalayas and multiple pristine lakes, the city also remains highly vulnerable for natural disasters due to its geography. There was a need to map different resources- both natural and manmade- available in Pokhara to enhance the resilience of the city and its citizens.
 
We worked with the local communities, government, and other relevant stakeholders to comprehensively map the resources available in Pokhara. The mapped resources are based in OSM to ensure that the community can collect, maintain, and update the data in the future. KLL also developed a user-friendly portal for citizens and stakeholders to access and use the data for preparedness and resilience.

We mapped the resources comprehensively to enable community and decision makers, prepare better for future disasters and climate change impacts. In total we placed the following infrastructures on the map: 
- 1,50,000 buildings 
- 417 Schools
- 317 Banks 
- 147 Government Offices 
- 36 hospitals 


Prepare Pokhara - 2C (Secondary Cities) Project

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Governance and development challenges are too big for any single agency to address. Government, citizens, and civil society must work together and engage in two-way conversations to co-create solutions. The proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT) allows us to practically implement this philosophy. Moreover, civil society organizations (CSOs) working to further public interest can also leverage these emerging ICT tools to make their efforts more fact-based and evidence-driven. However, while there is growing ICT literacy and penetration, governments and civil society organizations are not able to efficiently channel it into practical use - hence resulting in stunted government transparency, limited public participation and stifled government-citizen collaboration. 

In order to leverage growing ICT literacy and digital penetration to further public interest and government-citizen engagement, our solution was three pronged: 

- We conducted ethnographic research on the current tech capabilities of select Civil Society Organizations (CS: MAP partners), their ICT needs and possible points of tech intervention which could help them in their cause of furthering public interest. These CSOs were spread across 35 districts of Nepal. 
- Based on the findings of (1), we conceptualized, developed, tested and deployed appropriate ICT tools and platforms for the Civil Society Organizations. We also trained them on using and maintaining these systems as part of our mentorship program so that these tools remain relevant beyond the immediate life of the project. 
- To foster government-citizen collaboration on matters of local governance, we made the annual plans and the budget of two local governments (one Sub-Metropolitan City and one Municipality) publicly open through easily comprehensible maps and infographics. In addition, we deployed complementary ICT tools that facilitated two-way communication between the citizens and the local government - thus enabling both parties to plan, discuss, deliberate and take informed actions on matters of local governance. 

Consequently, we created 3 tools:
- Sajha Sabha - An ICT suite (web and mobile apps) that is used by citizens to report hyper-local issues in their locality. This tool also helped the CSOs document and publicly share the works they did at the grass-root levels to solve the citizens’ issues. 
- OLGDS (Open Local Government Digital Systems) - An ICT suite (web and mobile apps) built on the principles of Open Government Partnership. OLGDS were used in Nepalgunj Sub-Metropolitan City in Western Nepal, and in Neelakantha Municipality in Central Nepal. This system enabled the local governments to send important information like its budget, annual plans and policies, citizen charters, services, etc. right into citizens’ hands; whereas, it also enabled the citizens to comment, critique and suggest their local governments on the same. 
- Training conducted for 60 people from 14 CSOs on upgrading their ICT skills and knowledge through 5 cluster trainings in Kathmandu, Dang, Nepalgunj, Butwal and Dolakha. 


Civil Society: Mutual Accountability Project (CS:MAP)

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As we move through the 21st century, our social, economic, and environmental challenges are evolving and becoming more complex. These challenges stem from and reside at the intersections of more than one discipline. On the other hand, Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) is becoming ubiquitous and transcending these disciplinary boundaries.

The emerging social, technological, economic, and environmental challenges of the 21st century and the opportunities of the digital revolution mean that there also needs to be a gradual shift from traditional, physical volunteerism to more contemporary, digital contributions. In order to tackle these challenges and re-align our resources with the shift, a strong pool of digital volunteers that can understand data and use technology is needed. However, very few initiatives have addressed this shift and moved ahead with the trend of digital volunteerism. Thus there is a dearth of trained resources who can contribute, conceptualize and advocate technology for development and problem solving.

A DIAL (Digital Internship and Leadership) program is a three month long extensive internship program that equips young (under)graduates with a broad understanding of open data, technology, civic learning and prepares them to be the next generation leaders in open data movement. DIAL is one of the capacity building initiatives under Digital Volunteers initiative.

