The Integration of Information Technologies in Urban ... Integratio… · Prof. Dr. Mohamed...

2014

The Integration of Information Technologies in Urban Heritage

Conservation in EgyptA Conceptual Framework for Using the Volunteered Geographic

Information Approach as a Platform for Collaboration

A Thesis submitted in the Partial Fulfilment for the Requirement of the Degree of Master of Science in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design

byHeba Mohamed Hosny ElSayed Soliman Badr

Supervised by

Prof. Dr. Mohamed AbdelbakiProfessor of of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams

Dr. Marwa AbdellatifAssistant Professor of Architectureand Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams

Prof. Antje StokmanProfessor of of Landscape Planning and Ecology University of Stuttgart

Examiners CommitteeTitle, Name & Affiliation

Prof. Dr. Hany AyadProfessor of of Regional and Urban PlanningUniversity of Alexandria

Dr. Mohab Abdel Moneim ElrefaieAssociate Professor of Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams)

Prof. Dr. Mohamed AbdelbakiProfessor of of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams)


21/07/2014

Signature

The Integration of Information Technologies in Urban Heritage Conservation in EgyptA Conceptual Framework for Using the Volunteered Geo-graphic Information Approach as a Platform for Collaboration

A Thesis submitted in the Partial Fulfilment for the Requirement of the Degree of Master of Science in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design

by Heba Mohamed Hosny ElSayed Soliman Badr

Supervised by

Prof. Dr. Mohamed AbdelbakiProfessor of of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams

Dr. Marwa AbdellatifAssistant Professor of Architectureand Urban PlanningUniversity of Ain Shams


Disclaimer

This dissertation is submitted to Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering and University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning for the degree of Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design. The work included in this thesis was carried out by the author in the Year 2014

The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.

21/07/2014

Heba Mohamed Hosny ElSayed Soliman Badr

Signature

vii

Abstract

The recent demolitions of villas and significant buildings and continuing

violations have led to the deterioration of historic districts and erase of unique

features of the urban fabric, which reflects the architecture of earlier eras in the

history of Egypt. It is clear that the accumulation of urban problems and poor

social culture have led to the emergence of this problem; lack of awareness of

importance of preserving the urban heritage especially in light of the weakness

of the economic situation and frozen rents, since it was identified in the fifties of

the last century, in addition to lack of possible alternatives or opportunities to

adaptive reuse of these buildings, and improper management of urbanization

and particularly historic areas in Egypt.

So, seeking alternative solutions is an urging matter. That could be through

participation among concerned public, and advocacy for the development of

methodologies to be efficiently employed for safeguarding such a priceless

heritage. As a result, several community-based initiatives have emerged,

especially after the revolution of January 2011. Their role is to alert for this

continuing loss of heritage, to address these acts of damage, and to seek

community support. Most of these initiatives are promoted by young architects

and archaeologists who were able to involve others with their initiative;

residents or users of these significant areas who are attached due to personal

memories or aesthetic value. The widespread of social media, especially after its

success in the January revolution, facilitates information dissemination among

initiatives which are usually in concern of a specific area. These initiatives

usually share pictures and links to articles and try to highlight the changes that

negatively affect the buildings which are considered as significant However, the

viii

geographic relations among the shared information are still missing; despite the

fact that any attempt to develop any urban resolution needs maps to realize the

problem distribution and other contextual relations.

Accordingly, this study aims to integrate information technologies, especially

the volunteered geographic information (VGI) which coined in the mid of the

last decade as an influence to the proliferation of information communication

technologies (ICT) and easy internet access. The VGI approach was applied in

various fields on the international scale, and it started to be used on the

national scale in the last few years. Most local applications based on the

widespread use of smart phones to provide a certain service. The most famous

applications deployed by the local mobile phone companies to provide

information about traffic density. This research shows VGI approach with some

applied examples in various fields after referring to initiatives efforts. It also

aims to put a framework to use of VGI to support the bottom-up participatory

approach. The framework is based on an analytical study of problems that led to

the frequent violations to urban heritage as well as an analysis of preliminary

information which is collected from small sample of community through two

questionnaires in order to explore the acceptability of applying VGI in the field

of urban heritage conservation.

xi

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my special appreciation to my supervisors who have

been tremendous mentors for me. I am so grateful to them for helping me to

develop my skills as a researcher. I thank Prof. Dr. Antje Stokman for her

insightful advices in structuring my research and overcoming its gaps. I thank

Prof. Dr. Mohamed Abdelbaky for his critical discussions that helped me to

strengthen my research foundation and for his guidance to highlight important

points related to urban conservation in Egypt. I thank Dr. Marwa AbdelLatif

for her continuous support in elaborating my thoughts and for her kindness as a

sister. Special thanks to Bernd Eisenberg who acted as an advisor during my

research writing and for his guidance based on his knowledge in the Geographic

Information Science.

I would also like to thank my external examiners committee members for their

dedicated time to help me to finalize my degree of masters: Prof. Dr. Hany

Ayad and Dr. Mohab ElRefaie. Additional thanks to the committee members of

the IUSD colloquiums, Prof. Dr. Youhansen Eid, Prof. Dr. Nina Gribat, Prof.

Dr. Mohamed Saleheen and Prof. Dr. José Moro, who contributed to the

formulation of my thoughts through the initial presentations and discussions

about the research topic.

I would like to show appreciation to the participants of interviews and

questionnaires for their willingly shared precious time to answer my questions

which helped me to build one of the main pillars of the research findings.

I would also like to thank all members, staff members and colleagues, of the

Integrated Urbanism Sustainable Development (IUSD) and the three bodies

xii

that host the program: University of Stuttgart, Ain Shams University and the

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), since they all contributed in

increasing my knowledge in the past two academic years.

However, words cannot express gratefulness to my parents, my big family and

my friends who continuously supported me to develop my career, join this

program and accomplish this research. Since this paper would not be sufficient

to write their names, but I must acknowledge the individuals who assisted me in

proofreading and editing the research, despite their time limitation or their

little knowledge about the thesis subject: my Professor Dr. Ashraf Botros for his

continuous support, my inspirational friend Dalia Nabil who has a great

influence on increasing my knowledge and developing my thoughts in regards

to the research problem for the last five years, my friends: Mona AlKabbany,

Mahmoud Qodb, Neveen Akl, Aya ElWagieh, Nahla Nabil, Noran Azouz, Mona

Mannon, Mohemed ElFeki, Wafeya ElShennawy, Noran Farag, Wesam

ElBardisy, Rasha Abo ElDeeb, my mother: Dr. Fathia Zaghloul, my brothers-

in-law: Yasser El Oraby, Dr. Ahmed Attia and last but not least my young

nieces: Farida ElOraby and Mariam Attia. Whether it was edited chapters or

format adjustment and whether it was during the early stages or advanced ones,

they all had exerted much effort that it is very much appreciated and I will be

grateful forever for their support.

The best praise and thanks to Allah, the Best Helper, for all of the support and

help that I get.

xv

Abbreviations

AKTC Agha Khan Trust of Culture

APLH Association for the Protection of the Lebanese Heritage

CBO Community Based Organization

CD Compacted Disk

CULTNAT The Centre for Documentation of Cultural & Natural Heritage

DAAD German Academic Exchange Service

f-VGI facilitated VGI

GI Geographic Information

GIS Geographic Information System

ICT Information communication technologies

IDRC International Development Research Centre

IT Information Technology

IUSD Integrated Urbanism Sustainable Development

MSA Ministry of State for Antiquities

NOUH National Organization for Urban Harmony

OSM OpenStreetMap

OSMF OSM Foundation

PPGIS Public participatory GIS

SCA Supreme Council of Antiquities

SMS Short Messaging Service

UCL University College London

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

VGI Volunteered Geographic Information

Contents

List of Tables .............................................................................. xxvii

1 | Introduction ............................................................................... 1

1.1 Research Background ........................................................................ 1

1.2 Research Problem ............................................................................. 2

1.3 Research Hypothesis ......................................................................... 3

1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................... 3

1.5 Research Objective ............................................................................ 3

1.6 Research Methodology ..................................................................... 3

1.7 Research Structure ............................................................................ 4

2 | Urban Heritage Conservation Context in Egypt .......................... 7

2.1 Overview of Urban Heritage ............................................................. 7

2.1.1 Actors ......................................................................................... 7

2.1.2 Urban Heritage Issues .............................................................. 8

2.1.3 Local Community Initiatives Reactions to Issues .................... 9

2.2 Public Shared Information ............................................................. 13

2.2.1 Official Publicly Shared Maps ................................................ 14

2.2.2 Initiatives Public Shared Information ................................... 15

2.3 Preliminary Analysis ...................................................................... 16

2.3.1 General Analysis In light of Public Participation Approach .. 16

2.3.2 Preliminary Analysis of Monitoring Possible Causes of

Violations ......................................................................................... 18

