GIS Problem Set 1.2: Report
For the second part of my project (explained in the last post), I decided to focus on Nouakchott, Mauritania. As mentioned previously, the city has a low level of base OSM data, a high level of risk, and quality satellite imagery.
Some brief research about Nouakchott’s urban plan illustrated that a major issue for the city is its “rapid and unplanned sprawl”. According to Sameh Wahba’s 2001 report, the density of the city is challenged by the citizens’ desire for large parcels of land and single-family homes.
My Open Street Map UserName is DesireeLaVecchia (original, I know) so if you desire to visualize any of the summary of edits listed below, feel free look at Nouakchott in OSM.
A very brief list of my edits:
- Removed one of two identical “highway”=”primary” in order to clean up the map a bit.
- Added the name of the “Friday Mosque” to an already existing mapped plot of land corresponding to a place of worship. Per the Wikipedia page that described its location, I was able to identify its name. Via Bing! Satellite imagery, I was able to narrow in on the physical building within the already mapped plot of land, which I further mapped out.
- Did the same thing as above with a market place.
- Added the opposite one-way direction of Ave. Abdel Nasser.
- Mapped 2 personal swimming pools! (useful in the case of a heatwave or if it is for any reason necessary to know where the richest Mauritanians live, of course)
- Chose an area with many buildings and mapped them out. I felt interested in the particular plot that I worked in because it seems illustrative of the sprawl described at the beginning of this post. I used “building”=”yes” for those structures that I could not distinguish as commercial or residential and “building”=”residential” for those that clearly resemble informal housing structures. I feel confident in going with “residential” in instances where the structure is not uniform and appears to have been added to over time - as is typical with many informal/makeshift housing structures.
- Added an agricultural field, and a footpath going through it. I wonder if this is part of the Green Belt project.
- Became obsessed (literally hours-long obsessed) with a particular paved roadway that had not yet been mapped. This roadway is clearly shown in the Bing! satellite imagery and wound throughout a huge area of Nouakchott’s sprawl. It also connected with several unpaved paths through residential areas, which I also mapped.
So, there you go, Nouakchott OSM basemap!
