Assigment 6- Data Discovery Exercise
Health Structures. Point data, shapefile format. This dataset was put together by the
Congolese ministry of health to help create a more centralized database of health
facilities. It includes some facilities for western Congo, and a fairly complete set for
North and South Kivu. It was acquired by email from a contact in Congo. The key
attributes are location and name of facilities. No facility type was included, which made
it unclear whether these were clinics, small pharmacies, or even status of
operation. There is no metadata for this set, which makes it difficult to use outside of a
test capacity. However it seems to be the only complete set of health facilities available
for this region.
Positional data, publication date or other metadata is not present. The attribute table
does list MONUC and UNDP as sources for some, so we have some faith that
legitimate sources were involved.
This dataset was sent after a request to the Crisismappers listserve by Xavier Blaes,
who works in DRC: xblaes@gmail.com. According to Xavier it was put together by the
RGC, Congo’s new geospatial office (see below link).
Localities. point data, Shapefile format.
This is a collection of national Congolese towns. They are point data and include names
in the attribute data. Source was the only data repository set up by the Congolese to
share data. Only 6 datasets were available, and they seemed to be from either
MONUC or UNDP (many points in attribute data point to both as author).
This and roads datasets were uploaded to the RGC website on October 4, 2011.
Like most other Congo data found, there is no metadata.
http://www.rgc.cd/site/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&id=1:donneesadministratives&Itemid=11
National Roads for DRC. Vector Shapefile format.
This file has seemingly complete roads that correspond with other maps of the Kivus. It
is estimated that this file was created within the past five years, but this is unknown as
metadata is lacking. It was likely a MONUSCO product as they are listed as a partner
on the website.
http://www.rgc.cd/site/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&id=1:donneesadministratives&Itemid=11
Given a distance analysis, the only relevant attribute data is the roads themselves. If I
were doing a more nuanced analysis the type of particular segments would be valuable
to understand speed of travel along the surface.
SRTM data. Raster Format, TIFF
This set provides 30m terrain data for the world from the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission. Two SRTM tiles will be used for this project, 4212, and 4213, covering eastern
Congo. SRTM is a NASA project, created February 2000.
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/index.html
Localities
Health Structures and Roads
Population data
(not included here)
SRTM