‘Digital Volunteers’ is a platform initiated by Kathmandu Living Labs that encourages, empowers, and engages Nepali citizens, (particularly youth) willing to contribute their digital skills for the digital development of Nepal.

Each cohort of DIAL receives rigorous training on a wide range of digital tools with particular emphasis on OpenStreetMap (OSM). In addition, they will also receive mentorship on career and leadership development from a group of national and international experts.

Digital interns contribute to expand a free, editable, digital map of Nepal using OpenStreetMap. The core tasks include:
- Creating digital maps of critical infrastructures of three geographical areas (Terai, Hills & Mountains).
- Collecting field data using OSM tools, and tools that are developed by Kathmandu Living Labs.
- Validating and correcting mapping done by other fellow mappers.
- Conducting community based research and report writings.
- Meeting face to face with your mentors, experts and fellow mappers periodically, and co-learning from each others’ experiences.

Digital Interns have the flexibility of working from their homes or any other place they prefer with occasional fieldwork and scheduled meet-ups at KLL. However, they need to be physically present during the first week of their internship for orientation and training. Their mentors will keep in touch and follow the work online throughout the internship period.

We have successfully concluded 3 DIAL cohorts. We will let you know when cohort 4 starts. Stay tuned! 

Digital Internship and Leadership (DIAL)

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Nepal is home to a rich diversity of flora and fauna- with 8.5, 4.2, and 2.2 percent of all bird, mammalian, and flowering plant species respectively. However, the country’s biodiversity is declining due to climate change, human-wildlife conflict, and other anthropological stresses. One of the biggest bottlenecks of Nepal’s diversity conservation efforts is the lack of spatially and temporally sensitive data which reflect potential future changes in habit composition and distribution to climate change. A major challenge lies in the current state of data acquisition, sharing, and interpretation capacity. Lack of accessibility to past studies, which are often kept in hard copies, and the inability to harness citizens’ knowledge, especially at the local level have compounded the issue.  
 
The Jaibik Map project addressed the dual challenges of answering a clear research issue that has immediate conservation implications and of creating a tool for future challenges to be solved. KLL engaged extensively with the stakeholders, including project partners, to gather relevant information and present them in a freely accessible online portal. An interactive open data web-based mapping app enabled the public to submit opportunistic photographs of mammal sightings to the JaibikMap. 
 
The online portal provides aggregated geospatial data that is accessible to all and is monitored in part by citizen scientists. This ensured diversity in the methods of data collection and also provided tools for citizen scientists to contribute to biodiversity. The tools are a unique open data repository in the biodiversity domain of Nepal.  They empower local citizen scientists and people working in the conservation sector to fill data deficiencies.  


Jaibik Map

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Nepal has one of the most active open mapping communities in developing countries. There is a huge potential to engage digital volunteers and map unmapped parts of the world (Goodchild, 2007). Citizens can contribute their local knowledge to open mapping platforms using the Global Positioning System (GPS) capability of their mobile devices and the Internet. Citizens do have a wide range of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to participate in open mapping, yet despite such potential, our scientific understanding on how to recruit, engage, and retain citizens in open mapping remains poorly understood, especially in the context of developing nations. 

Online maps have been identified as “next utility” (National Research Council, 2010). Use of online digital maps by citizens and organizations has been increasing all over the world for daily navigation, adding value to products and services, and humanitarian causes such as crisis response. Access to, and management of critical spatial knowledge is critical to sustainable and inclusive urban development (Pfeffer et al., 2015). However, Nepal’s national and local governments seem poorly placed to access and manage critical spatial knowledge required for planning, considering Nepal’s last nationwide land survey was carried out between 1991-2002. Nepal’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure has also not been completely established and functioning as of 2017. Open mapping infrastructure, based on OpenStreetMap data that is free to use and modify when needed, can help government agencies to access and use critical georeferenced information for planning and other activities. Available research literature is not enough to answer if and how open mapping infrastructure can be used in local sustainable development goals. 

This study aims to fill the above research gap. The two main goals of this projects are: 
- to investigate the phenomenon of open mapping and develop a framework and guiding principles to conduct outreach, motivate, train, and engage citizen volunteers, particularly youth, in mapping 
- to investigate if, how, and under what conditions can open map infrastructure contribute to local sustainable development

Courses on open mapping to different audiences have been conceptualized and developed. KLL has also conducted a computational analysis to understand citizens mapping patterns; continued to review literature; developed a solid partnership with few newly formed local governments as cases to expand our research. 