2.3.3 Evaluating Mapping In light of Practice ................................ 19

xviii

2.4 Problem Tree Analysis ................................................................... 20

2.4.1 Core problem .......................................................................... 20

2.4.2 Causes: .................................................................................... 21

2.4.3 Effects: .................................................................................... 22

2.5 Chapter Conclusion ........................................................................ 22

3 | Volunteered Geographic Information ...................................... 25

3.1 VGI Backgrounds and Related Terminologies .............................. 25

3.2 Citizen Participation in the Field of Geographic Information ...... 27

3.2.1 Citizen as Sensors ................................................................... 28

3.3 VGI Typology .................................................................................. 28

3.4 Challenges ....................................................................................... 31

3.4.1 Digital Divide ........................................................................... 31

3.4.2 Data Quality ............................................................................ 31

3.4.3 Data Heterogeneous .............................................................. 32

3.4.4 Governmental Concerns ........................................................ 32

3.5 Chapter Conclusion ........................................................................ 33

4 | Drawing Lessons from Case Studies ......................................... 37

4.1 Credible VGI Applied Cases ........................................................... 37

4.1.1 Ushahidi Platform: Usage in Crisis Management .................. 37

4.1.2 OpenStreetMap (OSM) project .............................................. 40

4.2 Civic Duty Oriented Systems ......................................................... 44

4.2.1 FixMyCity: German Applied Case .......................................... 44

4.2.2 FixMyStreet: British Applied Case ........................................ 46

4.3 Heritage Related Cases .................................................................. 47

4.3.1 The Looted Heritage Project .................................................. 47

4.3.2 Lebanese Crowd-mapping ..................................................... 49

4.4 Egyptian Applied Cases ................................................................. 52

4.4.1 HarassMap Case ..................................................................... 53

4.4.2 VGI Module for Agriculture Land-use Violations ................. 55

4.4.3 VGI Platforms for Monitoring Traffic Status ........................ 56

4.5 Preliminary Comparative Analysis ................................................ 57

4.6 Conclusion and Lessons Learned .................................................. 60

5 | Community Acceptance Analysis .............................................. 63

5.1 Samples Profiling ............................................................................ 63

5.2 Questioning Existing Practice and Ideologies ............................... 64

5.3 Questioning VGI Practice ............................................................... 69

5.4 Conclusion and Highlighted Findings ........................................... 77

6 | Framework Development ......................................................... 81

6.1 Objective .......................................................................................... 81

6.2 Key Actors ....................................................................................... 81

6.2.1 Groups of Experts ................................................................... 83

6.2.2 Information Technology ........................................................ 83

6.2.3 Geographic Information Experts ........................................... 83

6.2.4 Urban Heritage Experts ......................................................... 83

6.2.5 Trainers .................................................................................. 84

6.2.6 Liaisons .................................................................................. 84

6.2.7 Local Partners ......................................................................... 84

6.2.8 Mappers (data providers) ...................................................... 85

6.2.9 Donors .................................................................................... 86

6.3 Processes ........................................................................................ 86

6.3.1 Initiation ................................................................................. 86

6.3.2 Management ........................................................................... 86

6.3.3 Roles Description ................................................................... 86

6.3.4 Building Networks.................................................................. 87

6.3.5 Sharing Information ............................................................... 87

6.3.6 Data Quality Control .............................................................. 89

6.3.7 Coordination with Official Bodies .......................................... 89

xx

6.4 Assurance of Success ..................................................................... 89

6.5 Outputs ............................................................................................ 91

6.6 Outcomes ......................................................................................... 91

6.7 Impacts ........................................................................................... 92

6.8 Chapter Conclusion........................................................................ 92

7 | Conclusion and Recommendations .......................................... 95

7.1 Summary and contribution ............................................................ 95

7.2 Research Challenges ...................................................................... 96

7.3 Recommendations for Future Research ........................................ 97

Appendices .................................................................................. 109

Appendix A| Questionnaire Activists ........................................................... 111

Appendix B| Questionnaire Public Citizens (Arabic version) ..................... 119

Appendix C| Questionnaire Public Citizens (translated Version) ............. 125

Appendix D| Interviewees ............................................................................ 131

xxiii

List of Figures

Figure 1-1: Schematic diagram for thesis structure .............................................. 5

Figure 2-1: Snapshots from Facebook page of Heliopolis Heritage Initiative

show the immediate response ............................................................................... 13

Figure 2-2: NOUH official web-site home page and links to other screens for

simple interaction with its users ........................................................................... 15

Figure 2-3: Arnstein participation ladder with focus on the middle rungs for

degree of tokenism ................................................................................................ 17

Figure 2-4: Problem tree analysis ......................................................................... 21

Figure 3-1 Schematic diagram for the studied VGI challenges ......................... 33

Figure 4-1: Snapshot of Syria Tracker ................................................................. 38

Figure 4-2: Highlights for using maps in media ................................................. 39

Figure 4-3 : Overview of OSM framework actors, means of communication and

data flow. ............................................................................................................... 41

Figure 4-4: Statistical charts shows percentages of user groups that are

classified based on their activeness on OSM platform between 2005 and 2013.

............................................................................................................................... 42

Figure 4-5: Statistical chart for numbers of active contributors per month

between 2009 and 2013 shows the progress although the decrease after one

year of contribution .............................................................................................. 43

xxiv

Figure 4-6 : The different components of FixMyCity platform. ......................... 45

Figure 4-7: Snapshots for the Looted Heritage platform shows typical functions

provided by Ushahidi platform ............................................................................ 48

Figure 4-8: Snapshot for the Get Alerts screen of Lebanese Crowd-mapping

platform. ................................................................................................................ 50

Figure 4-9: Snapshots for ‘Taree2y’ platform’s interface to show the various

user friendly interfaces. ........................................................................................ 52

Figure 4-10: Shops with harassment free zone stickers ...................................... 53

Figure 5-1: Activists’ years of experiences. .......................................................... 64

Figure 5-2: Activists’ experiences. ........................................................................ 64

Figure 5-3: Public sample geographic distribution from governorates with

exclusion of Cairo.................................................................................................. 64

Figure 5-4: Public respondents’ perception of urban heritage ........................... 65

Figure 5-5: Findings of the three sub-questions ................................................. 65

Figure 5-6: Comparison of findings of activists’ and public responses ............. 66

Figure 5-7: Public answers about their previous experience in expressing

noticed violations .................................................................................................. 67

Figure 5-8: Activists’ answers to question about their previously shared

information ........................................................................................................... 68

Figure 5-9: Activists’ evaluation on the effectiveness of the sharing tool

according to widen distribution, public interaction, considerable from decision

makers ................................................................................................................... 68

Figure 5-10: Public expectations about the attracted community group. .......... 69

Figure 5-11: Public expectations about the suggested platform. ......................... 70

Figure 5-12: Activists’ responses to evaluate the suggested properties for VGI

platform. ................................................................................................................ 72

xxv

Figure 5-13: Expected level of interaction of local authorities. .......................... 74

Figure 5-14: Expected level of interaction of NOUH. ......................................... 74

Figure 5-15: Activst’s expectations on the possible achievement by the proposed

platform ................................................................................................................ 76

Figure 5-16: Public willingness to use the suggested platform. ........................... 77

Figure 5-17: Activists respondents’ willingness to use the suggested platform. . 77

Figure 5-18: Expected data type for users. .......................................................... 78

Figure 6-1: Key actors of the suggested framwork .............................................. 82

Figure 6-2: Relationships among key actors ....................................................... 88

xxvi

xxvii

List of Tables

Table 2-1 Table shows various initiatives, which used Facebook to share their

knowledge. ............................................................................................................. 11

Table 2-2: Analysis for the information that can be provided and shared by

different actors ...................................................................................................... 19

Table 3-1: Summary of the characteristics of each VGI type .............................. 29

Table 3-2: Overview of Characteristics of Some Applied Examples ................... 30

Table 4-1: The following table provides a preliminary analysis to classify

Ushahidi platform in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and

challenges ............................................................................................................. 39

Table 4-2: Preliminary analysis to classify OSM in light of the previously

mentioned VGI typologies and challenges .......................................................... 43

Table 4-3: Preliminary analysis to classify FixMyCity platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges. ....................................... 45

Table 4-4: Preliminary analysis to classify FixMyStreet platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges ........................................ 46

Table 4-5: Preliminary analysis to classify Looted Heritage platform in light of

the previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges. ................................. 49

Table 4-6: Preliminary analysis to classify Lebanese Crowd-mapping platform

in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges .................. 51

xxviii

Table 4-7: Preliminary analysis to classify HarassMap platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typology and challenges ........................................... 54

Table 4-8: Preliminary analysis to classify Agriculture Land-use Violations in

Zabatak platform in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and

challenges .............................................................................................................. 55

Table 4-9: Preliminary analysis to classify traffic platforms in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges ......................................... 57

Table 4-10: Comparative analysis for the different characteristics of the studied

VGI case studies .................................................................................................... 58

Table 5-1: Analysis to rank activists’ expectations on the importance of given

possible properties of the VGI platform. ............................................................. 71

Table 5-2: Activists’ expectations on the groups that would be attracted to use

the platform .......................................................................................................... 73

Table 5-3: Activists’ expectations on the possible achievement by the proposed

platform ................................................................................................................. 75

Table 6-1: Preliminary analysis to check the coverage of the proposed

framework to the six factors of success ............................................................... 90

1

1 | Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Egypt has many areas that are characterized by their wealth of architectural,

urban, symbolic, aesthetic, or natural values. Some of those areas are privileged

with attention such as the historic center of Cairo, which is listed by the United

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a

‘World Heritage Site’ because of its inclusion for more than 600 classified

monuments dating from the seventh to twentieth centuries (UNESCO World

Heritage Centre, 2014).

