Participatory GIS as tools to support the public management of water in developing countries

Amongst the Geographic Information Systems (GIS), those focused on public participation (PPGIS) are tools used to support the collection of  information not yet available at official level of small and dispersed infrastructures in the territory. This is the case of water supply and sanitation points in small communities in developing countries such as communities in the South of Honduras where LaboraTe and Enxeñeiros sen Fronteiras (ESF) Galicia work in cooperation projects.

The collection and update of the location and status of these infrastructures are vital for the public and community management of water, and for this purpose GIS tools are being tested, such as the ‘PPGIS Web’ of Laboratorio do Territorio. This has been successfully used in participatory processes of rural development in several Galician entities. The web interface of this tool, and the possibility of editing and capturing data in the field in an intuitive way, makes them more interesting than other desktop SIX that need more technical training for its use and does not allow simultaneous editing by several users.

Within the current project, financed by the  Xunta de Galicia, ‘Improvement of public water management in the municipalities of the Mancomunidad Nasmar, Honduras, Phase 1’, the Laboratory also collaborates by providing training to teachers and researchers from the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH).

Thus, within the planned exchange visits, this week the researchers from UNAH Rafael Corrales e Eduardo Moreno, from the Facultad de Ciencias Espaciales visited the Rural Development Group of Condado-Paradanta and Mariñas-Betanzos to see examples of use of the ‘PPGIS Web’ viewer. And tomorrow Thursday 15th May at 10:30h, in the conference room of the CACTUS building in Lugo,  they will explain their activities related to these topics in the talk:  ‘Applications of participatory mapping for the protection of land and territory in Honduras: Experiences in mapping of the Department of Science and Technology of Geographic Information - UNAH’. The conference if free of access and no registration is needed.