Ramani Huria — Community Flood-Risk Mapping in Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam suffers severe, recurring flooding and had an almost complete absence of detailed drainage and terrain data. Ramani Huria ('open map' in Swahili) began in 2015 as a partnership between the University of Dar es Salaam, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and the World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).

To map flood-prone drains, buildings and terrain in previously unmapped, flood-vulnerable neighbourhoods, so ward leaders and disaster responders could plan drainage maintenance and target flood-preparedness support in informal settlements.

Trained university students and community members went house-to-house and ward-to-ward with free smartphone tools (OpenMapKit, Open Data Kit) and drones to record roads, buildings, drainage channels and flood-prone areas, uploading everything to the public OpenStreetMap database. The project's second phase began in July 2017.

In the first six months of Phase 2 alone, teams mapped over 51,000 buildings and completed more than 2,000 community surveys; field mapping and quality-checked drainage data were completed for 12 wards, part of a wider atlas plan covering 450 sub-wards. By the time World Bank/GFDRR reporting assessed the programme, the maps covered more than 20 neighbourhoods and an estimated 1.3 million residents.

Core funding wound down around 2020; the local implementing team continued as the independent organisation OpenMap Development Tanzania, though sustained coverage now depends on this smaller, locally led structure rather than the original grant.