In spite of the numerous development and rehabilitation projects that were

carried out by national and international organizations in Historic Cairo, the

area is still suffering from uncontrolled development, which resulted in the

dilapidation of its urban fabric. Since 2011 and especially after January

25threvolution, the absence of municipality supervision and lack of urban

management has resulted in the replacement of traditional buildings with new

concrete structures has been accelerated. These new constructions usually are

built with no consideration to the urban style of the historical context as the

whole process could be done illegally or officially due to corruptions in the

system.

It was marked by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that “the current

political situation in Egypt that so far has not allowed implementing positive

changes and, on the contrary, is putting the property under threat because of

the difficulties in monitoring the situation during this transitional period”

(World Heritage Committee, 2013, p. 94). This situation led the committee to

reconsider sending “a reactive monitoring mission to assess the overall state of

CHAPTER ONE | INTRODUCTION

2

conservation of the property and the presence of threats that could potentially

warrant its inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger” (World

Heritage Committee, 2013, p. 95). Furthermore, many architects, planners,

community based associations and local individuals are voluntary trying to

appeal for public inclusion and put pressure on decision makers to take action

to safeguard the urban heritage.

While this is the case in Historic Cairo which is an international focal point, the

situation is even worse in other districts in Cairo or Alexandria, and it further

worsens in other districts of smaller cities such as Mansoura, Port Said, Tanta

and many others. They suffer not only from neglect and exploitation, but also

from lack of public awareness and community support.

Therefore, many initiatives have used social media such as Facebook and blogs

to share their knowledge as a method to pay public attention towards the urban

heritage. Although these methods achieved to widely distribute information, but

it is yet temporary and lacks the further data utilization. In spite of the spatial

relations among the shared information, none of the initiatives or activists

shared their information in the form of mapping except for some photos which

have been geo-tagged, however maps is one of the essential tools to tackle any

urban related issue, whereas worldwide, the web mapping platforms that allow

public community to voluntary share spatial information became very popular

and have been used in various fields. This concept is known as crowd mapping

or Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) which is studied in this research

to be used in support of collaborative work among local initiatives in urban

heritage.

1.2 Research Problem

In Egypt, the local community initiatives’ efforts to stop violations in order to

safeguard urban heritage lack the sustainable advocacy to public participation,

as well as the publicly shared information hardly displays the existing spatial

relation among these violations which resulted in a distorted understanding of

distribution of these violations and difficulty in using additional data for

further analysis.


3

1.3 Research Hypothesis

The research argues that The Volunteered Geographic Information approach

can be utilized in the urban heritage conservation to capitalize on the usage of

new technologies in order to foster the collaborative work and to facilitate the

use of available geographical information.

1.4 Research Questions

The following questions are the ones to be answered through the research

chapters to achieve the research objective.

1. What are the community initiatives’ efforts to safeguard the urban

heritage?

2. Why is there a need for mapping tools?

3. What is the VGI approach and what are the challenges that need to be

considered when applying it?

4. On the national and international levels, how was the VGI applied?

5. Are the local community and activists willing to use VGI to share their

knowledge?

6. Based on the findings of this research, what is the framework that could

be developed to apply VGI approach?

1.5 Research Objective

The research aims to highlight the possible utilization of the VGI approach to

support the local initiatives who are applying a bottom-up approach to

safeguard the urban heritage in Egypt.

1.6 Research Methodology

In order to answer the aforementioned questions and to achieve the research

objective, literature reviews and analysis of different showcases are studied in

order to develop a conceptual framework based on the local community and

activists’ acceptance to integrate this approach in their practice.

The research follows the qualitative methodology, and it is based on both types

of resources: primary and secondary. Four types of primary resources have been

used to collect information in different phases: observation, interviews,

questionnaires and case studies. The observation was the first used method; it


4

was used for observing the urban heritage loss, activists’ efforts to share

information or calling for public support, and through being a participant in

one of the initiatives to map few cases in order to initiate a geographic database.

Few unstructured type of interviews were conducted to know the on-ground

difficulties of the Egyptian system for urban heritage preservation, the current

application of Geographic Information System (GIS), and the methods used for

sharing information.

In later stages of research after the development of some concepts which were

based on the collected information, questionnaire tool is used to gather

information from two community groups: activists and a sample public

community who are spatially connected to the urban heritage. The main

purpose of the two designed forms of questionnaires is to get an impression of

public acceptance of applying the VGI approach for sharing information about

urban heritage violations. Questionnaires are sent to the target groups through

web-based applications such as e-mails and social media, the currently used

channels by the local initiatives.

Secondary resources are used to collect theoretical information of web-based

public participation, tools and application of sharing spatial information with

specific focus on VGI approach, and applied cases. Various types of information

resources are reviewed to develop this research, as the research topic is

interdisciplinary involving four sciences: urban planning, social science,

computer science and applied geography science.

1.7 Research Structure

After this introduction chapter, the core of the research comes with its two

parts; the first part aims to understand three pillars to develop the framework

that forms the second part of the research. Those three pillars are: the Egyptian

urban heritage context for sharing information related to urban heritage, the

VGI approach and how it is applied, and the local acceptance for the concept of

applying the VGI within the Egyptian context. The second part aims to provide

a conceptual framework to be applied to supporting the local initiatives with an

appropriate tool for sharing information.


5

The following points describe each chapter:

The second chapter is an analytical study of the current conditions of

sharing information about urban heritage in Egypt

The third chapter provides an overview of the VGI approach and its

challenges based on literature reviews

The fourth chapter analyses the international and national case studies

to draw lessons for applying VGI

The fifth chapter describes the findings of the conducted questionnaires

The sixth chapter provides a description of the suggested framework for

the case of urban heritage in Egypt

The seventh and last chapter concludes the overall research findings and

provides recommendations for further studies

Figure 1-1: Schematic diagram for thesis structure

Ch3: Literature Review of

Volunteered Geographic

Information

Ch4: Drawing Lessons

from Applied Examples

3. What is the VGI approach and

what are challenges that need to

be considered when applying it?

4. On the national and

international levels, how

was the VGI applied?

Ch1: Introduction

6. Based on the findings, what is the framework that could be developed to apply VGI

approach?

Ch6: Framework Development

Ch7: Conclusion and Recommendations

1. What are the community

initiatives’ efforts to

safeguard the urban

heritage?

2. Why there is a need for

mapping tools?

Ch2: Initiatives’ Shared

Information of Urban

Heritage Conservation

in Egypt 5. Are the local community

and activists willing to use

VGI for sharing their

knowledge?

Ch5: Community

Acceptance Analysis

7

2 | Urban Heritage Conservation Context in Egypt

This chapter aims to provide information on the Egyptian context for urban

heritage and the role played by local initiatives to safeguard urban heritage. It

also aims to analyse the current issues related to the shared information.

2.1 Overview of Urban Heritage

An overview of urban heritage can be addresses through identifying the main

actors, issues and local community reactions to these issues.

2.1.1 Actors

In Egypt, there are different actors who have effect on the urban heritage,

starting from the controllers to the visitors. Controllers are various

governmental bodies such as The Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA),

formerly Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), that control monuments under

the terms of the Egyptian Law on the Protection of Antiquities (the Supreme

Council of Antiquities, 2014). Since 2001, The National Organization for

Urban Harmony (NOUH) has been affiliated to the Egyptian Ministry of

Culture. NOUH is responsible for identifying the urban and natural heritage

that is not subject to SCA as well as to develop regulations and guidelines for

protection (NOUH, 2014a). Since the governorates and their affiliated

municipalities are other governmental bodies responsible for issuing permits

for any construction modification, they are supposed to follow the urban

CHAPTER TWO | URBAN HERITAGE CONSERVATION IN EGYPT

8

regulations and coordinate with NOUH in case of any conflict related to

registered properties (The Egyptian Presidency, 2006).

Many interested international organizations coordinate with responsible

governmental authorities to get involved in conservation projects. They usually

facilitate the financial and technical aspects of projects. However, it is noticed

that they are more interested in the internationally known heritage such as

conservation projects in Historic Cairo and Pharaonic archaeological sites all

over the country.

For the local community actions, it is usually influenced by the socio-economic

condition, so it varies from positive to negative. For instance, it is common to

find illegal garbage collection points in front of unused registered monuments.

This is due to the lack of garbage collection service in the first place, but it also

reflects the lack of awareness of the possible damage that is caused by garbage

to a monument and the shortage in seeing the real value of the monument. In

contrary, the positive actions are done by local community and local

professionals through initiatives or through conservation projects or through

participatory activities in form of organized sessions and workshops.