Open Mapping short courses and workshops to school and university students with different backgrounds, e.g. business studies, urban planning, crisis management has taken place. Open Mapping and Civic Learning course to high school students from Kasthamandap Vidhyalaya took place in the month of April (5-24), 2017. The course taught students on how to use Open Mapping as a tool to learn and act on problems in their local communities. In addition to mapping, the course intended to develop students' sense of responsibilities as active citizens. We also developed a short course on Community Asset Mapping and ran it with the undergraduate students of King's College in May, 2017. Students learnt how Open Mapping can be used as a lens to study rural business and economy. Students were trained on Open Mapping hands-on skills for four days and then sent to a rural setting in central Nepal to map different assets in the rural community. The students have presented and reported their understandings of the rural economy. 
 
Three batches of Digital Internship programs have been conceptualized, designed and implemented. 10, 19 and 12 Digital Interns were selected for first, second and third cohorts respectively after an open online application form and telephone interview. Interns were selected based on their motivation to participate in the program and background, forming an eclectic mix of participants representing different academic backgrounds, age groups and career interests. A 1:1 gender balance in final selection was maintained. The internship lasted for a period of 3 months. Experiences from the first batch were shared at the State of the Map Asia 2017 conference. Findings from the internship have also been published in a paper, link [here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336692134_Filling_OpenStreetMap_data_gaps_in_rural_Nepal_a_digital_youth_internship_and_leadership_Programme)).

During the course of the project, a computational analysis of the contribution inequality of OSM mappers in Nepal has been conducted. The brief study revealed extreme inequality in contributions. Single most active user contributed to more than 10% of OSM contributions among the active changesets in Nepal. There is a long tail of contribution, meaning most people make small contributions while the majority of contributions come from a small number of mappers. We also continue to review literature relevant areas e.g. open data for development, open mapping as GIS application for development, Sustainable Development Goals, theories on planning, Nepal’s commitment and progress in Sustainable Development Goals, Volunteered Geographic Information, and more. We used the review to inform their research questions and overall research design. We have started action research at Nilkantha Municipality, which is outside Kathmandu Valley as a site for case study for understanding how open mapping contributes to sustainable development at local level. 

Similarly, we have also explored the process of mapping in OSM as beneficial to its mappers. We found that mapping developed multifaceted benefits including affective, cognitive, geography-based, technical skills and digital literacy among others.  

We have sensitized more than a hundred young people about open mapping and trained more than 60 young people on open mapping skills. We have also built a partnership with more than 10 organizations which includes local government, academic institutions, non-profits, and private companies.
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Our project will contribute to achieving development impacts in two ways: 
- it will inform how more young people can be engaged in contributing Volunteered Geographic Information in the open mapping infrastructure 
- it will inform how open mapping information infrastructure can be used to achieve and measure progress in sustainable development goals at local level 

We have made some progress in understanding ways to engage young people to contribute in creating maps that will be useful for local development. Our understanding of the effectiveness of different ways to engage youth in mapping has increased. Programs like Digital Internship designed for longer terms and linked to meaningful causes show signs of being more effective to engage youth in volunteering geographic information. Knowledge about engaging youth in contributing to societal needs might be applicable to other areas of development as well. 

We also have an increased understanding of the geo-referenced data needs based on priorities of local government in Nepal through the Focused Group Discussion we have conducted as well as other interactions. This will help us to understand the requirements for open mapping infrastructure to achieve sustainable development goals at the local level. 

By the end of this project, we intend to develop a framework for youth engagement in Volunteered Geographic Information based on our action research investigations in the Digital Internship program as well as sensitization and training events. The framework will be useful in designing programs to engage youth in digital development. We will also have trained, sensitized, and engaged hundreds of young people in open mapping skills by the end of this project. 

Our understanding of if, how, and under what conditions can open mapping infrastructure contribute to sustainable development at local level will be broadened. The knowledge gained can be useful in achieving and measuring the Sustainable Development Goals at local level. 


PEER Science Project at KLL

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Nepal was hit by a massive 7.8 Mg earthquake on April 25. The total count of deaths and injuries were in the thousands. In the confusion and chaos that followed the quake, some people were looking for help while others were looking for ways to help. However, those who were seeking help did not know where to find it and those who were trying to help did not necessarily know where exactly their help was needed. Essentially, what everyone was looking for in that period was information. Crucially, it was the information that was missing.

