Day 3: Friday 10 September - Training

The drive to work is already becoming quite familiar. Our accommodation is located on a steep hill. The area was badly affected by the earthquake but apparently contains relatively wealthy residents. Still, many must walk to the top of the steep hill carrying water on their heads from the public spring at the bottom. Worse still, at night I see people navigating this hill in pitch darkness with pot-holes and rubble everywhere.

The image below shows the accommodation where we are staying with the World Food Program and several other NGOs. The complex contains a swimming pool and two tennis courts but outside the parameter wall and the armed-gates things are very different. I'm finding it difficult seeing the difficult conditions in Port-au-Prince and then returning to such luxury at the end of the day


As we enter the centre of Port-au-Prince the road opens up. We pass the only two high-rise buildings in the area which contain competing mobile phone companies. Then we pass the slums, camps and concrete masonry buildings - each with their own unique issues and complications. I test out the GPS cameras for the first time. This camera will allow me to map the photographs I capture whilst in Haiti. I hope to post some of the results on this blog as kmz files for viewing in Google Earth.

Today I will be working with John-Ross - the team's local GIS team member. We discuss the spatial analysis that can be applied to the cadastral and enumeration survey results including population density, vulnerability analysis and network analysis. We also go through the remote analysis of Delmas 19 I conducted in the UK earlier in the year. This work focused on the analysis of accessibility, the built environment and the presence of new tents and makeshift shelters. The analysis was all done using aerial, satellite imagery, lidar and pictometry. We also talk about data management and we make our first map showing the building size distribution across Delmas 19.

We finish at 6pm again, which is the curfew in central Port-au-Prince.