For instance, Al-Darb Al-Ahamr Revitalization Project that was developed by

The Agha Khan Trust for Culture in Egypt (AKTC-E) involved the local

community through employing local individuals in the project and other groups

were involved in community workshops or small meetings to participate in the

design process of the rehabilitated houses or open space (Aga Khan Trust for

Culture, 2005; Imam, 2013).

2.1.2 Urban Heritage Issues

Recently, demolition and violations actions to villas, significant buildings, and

urban spaces led to erase the unique features of the urban fabric and the

deterioration of historic districts that reflect the architecture of earlier eras in

the history of Egypt (El-Aref, 2014). Despite that NOUH listed many buildings

as significant heritage to be protected from demolition, still there are other

urban heritage areas that are not listed despite their recognition as heritage by

other professionals such as the unlisted valuable buildings include buildings

that reflect early modern architecture built in the 1950s and 1960s (Nabil,

2014). Thus, it is difficult to find any documentation for these unlisted valuable


9

buildings, and when they are demolished, their loss is irreversible and can never

be compensated. These issues are due to the accumulation of urban problems

that include shortage in management, legislations and financial aspects in

addition to the presence of other shortages due to socio-cultural aspects such as

the lack of community awareness about the urban heritage value, and possible

alternatives for adaptive reuse (Hassan et al., 2008).

For instance, one of the major problems that subsequently encourages property

owners to demolish their buildings is the frozen properties’ rents, as they were

fixed since the fifties of the last century (ElSorady, 2011). That results in a

significant gap between the generated monetary value and the property real

value according to the land value or its value in case of redevelopment.

Therefore, most owners prefer to demolish their properties instead of

preserving them, as they do not see other profitable alternatives especially that

they do not get any support from the government authorities that impose

several restrictions in cases of listed buildings (Bakhoum, 2014; ElSorady, 2011;

Nabil, 2014). The following are some examples of the various devious ways to

have this demolishing done:

By illegal demolition without permit (Nabil, 2014)

By illegal distortion of the distinct features of architectural styles

apparent on the façades of their properties, then apply for delisting the

property in order to finally claim for a demolition permit (El-Aref, 2014;

ElSorady, 2011)

By applying for demolition permit for the property by giving a different

address rather than the real one, and so taking advantage of the conflict

in addresses systemi especially in the absence of maps usage (Akl, 2014)

2.1.3 Local Community Initiatives Reactions to Issues

Local initiatives rose up after the January 25th Revolution in 2011 because of

mainly two aspects; One is the absence of security, lack of administrative and

authoritative work, which encouraged caused many violations to take place

(Stadnicki, 2013). The second aspect is the community motivation after seeing

the result of collaboration in the revolution, and they have become more

confident in using social media for exploration. Those initiatives attempt to put


10

some pressure on decision-makers to resolve urban heritage issues. This

pressure takes many forms such as protesting against demolition permits of

significant buildings, leading campaigns through petitions and official requests

that is signed by large number of community, and organizing conferences to

publicly announce for the seen deficiency through media.

2.1.4 Individual-based Initiatives

Many areas witnessed demolitions that make individuals approach NOUH and

the local authorities as an attempt to stop these illegal actions (Nabil, 2014). In

few cases it achieved a certain success that could be gained with support from a

powerful body such as a governor, a parliament member or international

organization which is in concern of a certain area like UNESCO or AKTC-E.

In other cases, the popularity of Facebook and social media as a platform to

share personal thoughts has encouraged many young professionals to share

information about urban heritage, seen in Table 2-1 . Some of those blogs are

initiated by heritage professionals who are mostly architecture academic

researchers and other concerned people whose profession might not relate to

the urban heritage field. The following are some examples for individual

initiatives:

One of the academic architecture researchers in Alexandria, Mohamed

Adel AlDesoky, who initiated blog called ‘Godran Madina Mot’aba’

which means ‘Walls of Tired City’ to reflect the hard times that have

passed by the old city of Alexandria . He is also a member of ‘Save Alex’

initiative group that attempts to protect and enhance the built

environment of the city of Alexandria through increasing public

awareness of what is left of Alexandria's rich architectural heritage and

of other urban challenges that it is facing today (Kamal, 2012).

Cairo-based scholar and researcher, Mohamed ElShahed initiated ‘Cairo

Observer’ which targets “architects, journalists, historians, artists, and

residents to find and share content that offers ways for understanding,

representing, and improving the city” through bringing together

personal interpretations, historical anecdotes, current news, relevant


11

links, and useful lessons from elsewhere that may help readers to

rethink of Cairo (ElShahed, 2011).

Another active academic architecture researcher in Cairo, Shaimaa

Ashour, initiated ‘shaimaa-Keep Hunting Photos’ that share many

thoughts and references about Egyptian heritage without specifying a

place. She also initiated an electronic newsletter that focus on Egypt and

the middle east, called ‘The IO Weekly’, which is identified as “An

information hub seeking to ‘connect’ individuals & collectives by

‘sharing’ fresh news about the city’s built environment; space,

architecture, and heritage” (Ashour, 2012; Stadnicki, 2013).

Other non-architect individual initiative, ‘Mostanqa’at al Fahm’ that

means ‘Coal Swamps’ by Michele Hanna, he lives in Heliopolis

neighbourhood which is one of the significant districts in the east of

Cairo. He writes about his sadly observation of the deterioration of the

neighbourhood with regards to violations against its greenery, buildings

and spaces (Hanna, 2010; Keshk, 2012).

Table 2-1 Table shows various initiatives, which used Facebook to share their

knowledge.

Governorate /Area in Interest

Name of Facebook Group

Da

te o

f E

sta

bli

sh

me

nt

Co

un

t o

f L

ike

s

Ma

x V

alu

e o

n

Ac

ce

ss

We

ek

Us

er

s A

ge

G

ro

up

Cairo Historical Cairo 2011 37,521 3005 18 - 24

All Al-Rawi - Egypt Heritage Review

2010 15,595 62 18 - 24

Alexandria Save Alex 2012 14,991 55 25 - 34

All Cairo observer 2011 12,987 18 - 24

All Egypt's Heritage Task

Force 2013 7,076 25 - 34

Cairo (Heliopolis district)

Heliopolis Heritage Initiative

2010 6,088 273 25 - 34

Cairo Save Cairo 2013 4,500 745 25 - 34


12

Governorate /Area in Interest

Name of Facebook Group

Da

te o

f E

sta

bli

sh

me

nt

Co

un

t o

f L

ike

s

Ma

x V

alu

e o

n

Ac

ce

ss

We

ek

Us

er

s A

ge

G

ro

up

Cairo Monuments of Al Darb

Al Ahmar 3,870 345 18 - 24

Mansoura Save Mansoura 2013 3,060 213 18 - 34

Minia Save Minia 2013 2,212 370 18 - 34

Port Said Save Port Said 2013 1,586 242 18 - 34

Cairo Downtown buildings to libraries and cultural

centers 2011 1,526 11 25 - 34

Suez Save Suez 2014 860 30 25 - 34

Cairo (Historic Cairo in particular)

Save Historic Cairo 2014 462 25 - 34

Cairo Treasures of Egypt at

Risk 2011 363 5 25 - 34

2.1.5 Group-based Initiatives

Based on being a participant since 2010 in ‘Treasures of Egypt at Risk’, the

group interaction helps to develop knowledge and bring new ideas to think

about possible attempts to face the loss of urban heritage. Networking with

other initiatives, institutions, and individuals such as Heliopolis Heritage

Initiative, Megawra NGO, and the author of ‘Mostanqa’at al Fahm’ Michele

Hanna respectively was a benefit for all network members. This networking has

been built as a result of being in one geographic location which is Heliopolis

neighbourhood. Thus, they all have the same concern about the continuous loss

of villas, valuable buildings, and the reduction of green areas. Then Heliopolis

Heritage Initiative had built a good network with NOUH and the local

authority in the neighbourhood (NOUH, 2014b); that encouraged others to

approach the group believing that their voice will reach the official responsible

persons. Despite these networks, only a few cases have been resolved. For

example, an immediate response was made from both initiative and official

body to remove added billboard on a significant building at one of the main

streets in Heliopolis, see Figure 2-1.


13

Figure 2-1: Snapshots from Facebook page of Heliopolis

Heritage Initiative show the immediate response

Consequently, the effort of the local initiative is much more supported when the

collaborative work is considered, getting external powerful support, public

exploitation, and the academic and research knowledge.

2.2 Public Shared Information

Since the information technologies are the core of this study, the following

section shows the existing publicly shared information with special focus on

mapping; as mapping is one of the important visualizing tools that are widely

used to support understanding and resolving urban planning issues. Moreover,

building a geographic database facilitates data manipulation that enables

further use of the mapped information. It raises questions about the areas with

no mapped information, thus it can alert the need for the information.

