Integrating drones, participatory mapping and GIS to enhance resiliency for remote villages

Abstract

Indigenous communities in developing regions are impacted by frequent disasters and the erosion of their culture with the trend of modernization. Additionally, their efforts to reduce risk have been hampered by the fact that these communities lack a sufficiently detailed map of their territories. In the absence of professional surveying instruments and costly high-resolution satellite imagery, this study uses drone-captured imagery, participatory methods, and GIS to produce the first publicly accessible infrastructure and resource data set for indigenous communities in southwest China. The resulting maps enable the data-poor indigenous communities to be aware of their housing fire risk, historical building preservation status, and potential economic resources such as tourist attractions. The maps created are expected to build resiliency in these communities which is of significance to many hard-to-reach communities around the world for disaster prevention, economic planning, and cultural preservation.