Open Data for Resilience and Risk Management Initiative: Open Cities Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) (Jamaica)

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is soliciting proposals for the Open Data for Resilience and Risk Management Initiatives as part of the project Open Cities Latin America and Caribbean (Jamaica)

Jamaica

Jamaica is a regional outlier for solid-waste and ocean-resource management. According to the World Bank report, Marine Pollution in the Caribbean, Jamaica’s concentration of litter is 4,684 items of trash per km2 of coastline; which is both the highest concentration for the Caribbean, and almost 8-times the global average. While Jamaica continues to prioritize investment in its blue economy, unsustainable waste management practices may severely hinder those investment indicators in the near-term. Despite Jamaica’s relatively average household-coverage by waste management services – Jamaica’s predominant form of household waste-management is informal (eg. the majority of the population burns their own household refuse).

The waste-management sector is consistently underfunded, creating multiple fractures in the waste-management chain through which trash spills into the environment. Indeed, 30% of waste is not collected and the collected waste is disposed of in eight landfills across the island. Two key World bank operations currently focus on solid waste management and solid waste as a risk factor for flooding.

The objective of the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project is to enhance Jamaica’s resilience to disaster and climate risk. There are four components to the project (the first two of which will be supported through the data collection activities outlined in this TOR), the first component being technical assistance for improved disaster and climate resilience. This component includes improving the generation and collection of targeted hazard and risk information, its analysis and use in monitoring systems and decision making. The second component is the risk reduction. This includes the retrofitting or construction of key assets given that the infrastructure sector is one of the most severely impacted after a major disaster event. The sub-components and activities to be financed under this component are: (i) retrofitting, construction and/or rehabilitation of national and sub-national priority infrastructure (bridges and urban drainage); (ii) retrofitting, construction and/or rehabilitation of critical public facilities (schools and fire stations); and (iii) establishing or improving coastal protection measures.

The ProBlue initiative proposes to 1) better understand waste composition and the life-cycle of marine litter from land to sea, 2) strengthen community collaboration for initiating behavior change approaches for waste minimization as well as environmentally-sound waste management, and 3) develop communications and learning products to share lessons for the country and the wider region. The proposed interventions prioritize a community-focus where citizens take ownership of reducing and diverting waste.

Kingston is the capital city in Jamaica and sits in the parish of Saint Andrew. Being the most densely populated municipality, with over half a million (500,000) people, sanitation and waste management is a huge issue for the local authorities. There have been several concerted attempts to understand this problem; but to date the issue is still largely unresolved, frustrated by a lack of sufficient data for the areas in question. Poor sanitation and pollution, particularly in the urban river networks further exacerbate living conditions in the densely populated unplanned settlements. This puts additional strain on the more vulnerable populations and Kingston residents on the whole.

The solid waste accumulation situation has visible and significant effects most notably:

• Urban flooding phenomena caused by illegal solid waste dumping: resulting in infrastructure damage, health hazards to communities, and post-disaster reduction of economic activity
• Pollution of the Kingston Harbor : affecting the marine life as well as secondary effects to the tourism, health and fishing in the area

In light of these various environmental, health disaster related factors, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is well positioned to provide mapping and other data related support/activities to assist in managing the vulnerability to natural hazards and economic stresses in Kingston, Jamaica. This includes supporting the creation of local-scale data and strategies for geospatial information management, as well as participating in the development of integrative methodologies. The OpenCities Latin-America and Caribbean project would focus on capacity building through the OpenStreetMap community and open mapping / open data overall. The training, sharing and creation of tools and strengthening of local communities through participatory assessments, follows the previous OpenCities Africa and OpenCities South Asia projects. It is tailored to empower agencies to enhance their decision making, through better data access and to gain the ability to create, analyze and utilize open data as part of their decision systems and culture.

HOT through the Open Cities pilot intends to:

• Increase the volume and quality of data and layers for the the country for better overall usability
• Provide a strategy for data production, sharing and integration between global volunteer open mapping communities;
• Train authorities, representatives of local communities and designated groups of inhabitants, possible disseminators of the acquired skills and work methodologies.
• Coordinate the necessary work for the production of data remotely, in the field with the Community Committees and as needed with support materials such as drone and street-level images,including the implementation of innovative technologies.
• Define and provide technical support for the assimilation of the data flow produced, its permanent updating from the local level.
• Inspire and instigate a local OSM community of avid mappers and validators, for quality promotion and increase of user base.

The terms of reference are available here.

The technical proposal shall be presented electronically in Adobe PDF format, in English using the templates provided. The proposal consists in three parts: (a) Technical Proposal (b) Financial Proposal (c) Firm Qualification Questionnaire. Links to templates are available in the Terms of Reference.