WhatsApp shows

conversation

between initiative

coordinator and

official body in

Heliopolis

municipality, 22

June 2014, 11:24

pm

Photos show

billboard and the

significant

building, 22 June

2014, 6:30 pm

Two photos show

the removal of

billboard, 23 June

2014, 11:00 pm


14

Mapping violations overtime and the contextual conditions of each case helps

to:

Understand the pattern of distribution of the violations

Classify areas upon percentages and rate of violations to identify the

vulnerable areas that need interventions to slow down this

accelerated loss of urban heritage

Identify the geographic factors that influence the violation actions,

such as the exposure of location, degree of modernity of surrounded

buildings and other factors.

Identify possible networks to use relevant resources

Alert local authorities of the shortages of their system of protection

Questioning the areas without reported violations whether it is due

to a good system or lack of monitoring actors

2.2.1 Official Publicly Shared Maps

Currently, there is no published map that shows any of the mentioned loss of

urban heritage despite the use of GIS by many of the official actors. For

instance, the MSA has a general department for GIS which is set as a centre of

excellence within public sector to manage and protect the Egyptian heritage by

identifying the location and characteristics of the archaeological sites and

monuments (GIS Centre, 2010). But there is no easy public access to this

information. The Centre for Documentation of Cultural & Natural Heritage

(CULTNAT)ii uses the GIS with integration to other multimedia technologies to

professionally document heritage areas. Since they do that within certain

agreements with the official authorities, they only focus on some specific areas

such as Downtown Cairo while other areas suffer from neglect. Although this

geographic information (GI) is not openly shared on internet, but it is

published as a Compacted Disk (CD) (Saleh and Barakat, 2005). The most

available mapped information is provided by NOUH on its official website. The

map shows the listed buildings and basic information related to it for only some

areas in Cairo. However, there is a published list with addresses of the listed

buildings and other related information such as status of complainants, as most

of the owners apply for delisting their buildings.


15

Figure 2-2: NOUH official web-site home page and links to

other screens for simple interaction with its users

Source: http://www.urbanharmony.org

2.2.2 Initiatives Public Shared Information

Since the social media became popular for sharing information, most of the

initiatives use Facebook to publicly announce walking tours that raise public

awareness and create place attachment sense, noticed violations, calls to join

the organized pressure activities such as silent protests or signature campaigns.

The individual initiatives use their blogs in first place and they usually post a

link to their blogs on the other groups’ Facebook pages which are in their built

networks. Media also uses this information to publish it through their electronic

newspapers.

Screen shows that only six

districts in Cairo have mapping

the listed buildings in Cairo are

mapped Replies on Reports (one way

connection from NOUH to reporter)

Name of Districts

Access to Map

Online form for

reporter to fill basic

information include

reported location as

an address


16

Despite that the Facebook is not a searchable tool and the data is unstructured,

yet it is the most popular tool used. Furthermore, although almost all of the

reported information is related to a certain location, nothing has been shown on

a map, however it might be reported with the full address.

2.3 Preliminary Analysis

2.3.1 General Analysis In light of Public Participation Approach

The popular ladder for Arnstein categorizes participation actions into eight

steps based on the degree of activeness, as seen in Figure 2-3. The ladder top is

the most effective as it is full participation and the last two levels that are

considered as non-participation while the middle three levels called Degree of

Tokenism where citizen can explore but without being a part of the decision

making process (Arnstein, 1969, p. 217). In these middle levels, Informing,

Consultation and Placation, citizen acts as information provider, which is the

focus of this research in order to enhance the current condition of urban

heritage conservation.

In light of the aforementioned ladder, there is a need to build capacities, on

both sides of public and decision makers, to be ready for the top levels where

citizen are fully involved in decisions that relate to urban heritage conservation.

As in most of the current involvements, the official actions can be classified

either consulting or informing.

In light of the aforementioned ladder, there is a need to build capacities, on

both sides of public and decision makers, to be ready for the top levels where

citizen are fully involved in decisions that relate to urban heritage conservation.

As in most of the current involvements, the official actions can be classified

either consulting or informing.


17

Figure 2-3: Arnstein participation ladder with focus on the

middle rungs for degree of tokenism

Source:Adapted from (Arnstein, 1969, p. 217)

An example that shows ‘Informing’ is the information provided by NOUH that

gives the opportunity for activists to approach the authoritative bodies in case

of seeing important values in the unlisted building to rethink of the exclusion

decision. But the problem is that it usually comes late and the decision does not

change. For instance, the Villa of Gustave Aghion is one of the city’s landmarks

in Alexandria was subject to a court order to be demolished in 2014 after two

years of freezing (Kingsley, 2014). This was “following an illegal demolition

attempt in 2009, the villa remained in a delicate state until the Save Alex

initiative and the neighbourhood provided security in 2012” (ElAdl, 2014;

Kingsley, 2014)

“3- INFORMING

Informing citizen … can be the most important first step toward

legitimate citizen participation… However, too frequently the emphasis

is placed on a one-way-flow of information – officials to citizens- with no

channel provided for feedback and no power for negotiation. Under

these conditions, when information is provided at a late stage in

planning, people have little opportunity to influence the program

designed”(Arnstein, 1969, p. 219)

“5- PLACATION

It is at this level that citizens begin to have some degree of influence

though tokenism is still apparent. … example is the Model Cities

advisory and planning committee. They allow citizens to advise or plan

ad infinitum but retain for power holders the right to judge the

legitimacy or feasibility of the advice. The degree to which citizens are

actually placated, of course, depends largely on two factors: the quality

of technical assistance they have in articulating their properties; and the

extent to which the community has been organized for those priorities. ”

(Arnstein, 1969, p. 220)

“4- CONSULTING

Inviting citizens’ opinions, … can be the most important first step toward

legitimate citizen participation, but if consulting them is not combined

with other modes of participation, this rung of ladder is still a sham

since it offers no assurance that citizen concerns and ideas will be taken

into account.” (Arnstein, 1969, p. 219)

8 CITIZEN CONTROL

7 DELEGATED POWER

6 PARTNERSHIP

5 PLACATION

4 CONSULTATION

3 INFORMING

2 THERAPY

1 MANIPULATION

DE

GR

EE

OF

TO

KE

NIS

M

No

n-

pa

rtic

ipa

tio

n

Deg

ree

of

Po

wer


18

An example that shows ‘Consulting’ is the official website of NOUH that

provides a call for public to report any destruction noticed, and they provide a

list with reported violations and NOUH replies, seen in Figure 2-2. However,

the list shows that NOUH consider the reported issues with no power to stop

violations, but they can only escalate it to the responsible official body.

Initiatives are willing to have a step forward through consultation trying to

reach placation level. This can be seen in an effort started by ‘Treasures of

Egypt at Risk’ in co-operation with ‘Heliopolis Heritage Initiative’ to provide

NOUH with a list of valuable buildings belonging to early modern architecture

of the 20th century that are not included in NOUH’s list (Nabil, 2014).

2.3.2 Preliminary Analysis of Monitoring Possible Causes of Violations

There is a need to highlight issues for decision makers and provide more

information for other experts who can take action to resolve the aforementioned

issues. Therefore, it is needed to provide information that enables stakeholders

to classify importance and urgency of issues in order to effectively manage

resources for resolving it. Based on observation, many factors influence those

who violate to the urban heritage to meet a certain individual need. For

instance, the land value in proportional to the property generated profit is a

factor, lack of proper management regarding the conservation of valuable

buildings and employing adequate adaptive reuse is another factor, instant and

strict implementation of law in case of violation. Building early knowledge

about these factors can be an alarm that helps to predict violations or be well

prepared for eradicating them.

The following table is a comparative analysis for the possibility to have

knowledge from four community groups about information related to some

observed factors. Those groups are: residents, experts who are geo-connected to

the area; whether being a frequent visitor or a resident or a worker, other

experts, and governmental bodies who partially control it either local

authorities, NOUH, SCA or others, see Table 2-2. This comparative analysis is

based on personal observations and assumptions in order to rethink of

possibilities to gain information from other actors and to think of the added

value of openly shared information.


19

Table 2-2: Analysis for the information that can be provided and shared by

different actors

Re

sid

en

ts

Ex

pe

rts

ge

o-

co

nn

ec

ted

Ex

pe

rts

Go

ve

rn

me

nta

l

Land value in proportional to property generated profit value

Medium Medium Low High

Availability of alternatives to meet the needs for space extension

Non High High None

Availability of alternatives for profitable utilization and adaptive reuse.

Non High High None

Occupation status of the building High Medium None None

Owner capacity to convince and pay compensations to building tenants

Low Low None None

Corruption and deficiency in the urban management system

Medium High None Medium

The building exposure and strategic location.

High High None High

The modernity of the surrounding context High High None Low

The uniqueness features, richness with aesthetic values that it have.

