AIM

Construct a comprehensive geospatial dataset that maps the locations of schools, nearest clinic(s) to the schools, and the major roads leading to these schools, including the conditions of these roads, within Blantyre district in Malawi.

OBJECTIVES

  • Collect the names and geographical coordinates of primary and secondary schools, as well as the nearby clinics. Additionally, to collect data on the type (bitumen, earth) and condition (good, fair, poor) of major roads in both rural and urban areas of Blantyre district.
  • Develop a geospatial dataset for Blantyre district that contains the names and geographical coordinates of schools(primary, secondary) and clinics, the school’s distance to the nearest clinic, and the major roads with their types and conditions.

HIGH-LEVEL METHODOLOGY

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We sourced school data for Blantyre district from multiple sources including the Giga Global website, OCHA services website, MANEB passlist 2022, 2019 list of election polling centers, and various web-scraped sites. The collected data comprised 1,029 school entries, categorized into primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. In the cleaning phase, duplicates were removed using Excel functions, and the Giga Global list was used to cross-verify and categorize school names from other sources. During this phase, schools with geographical coordinates were identified and categorized accordingly. We merged 10 verified schools with coordinates from other sources into the Giga Global dataset, resulting in a total of 344 cleaned schools: 230 primary, 109 secondary, and 5 tertiary. Schools without coordinates (217) were not included in the final dataset. For visualization, we created a local project folder in QGIS, added the OpenStreetMap layer as the base map, and imported the cleaned and merged school dataset for analysis.

EXPECTED RESULTS

  • Creation of a detailed geospatial dataset for Blantyre district, including: schools, clinics and roads.
  • Visualization of schools, clinics, and major roads on a map using QGIS
  • Insights into the accessibility of healthcare and educational facilities, identifying potential areas for improvement in service delivery and infrastructure.

TEAM

Dr. Amelia Taylor

Amoss Robert

Tamanda Phiri

Moses Gwaza