On April 26, Kathmandu Living Labs deployed QuakeMap.org with the aim of bridging this information gap so that rescue and relief efforts can be informed and expedited by reports from the ground

###### What information does QuakeMap.org seek?

Problems: What is needed and where? 

Solutions: Who is able to provide it and what other help has reached there already?

###### From whom does it seek the information?

These information were fed into QuakeMap.org directly by people and organizations on the ground. Based on the positively reinforcing experiences with crowdsourced information in Nepal and abroad, we selected crowdsourcing as the way of getting direct, primary and disaggregated source of information onto Quakemap.org.

###### How does it get the information?

Despite the massive quake, services like the internet, telephones and SMS were still functional in many quake-hit areas. We opted to use these still functional and easily available means of communication to facilitate two-way flow of information between the earthquake survivors and relief providers.

###### How does it work?

To get an idea of how QuakeMap responds on its reports, please read this blog for a [walkthrough of a typical QuakeMap report](https://kathmandulivinglabs.netlify.app/blog/nepal-earthquake-kll-situation-room-update-may-26).

To understand how QuakeMap.org operated during the crisis, please read our daily KLL Situation Room updates [here](https://kathmandulivinglabs.netlify.app/blog/nepal-earthquake-report-from-openstreetmap-situation-room).

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Over the response period, we were supported by many partners. The Yellow House and Professional Development and Research Center provided us with numbers of volunteers, who became the core of QuakeMap manpower. [CloudFactory](http://cloudfactory.com.np/) provided us with resources to host QuakeMap.org. NepalMonitor.org and Himalayan Techies helped us immensely with their prior experiences in Ushahidi deployment.

###### Current Status
QuakeMap entered a "Less Active" phase starting from July 13, 2015. The site was officially online till October 2015 and served as an online archive of the needs on the ground as reported by the citizens. View the entire life of Quakemap.org on this [visual timeline](http://kathmandulivinglabs.github.io/timeline-sixmonths/).


###### Output and Impact
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Nepal Army used over 300 QuakeMap reports marked as 'critical for prioritizing and planning its emergency rescue operations. Reports on QuakeMap.org were instrumental along a continuum of use cases. Individual reports were picked by groups and organizations and were directly responded to. On the other hand, the aggregation of QuakeMap reports was used by the UN and other organizations to plan their operations and create informative visualizations.


QuakeMap.org

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About 65.6 % of Nepalis are dependent on agriculture. Despite being a predominantly agricultural country, people in Nepal—particularly the young generation, aged between 10 and 24, constituting 33% of the total population—do not choose agriculture as their preferred profession and do not work in the countryside. Rather, they prefer to move to urban centers in search of a better life. This results in two major problems: decrease in agricultural productivity and over-crowded urban centers with significant challenges to manage.

Two major issues are widely reported to exist in engaging youth in agriculture: lack of access to information and knowledge about agriculture; and lack of visibility of their agro-products and access to market.

We developed teaching and learning materials to help local schools embed open mapping in their existing curriculum or as an additional learning activity. After discussing it with schools, we have identified that it nicely fits into the existing Social Studies curriculum of grades IX and X.
- Since mapping activities would be carried in agriculture and food security, students would begin to consciously observe, inquire, reflect and enhance their knowledge about agriculture.
- Agriculture and food security data were made publicly available on OpenStreetMap. Additionally, we also created a separate website with custom map visualization of agricultural data. This was done to help make farmers’ products visible to the market.
                
We started mapping from Bajrabarahi VDC in Makawanpur District, which is about 90 kilometers of roadway from Kathmandu. Please take a minute to [view these pictures](https://www.flickr.com/photos/100666799@N03/sets/72157648814527018/) to get a sense of our work.

The project was carried out in three different VDCs (Bajrabarahi VDC in Makawanpur, Manahari VDC in Makawanpur and Padampur VDC in Chitwan). Please watch the [project video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xf0d-v4TPc) below.

Local students, teachers and small farmers’ co-operatives mapped their locality and its agricultural produce. They were able to put themselves on the map - literally and figuratively. They also developed their skills and knowledge on using everyday technology tools to give exposure to their agri produce and processes. More importantly, we expect that a publicly accessible agriculture map will increase the visibility of farmers’ local products to market and enhance their income.