Medium High Medium Medium

The public awareness towards the value of urban heritage and the importance of

safeguarding it High High Medium Low

Availability of external support such as international, parliament member,

governor and others Low High Low Low

2.3.3 Evaluating Mapping In light of Practice

Based on being a participant, there was an initiative to create a map for

Heliopolis that can be used for the survey and the comparative analysis between

the building that is legally protected by NOUH registration and other historical

ones that are seen on historical maps. This comparative analysis was planned to


20

help the group in conducting a survey to update the current status of the

unlisted building in order to approach NOUH to add the significant ones. The

process to create the needed map was not easy due to many factors:

1. Limited number of members working on it

2. Difficulties to document field tracks due to lack of GPS usage

3. The available value map from NOUH is difficult to be used because of its

inaccuracy, incompleteness, difficulty to be exported to other data

forms, and difficulty of reading address

4. Status of complainant related to the registered buildings is provided as

list but not mapped

5. Adding points using Google Earth does not support adding many

information on one point as it could affect map visualization

6. Difficulty to control privacy of data as the photos should be uploaded on

Panoramio

2.4 Problem Tree Analysis

Based on the aforementioned context and the scope of this research, a problem

tree analysis is used to be one of the basic analysis for this research study.

2.4.1 Core Problem

In Egypt, the local community initiatives’ efforts to stop violations against

urban heritage lack the sustainable advocacy to public participation, as well as

the publicly shared information hardly displays the existing spatial relation

among these violations which resulted in a difficult understanding of

distribution of these violations and difficulty in further data usage for advance

analysis, as seen in Figure 2-4.


21

Figure 2-4: Problem tree analysis

2.4.2 Causes:

Shortage of networking and collaborative work

Shortage of capacity and resources

Difficulties to communicate with authoritative bodies

Lack of community participation

Tools for sharing information does not provide best utilization

Tools do not include spatial relations

Shared information is difficult to be filtered or searched

Information is difficult to be exported or compatible to other data

Lack of awareness of other possible tools and approaches


22

2.4.3 Effects:

Some areas are out of concern and have become at risk condition with

no single attention

Realizing the geographic distribution of the problem as whole is very

difficult

Lack of participation of the public that is considered a powerful resource

Not all initiatives’ efforts reach the authorized and responsible bodies

2.5 Chapter Conclusion

In conclusion, this chapter shows an overview of urban heritage main actors

and the issues that motivated local community to address. Initiative efforts are

mentioned with a focus on the tools for sharing knowledge. The availability and

accessibility to the geographic information is discussed and it shows the need

for updatable, publicly accessible platform that includes the issues discussed.

Popular ladder of public participation is used as entry point to preliminary

assess the existing situation of public participation. Also, a preliminary

evaluation based on practice is demonstrated. Finally, the problem is analysed

through creating problem tree to highlight the major strategies that are needed

to address the discussed core problem. Those strategies are the development of

information systems, and the development of collaborative work, and the new

geography approaches that can contribute to both strategies.


23

iBased on self-experience of building basemap for buildings in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar through DAR project of AKTC-E, conflict in addresses system has many faces. Sometimes there is a redundancy of street name with slight difference that cause confusion, if building located in a cross section of two streets thus it might have two possible addresses. Adding to that misleading that in many cases the building number mark does not exist. ii CULTNAT is “affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and supported by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology” (Saleh and Barakat, 2005, p. 75)

25

3 | Volunteered Geographic Information

Aforementioned need for mapping system and public geographic database that

includes information to safeguard urban heritage leads to the following study

for the concept of VGI. VGI is one of the most widespread terms of the neo-

geography approaches. VGI was developed to empower citizens to have equal

access to geographic information and to have the space to add their local

knowledge.

This chapter provides an overview of the VGI approach and its challenges based

on literature reviews.

3.1 VGI Backgrounds and Related Terminologies

In the 1990s, there was a debate about the accessibility of spatial information

and the usage of GIS which was limited to the official and professional usage.

This limitation has resulted in a high cost of geographic information and lack of

availability of information for some areas that were not prioritized by officials.

This was considered as a kind of exclusion and the debate was to involve the

community who can add their local knowledge that complements the official

one. Moreover, this involvement has empowered the grassroots and

marginalized groups, as they can be part of the decision making process

(Deparday, 2010). Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) have been developed as a

response to this debate. It aims to integrate and contextualize the spatial

information through a participatory approach among various stakeholders and

community inclusion (Sieber, 2006).

CHAPTER THREE | VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

26

Later on, many online mapping platforms have emerged such as Google Maps,

Google Earth, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, and Wikimapia. The widespread of

online maps and the decrease of the cost of obtaining GPS which has been

embedded in many devices have popularized mapping usage and shared spatial

information among the public (Elwood, 2008). So, it became easy for everyone

who has access to the internet to create and share his own spatial information

as well as use the fine resolution images which became available by Google

earth for free (Goodchild and Li, 2012).

In October 2004, the term Web 2.0 has been popularized through ‘Web 2.0

conference’. This term has been used to express the dynamics that have been

developed in the ‘World Wide Web’ and the interaction among its users

(O’Reilly, 2009). Subsequently the geographic information field got many new

terms to express the evolvement of user participation with the new abilities that

was provided by Web 2.0.

‘Neo-geography’ has been underlined by Turner (2006) to express the new

characteristics of the geographic information management and usage which

does not follow the traditional GIS rules or mapping techniques but based on

the user interest (Sylaiou et al., 2013). The shared data through this new

framework is licensed using some open-source approach which allows users to

freely use data, and the producer of data is acknowledged that his data would be

used by any (Coleman, 2013; Coote and Rackham, 2008).

The term ‘mash-up map’ have been popularized by Google Earth and Google

Maps, it means the ability to overlay geographic information from different

sources that are distributed over the Web, even if it is created by amateurs

(Goodchild, 2007).

The term ‘crowd-mapping’ is another term that has emerged from the

‘crowdsourcing’ which is used when the information is derived from ‘crowd’ or

in other wording it is ‘User Generated Content’ (Sylaiou et al., 2013). It is

developed from the concept of ‘outsourcing’ in which business operations are

transferred out where it can be performed with less cost (Ismail, 2012).

Similarly, crowdsourcing and crowd-mapping is how large groups of users can

perform functions that are either difficult to automate or expensive to

implement (Haklay and Weber, 2008).


27

The term VGI has been introduced by Goodchild (2007) and it is one of the

most widely disseminated. It refers to the amateur efforts to manipulate spatial

data voluntarily (Elwood, 2009). Many other terms are related to the same

meaning with slight differences such as web mapping, geo web, wiki-mapping,

and ubiquitous cartography.

3.2 Citizen Participation in the Field of Geographic Information

Citizen participation has been advocated by many factors. As mentioned before

the technology evolvement provides tools with almost no cost; in addition to the

free mapping platforms and Web 2.0 framework, the wide spread of using GPS

technology that has been facilitated by the decrease of price of the receiver

standalone device or the embedded units in cameras, mobiles, PDAs, and

computers.

Consequently, that popularized the ‘Geo-tagging’ which mean attaching the

geographic location to the produced online content. The geo-tagging could be

either in formalize form which include geodetic coordinates (Latitude and

longitude) or in linguistic form as place names (Elwood, 2008).

Another important factor, which was one of the main issues behind the

involvement of the community, is that there are gaps in official maps.

Therefore, there is always a desire to fill in those blank spaces (Zook et al.,

2010).

Furthermore, there are other factors related to individual motivations such as

self-promotion and personal satisfaction (Goodchild, 2007). For example

sharing geo-tagged photos in Panoramio could lead to self-promotion. In some

cases the self-promotion intended to be among friends, but it ends up being

among public. The personal satisfaction could be obtained by seeing the value

of contribution in solving a certain problem or seeing the output appearing in a

patchwork.

Coleman(2010) has classified citizen participation in three main categories: the

first one is related to economical issue which means it is a response to avoid the

high cost of getting spatial information from commercial service by finding

another freely resources. The second one is based on the common interest

among groups to collect and share information of their interest. The third is


28

related to governmental or large institutions’ initiatives to address certain

issues such as climatic issues or crises management. The classification is

general and can include other subcategories and overlap contents (Sylaiou et al.,

2013).

3.2.1 Citizen as Sensors

Human sensor could be preferred than the regular one, as a human can do

other functions such as observing different parameters, moving freely, having

local knowledge and making sense of a situation (Poser and Dransch, 2010).

Since VGI term emerges, this has drawn the attention to the concept of sensor

network to observe many issues related to earth science, security and

surveillance.

Goodchild (2007)highlighted the concept of building human network who acts

as sensors. It takes advantages of VGI and the Web 2.0 to effectively build this

network. The time sensitive nature of VGI makes it a suitable tool to track

changes through timely observations by a dense network of observers (Cowan,

2013).

This characteristic of VGI was well utilized in disaster events, as it was noticed

that within only one minute of the 7.9 earthquake in China 2008, it was

discussed in a popular Chinese internet discussion forum (Cowan, 2013; Poser

and Dransch, 2010). Another two examples can be mentioned here, one called

Christmas Bird Count which is designed for amateur ornithologists and the

other Project GLOBE for atmospheric observations for school-children and

teachers. Both projects sleeked a high quality of data, and trainings were

conducted to achieve this quality (Goodchild, 2007).

3.3 VGI Typology

Deparday (2010) has classified the VGI platforms into three main classes based

on types of shared information. Those three classes vary in data type, data

management, processes, and level of exploration, which is seen in Table 3-1.

The first type is well structured and similar to data created by professionals.