Agriculture Resource Mapping

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Like many emerging economies, Nepal did not have freely available online maps. Traditional mapping agencies target the needs of large organizations and expert users. This left a gap in the everyday needs of map data for small organizations and citizens. There was a need to build an ecosystem of mappers that contributed to and sustained a freely available map. 

KLL pioneered building OpenStreetMap communities in Nepal. In the first three years of operations between 2013 and 2015, KLL worked tirelessly to lay the foundations of the OSM community in Nepal and South Asia. We engaged diverse stakeholders ranging from government agencies to development agencies to educational institutions and civil society organizations to sensitize the public about OSM.  

In the first three years, we reached out to 1650 people.  Over the course of years, KLL has trained and engaged with thousands of volunteers. The intensive efforts have paid off in manifold ways to build an ecosystem of the OSM community. POIs across the country has increased substantially over the course of years as showcased in the figure below. Similarly, KLL’s early work of building an ecosystem and sensitizing the stakeholders about OSM was instrumental in the earthquake response in the aftermath of the 2015 megaquake. KLL continues to engage extensively with stakeholders to sustain and expand the OSM community in Nepal and across Asia. 


Maps for Everyone

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COVID-19 took millions of lives and severely crippled global health infrastructures. Its impact caused tremendous second-order impacts. Cities’ COVID-19 Mitigation Mapping (C2M2) aims to ‘map’ such second-order impacts on different sectors to forge appropriate responses. 
 
12 cities in 3 continents worked to catalog the existing data on and mitigate efforts of, such impacts on various aspects of their cities and citizens. Kathmandu (Nepal), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) were the three participating Asian cities in this initiative. KLL was the Asia Hub for C2M2.
 
KLL assessed the impact of COVID-19 on tourism in Nepal via surveys, interviews, and map data. Similarly, it also supported teams in Ulaanbaatar and Bangladesh to map impact on health and migration, respectively.
 
The team hosted an event in mid-May to present the findings and recommendations to tourism stakeholders. Representatives from the government, associations, businesses, workforce, and media were present at the event. Among an extensive list of recommendations, the government included several key recommendations in the budget. While the C2M2 team does not claim the sole responsibility or the causal force behind implementing these recommendations, it notes that such measures by the government are in line with the voices the survey had captured and amplified.
 
The immediate needs, impacts, resilience, and preparedness of tourism workers and entrepreneurs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and their select stories are published in a web portal. The portal also hosted story maps of the findings visualizing the impacts, downloadable data, and questionnaires.


C2M2: COVID-19 and Its Secondary Impact

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Nepal is the 11th most vulnerable country in the world in terms of earthquake risk. Its capital, Kathmandu, ranks as the most vulnerable city in the world. Kathmandu Valley hosts three major cities of Nepal. The valley is home to 3 million people and to the constrained resources which support them. In the face of a major quake, most of these resources will be seriously damaged; the majority of this population will either be injured, maimed for life or dead. This risk is largely associated with building collapse.

Mitigation of risk and preparation for response requires assessment of building structures as the first step. The lack of readily accessible building exposure data has hampered the assessment work.

Building on our on-going mapping work on OpenStreetMap, we have been collecting exposure data for individual buildings in Kathmandu Valley. This data will be shared via OpenStreetMap for enabling Nepal's disaster community to accurately assess the scale of possible damage and inspire innovative approaches to address the problem.

The exposure data will give a clearer picture of building typology based on their structures. An accurate understanding of building structures and number of likely casualties will help in effective mitigation and preparation for disasters, potentially saving many lives.

Additionally, freely accessible building locations and exposure data will reduce data duplication costs and also stimulate solutions to urban planning and management issues in the valley. Eventually, this work will contribute to providing better urban services to citizens.


Exposure survey

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###### Problem and Context
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Facts:
- Water, sanitation and hygiene has the potential to prevent at least 9.1% of the global disease burden and 6.3% of all deaths. 
- Worldwide, 780 million people do not have access to an improved water source. Many more obtain their drinking water from improved, but microbiologically unsafe, sources.
- An estimated 2.5 billion people — half of the developing world — lack access to adequate sanitation (more than 35% of the world’s population).
    