Usually, it aims to include scientific knowledge such as monitoring the

environmental change. To keep the good structure in this type, more

restrictions are needed to guarantee collecting information with the best


29

possible quality. It is also needed to provide guidance for participants as they all

have access to the datasets and can correct each other in order to maintain

quality of data (Deparday, 2010).

The second type is commonly used for local knowledge to address certain local

issues or to simply provide description for local context. Data shared within this

type is mostly unstructured, such as free text with simple classification that

could be in the form of predefined list in order to facilitate browsing data

(Deparday, 2010).

The third type is usually kept private among closed groups to exchange their

personal knowledge through an unstructured method and usually it stores

geographic data as points only (Deparday, 2010).

Table 3-1: Summary of the characteristics of each VGI type

Typology Scientific

knowledge VGI Type 1

Local knowledge VGI Type 2

Personal knowledge VGI Type 3

Process Nature

Volunteered facilitated-VGI Kept private

Data Objectivity

Objective Subjective Subjective

Structure Type Structured Unstructured Unstructured

Connection 2 way (user to/from facilitator) or multi ways (among users)

1 way (user to facilitator), 2 way (user to/from facilitator) or

multi ways (among users)

Multi ways (among users)

Tools for Data Capture

Digitizing, GPS, twitter

Selection, Drawing, geocoding

Location through

networks, geocoding

Cartographic Data Feature

Only points or points, lines, Polygons

Points, lines, polygons Only points

Examples

OpenStreetMap eBird (Other similar

projects, Geobird, Snowtweets, E-Flora

BC)

Wikimapia Ushahidi (FixMyStreet)

MapChat Flickr (Panoramio,

Ipernity)

BrightKite, Loopt, Plazes,

Dopplr

Source: Adapted from (Deparday, 2010)


30

Table 3-2: Overview of Characteristics of Some Applied Examples

Na

tur

e

Vo

lun

teer

ed

Vo

lun

teer

ed

Vo

lun

teer

ed

Vo

lun

teer

ed

Vo

lun

teer

ed

Vo

lun

teer

ed/K

ept

Pri

va

te

Pr

oc

es

s

Inte

ra

cti

on

mu

lti

wa

ys

2 w

ay

mu

lti

wa

ys

mu

lti

wa

ys

mu

lti

wa

ys

mu

lti

wa

ys

Da

ta

Att

rib

ute

Ob

jec

tiv

e/

Su

bje

cti

ve

Ob

ject

ive

Ob

ject

ive

Ma

inly

O

bje

ctiv

e

Ob

ject

ive/

S

ub

ject

ive

Ob

ject

ive/

S

ub

ject

ive

Ma

inly

su

bje

ctiv

e

Str

uc

tur

ed

/ U

ns

tru

ctu

re

d

Str

uct

ure

d

Ma

inly

str

uct

ure

d

Un

stru

ctu

red

(fr

ee

des

crip

tio

n),

S

tru

ctu

red

(c

ate

go

ry)

Ma

inly

u

nst

ruct

ure

d (

free

te

xt)

, S

tru

ctu

red

(c

ate

go

ry)

Un

stru

ctu

red

Ma

inly

u

nst

ruct

ure

d,

S

tru

ctu

red

Sp

ati

al

Fe

atu

re

Po

int,

li

ne,

P

oly

go

n

Po

int

Bo

un

din

g

bo

x a

nd

p

oly

go

n

Po

int

Po

int,

li

ne,

P

oly

go

n

Po

int

Ca

ptu

re

GP

S t

rack

s,

Dig

itiz

ing

Geo

cod

ing

,

Pin

po

inti

ng

,

GP

S

Dig

itiz

ing

Geo

cod

ing

, P

inp

oin

tin

g

Dra

win

g,

Sel

ecti

on

Pin

po

inti

ng

, G

PS

Ap

pli

ca

tio

n

Op

enS

tree

tMa

p

eBir

d

Wik

ima

pia

Ush

ah

idi

Ma

pC

ha

t

Fli

ckr

Cla

ss

Scientific knowledge VGI Type 1

Local knowledge VGI Type 2

Source: Adapted from (Deparday, 2010)


31

3.4 Challenges

Some challenges need to be considered when implementing VGI. The following

section shows the most important one which was discussed in the revised

literature and would be considered in the Egyptian context.

3.4.1 Digital Divide

Although the VGI firstly developed to overcome marginalization issue, some

researchers refer to the potential of another kind of marginalization which is

caused by the digital divide. There could be groups of citizens that do not easily

access the internet. Tackling this issue is usually by providing another channel

for information, such as accepting information through Short Messaging

Service (SMS) which is enabled by Ushahidi platform (Cowan, 2013). Another

alternative named by Seeger, with facilitated VGI (f-VGI), was developed for

individuals who are not using technologies, to transfer knowledge through

others who are familiar with technologies (Seeger, 2008).

3.4.2 Data Quality

There are some methods to deal with quality issue. In the following section four

of them are described: assigning certain group for reviewing, allowing all users

to evaluate the shared data; this includes self-evaluation, use of automated data

filters, and the less controlled is to leave it to the crowd to be corrected by time.

The first method relies on assigned group for data review. This group could be

advanced users who are more trusted contributors, but then they should have

the knowledge of the space to be able to validate. McLaren (2012) suggested

that the reviewers could be from local community who can take direct

responsibility for data quality in their area.

The second method relies on evaluation. In this method users are authorized to

give a rate to the quality of shared data. Cumulatively these rates give an

evaluation rate to the data initiator which affects the user evaluation and his

credibility of shared data (Maué, 2007). This is called peer-to-peer or crowd

sourced credibility assessment (Deparday, 2010).

The third approach can be considered as a complex one which combines the

above two approaches. As the automated data filtering process is a kind of


32

automatic evaluation which is based on algorithm that can flag record to be

later reviewed by expert or advanced users. Automatic evaluation can be based

on factors such as natural language processing, the distance between the

reported data location and the user geographic location, user’s usual shared

topics or previously added locations (Deparday, 2010).

The last approach is based on the proportional between number of ‘eyeballs’

and errors observation or truth validation. This is known among software

developers by Linus law, which is applied in open source application that allows

other developers to find and correct errors. This applied in VGI through

building on the value of the crowd who can contribute to, correct or confirm the

good quality based on the other users contribution, whether it matches or not.

It is also important that the contributors are keen on the quality and on

performing editing to meet it, as lots are attracted to create data, but they are

not willing to edit it. This concept is valid for clear cases, but it does not fit to

vague cases such as location with access limitation (Goodchild and Li, 2012).

3.4.3 Data Heterogeneous

The diversity of sources could lead to data heterogeneous, which occurs when

similar entities are represented differently. Standardization is one approach to

make automated integration for data to tackle the issue of heterogeneity,

despite that it does not match the dynamics of user interaction which is a core

characteristic of VGI (Elwood, 2009). For example, most of VGI second type

that early mentioned is unstructured and would be hard to be applied

(Deparday, 2010). To keep dynamics another strategy could be useful which

enriches data with information that can help the user to assess heterogeneity,

such as providing metadata and data dictionaries (Elwood, 2009). Additionally,

providing pre-set categories, that users can select the most relevant to his

posted text, is another easy mechanism for collected data classification

(Deparday, 2010).

3.4.4 Governmental Concerns

Some concerns about using VGI within governmental platform such as

information sensitivity, mistrust of user generated information, unwillingness

to fulfill citizen requests due to other contextual factors and increased citizens’

expectations when they get into contact with the official bodies (Cowan, 2013;


33

Johnson and Sieber, 2012) . Most of those concerns reflect lack of governance

and lack of awareness about the added value from citizen participation and

bottom-up approach. In general, mechanisms should be developed to ensure

protection of privacy and intellectual ownership of local knowledge (Rambaldi

et al., 2006). Moreover, VGI applications have to provide tools that insure

respect of privacy such as system user levels, restricted access to sensitive

information and facilitate reporting abuse (Deparday, 2010).

Figure 3-1 Schematic diagram for the studied VGI challenges


In conclusion, the VGI is a relatively popular term that is used to describe

mapping processes based on the collaborative user generated information. In

this chapter, using citizens as sensors is highlighted to be utilized in monitoring

the previously discussed urban heritage issues. The three different VGI

typologies were studied based on different characteristics. While the first VGI

type is highly structured – which is appropriate to the need for a scientific

approach such as urban heritage conservation – there is still a need for

flexibility to allow the maximum collaborative input from the wider public. This


34

implies the use of certain characteristics from the second VGI type that is less

structured and has higher adaptability, which in turns encourages wider public

participation. The challenges mentioned in this chapter are digital divide, data

quality, data heterogeneity, and governmental concerns. The different strategies

for overcoming each one of these challenges were mentioned, and will be

further explained in the following chapter in regards to the different applied

cases.

37

4 | Drawing Lessons from Case Studies

This chapter illustrates various VGI applied cases, in which credible and widely

used applications would be firstly shown. Afterwards, two other applied cases

on VGI are discussed; to show the VGI applications within small scale and

specified disciplines related to heritage conservation. Later, the chapter looks

closer into national experiences within the Egyptian context, and analyses them

in relation to the previously conceptualized research framework. Eventually, the

final lessons learned and research outcomes from the illustrated models are

introduced in an attempt to conclude set of measures to be further investigated

in the next chapters.