On one hand, about 10% of global disease burden can be reduced by increasing citizens’ access to safer water while on the other hand, citizens themselves are largely unaware of the ill practices related to water health going on in their own locality. Furthermore, there is no existent system where information about water health status such as its pH, arsenic count of an area (country, city or a particular locality) can be obtained easily.

###### Our Contribution
Kathmandu Living Labs is working with the U.S. Embassy and Nepal Water Conservation Foundation to develop a web-based Water Health Data Platform. In its pilot phase, High school students from four cities in Nepal, India and Bangladesh will be collecting and testing water samples for attributes such as pH, arsenic, coliform bacteria, from different locations in their respective cities.

The platform will enable these students to use a smartphone or a tablet to record and upload water attributes onto the aforementioned Water Health Data Platform along with other pertinent data such as pictures of water test-point locations, their geographic coordinates, and their short descriptions. This platform will display individual water test points and their corresponding attributes on a map. It will also allow users to compare water health between individual test points, cities and countries. 

###### Current Status
The Water Health Data Platform was soft launched on November 4, 2014. About 20 students from Shree Gambhir Samundra Setu Higher Secondary School used the platform to test and upload water health status of three water sources in and around the school.
 
###### Anticipated Impact

The Water Health Data Platform is designed to operate at the intersection of citizen engagement, community development, and digital technology. Through its implementation, we hope to create a scalable model of involving citizens in local development efforts through the use of digital technology. It will do so by directly engaging general public in assessing the quality of water health in their locality by use of increasingly commonplace technology like smartphones and tablets. It will raise awareness amongst general people regarding water health and water-borne diseases thus leading to a healthier community and will serve as a model of direct citizen engagement using digital technology in developing their community.


WATER

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Good local governance is the backbone of democracy as it directly impacts citizens’ everyday lives. However, Nepal’s local governance is criticized for a number of shortcomings: traditional service provision, accountability deficit, lack of transparency, low citizen participation, and too little engagement.

Nepal has gone through major political changes during the first decade of the 21st century. Along with these political changes, the demand for efficient public service delivery has heightened. People are also eager to bring government plans and programs to public scrutiny. They do not see themselves as passive recipients of government programs anymore; rather they are willing to engage in active conversation with the government. Its proper harnessing has the potential to transform local governance in Nepal.

We have been developing a model to revamp local governance using crowd-sourced mapping, open data, and mobile technology. Rather than just blaming the government, our approach rests on the premise that effective local governance requires two-way communication between government and citizens. We have developed new information and communication tools to enable stronger interaction between the government and the public. These tools are aimed at simultaneously empowering citizens as well as enabling the government to harness citizens’ knowledge and experience in hyper-local issues.

We are working in Ward 7 of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Our partners are the Ward 7 office, the office of Honorable members of the Constituent Assembly Mr. Gagan Kumar Thapa, and Young Innovations. Kathmandu Living Labs brings its expertise in crowd-sourced mapping, open data, and mobile technologies to the team.

On January 7, 2015, this prototype was demonstrated to the Office of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Following the demo, a task force consisting of members from the office of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, the office of Hon. Member of Parliament Gagan Kumar Thapa, Ward 7 office, Kathmandu Living Labs, and Young Innovations have been formed. This task force integrated this model into the existing workflow and systems of the Office of Kathmandu Metropolitan City.
- We have completed mapping infrastructure and major points of interest in ward 7 mobilizing students and citizen volunteers.   
- We have developed a mobile app that enables citizens to report their grievances such as potholes on the road and illegal dumping of garbage. We have also developed a system to map and show those reports to fellow citizens and the ward officials for their action. 

Mapping and Opening Data for Local Governance and Citizen Engagement (MODEL4G)

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Taxi Meter tampering is real and rampant in Kathmandu Valley. Passengers often get cheated and are forced to pay much more than the actual fare for their journey.

MERO BHADA METER is an Android-based location-aware app. It is open-source, works real-time and provides the following features:
- Real-time taxi fare calculation using government-declared rate. It does so by calculating the actual distance traveled using the GPS capability of an Android device.
- Pre-calculation of taxi fare. Users can get this estimate by setting departure and destination points.
- Alternative route selection using 'via' points.
- Real-time fare display
- Works offline 


Mero Bhada Meter [Taxi Meter App]

Our Work

Discover how we are working locally yet contributing globally