4.1 Credible VGI Applied Cases

This section demonstrates the following two cases, in which there are popular

VGI applications; because of their huge coverage in many countries. The first is

Ushahidi platform which have been used in Haiti earthquake as an effective tool

in emergency response, the other is OpenStreetMap platform, which was

applied as a free application for building a collective base map for roads

network all over the world.

4.1.1 Ushahidi Platform: Usage in Crisis Management

Ushahidi is a Swahili word means ‘Witness’ (Crowe, 2012). It used as a name for

a non-profit company who developed a VGI platform, which was firstly used to

map eyewitness reports of Kenya’s post-election violence in 2007-08

(Deparday, 2010). Reports were sent via e-mails, text messages through SMS

and then marked on Google Maps. According to Ushahidi web site at time of

CHAPTER FOUR | DRAWING LESSONS FROM CASE STUDIES

38

writing, it was used in 159 countries through 60,000 maps in 31 languages

(Ushahidi, 2008).

As a tool for crisis management, Ushahidi was deployed in the first two hours

following to respond to the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January

12th2010 (Zook et al., 2010). Because of the huge amount of reported data, the

director of crisis mapping of Ushahidi put out a call for volunteers at two

educational organizations: the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts

University to continue mapping the crisis live (Heinzelman and Waters, 2010).

In addition to the e-mails and SMSs, worldwide volunteers monitored all posts

that used hashtag Haiti on Twitter and then entered it to the publically

searchable database. Then geo-locating urgent message like being under rubble

was sent with short statement with geo-location to relief workers to support

them to rapidly reach in need cases (Zook et al., 2010).

Currently, an Ushahidi initiative called CrisisNET has been developed to

combine crisis information from thousands crisis relevant data sources, such as

individual Facebook posts, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) refugee updates, and Ushahidi deployments to facilitate fast access to

critical information (CrisisNET, 2014).

Figure 4-1: Snapshot of Syria Tracker

An Ushahidi platform adapted for mapping conflict in Syria, with highlight of the possible

geographic data export.

Source:www.syriatracker.crowdmap.com

https://syriatracker.crowdmap.com/


39

Figure 4-2: Highlights for using maps in media

The map on left is a map generated from streaming social media (Facebook and YouTube)

augmented by CrisisNet, while the map on the right is taken from a BBC report that uses

data manually collected by humanitarian organizations working in the region.

Source: blog.crisis.net

Table 4-1: The following table provides a preliminary analysis to classify

Ushahidi platform in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and

challenges

Classification Criteria Ushahidi Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s

Type of Knowledge Local

VGI Typology Type 2

Objectivity Objective /Subjective

Structured/ Unstructured Mainly unstructured (free text ),

Structured (category)

Geo-spatial Data Capture Geocoding, Pinpointing, GPS

Cartographic Data Feature Point

Process Interaction Multi-ways

Nature Mainly Volunteered, facilitated-VGI

http://blog.crisis.net/syrian-social-media-journalists-secret-weapon-in-the-crisis-data-revolution/


40

Classification Criteria Ushahidi Platform

Ch

all

en

ge

s Digital Divide

Accept reports sent as SMSs, Many cases were facilitated through

trainers,

Data Quality GPS, Geocoding, Verification

Data Heterogeneous pre-set categories for classifying

topic

Governmental Concerns N/A

4.1.2 OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project

In July 2004, the OSM project initiated at the University College London (UCL)

to enable volunteers to create worldwide base map data that can be freely used

and fully edited (Haklay and Weber, 2008). Currently many other partners are

supporting UCL to host the data storage infrastructure (OpenStreetMap,

2014a). It is considered as “the best-known, and clearly most successful, of a

number of efforts begun at that time to create an alternative to the products of

official agencies” (Goodchild and Li, 2012, p. 111) The OSM Foundation (OSMF)

is a UK-registered not-for-profit organization that supports, but not controlling,

the OSM Project (OpenStreetMap blog, 2014; OpenStreetMap, 2014b). It is

established to encourage the growth of the project, so it consists of members

from around the world. It includes several working groups each has a specific

function, such as group for communication, another one for data control - who

are helping to set policy on data and responsible of resolving data issues like

copyright violation, vandalism - and other groups for licensing, operations

control, software development, and strategic planning (OpenStreetMap, 2013a).

All minutes of their meetings are available on the OSMF web page that reflects

transparent approach and enables others to be easily joining the working team.

Since 2007, they are organizing an annual conference called ‘State of the Map’

which is held in different location around the world to celebrate the OSM

project growth and to examine its practice (OpenStreetMap, 2013b). The OSMF

relies on donations for much of their funding to assure financial sustainability

of project (OpenStreetMap, 2012).


41

Figure 4-3 : Overview of OSM framework actors, means of

communication and data flow.

Source: Adapted from (Neis and Zielstra, 2014, p. 81)

For the OSM map production, the contributor can add new data or edit existing

data either the attributed data or the geometry of the drawn shapes (streets,

lands, building and other features). It is also possible to trace features based on

the provided satellite image in its background, which was enabled after an

agreement with Microsoft Bing Aerial Imagery (Neis and Zielstra, 2014).

Uploading data from GPS receiver device was reported as the common

approach, but some bulk data set for road networks can be uploaded, such as

the case of USA during the years 2007 and 2008 (Corcoran et al., 2013). Other

cases are in Netherland and Austria where commercial or governmental

datasets that comply with the OSM license, in addition to cadastral information

which was imported for Spain and France (Neis and Zielstra, 2014). The

updated geographic data can be retrieved from the OSM and other full history

files, which contain all archived changes and are available as well to be used for

analytical purposes and advanced use (Neis and Zielstra, 2014).


42

Figure 4-4: Statistical charts for the percentages of user

groups that are classified based on their activeness on OSM

platform between 2005 and 2013.

Source: (Neis and Zielstra, 2014, p. 88)

OSM was studied in many researches and one of the major findings that, in

spite of the large number of registered users, the percentage of active users is

still small percentage. In 2012, Moony and Corcoran investigates the types of

contributors through three case study cities (London, Berlin and Paris), and

their results showed that over 85% of objects were created by very small groups

of individuals. Moreover, “Editing and contribution behaviour is mostly steady

and consistent over time except during months where OSM 'mapping parties'

occur or when freely available spatial data is bulk imported into OSM” (Mooney

and Corcoran, 2012, p. 1). On the same year another study have analysed the

OSM data till the end of 2011 and it showed that 38% of the registered members

have contributed to the OSM with at least one edit and only 5% are actively

contributors (Neis and Zielstra, 2014).


43

Figure 4-5: Statistical chart for numbers of active

contributors per month between 2009 and 2013 shows the

progress although the decrease after one year of contribution

Source: (Neis and Zielstra, 2014, p. 88)

Table 4-2: Preliminary analysis to classify OSM in light of the previously

mentioned VGI typologies and challenges

Classification Criteria OSM Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s

Type of Knowledge Scientific

VGI Typology Type 1

Objectivity Objective

Structured/ Unstructured Structured

Geo-spatial Data Capture GPS tracks, Digitizing

Cartographic Data Feature Point, line, Polygon


Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide N/A

Data Quality

GPS, Provide Satellite image for tracing,

Verification based on reputation model

Data Heterogeneous Standardized data



44

4.2 Civic Duty Oriented Systems

Lots of platforms have been deployed worldwide to enable citizens to report

non-urgent urban issues in their local areas through a web-based platform

which is integrated to the governmental system. In this case reports are used

formally and authorities take certain actions based on it. All platforms are

provided with mobile application to facilitate citizen interaction as much as

possible. Examples to this concept are: FixMyCity in Germany, FixMyStreet in

United Kingdom, SeeClickFix in United States and other similar examples.

Some of them were adapted to be used by other countries such as SeeClickFix

which can be used for any location worldwide, and in case of FixMyStreet it can

be adapted based on the governmental system, such as the case of FixMyZurich

in Switzerland and other ones deployed in Norway, New Zealand, Georgia and

Italy (mySociety, 2014a). All of those applied cases confirm the role of VGI to

facilitate citizens who act as sensors by turning the public’s eyes on outstanding

problems. In the following some highlights for some characteristics for two

applied cases FixMyCity in Germany and FixMyStreet.

4.2.1 FixMyCity: German Applied Case

FixMyCity is developed by the FOKUS Fraunhofer Institute to have several

components. One component for the management console; it enables

authorized individuals view, categorize and modify received reports within a

web browser, and administrators can define roles with restricted permission

levels for particular user groups (Fraunhofer FOKUS, 2014a). The Social Media

cross-publishing components are used to publish reports on social media

platforms to achieve larger exposure. As seen in Figure 4-6, The notification

components provide real time notifications when reports change to the

subscribed stakeholders (Fraunhofer FOKUS, 2014b).


45

Figure 4-6 : The different components of FixMyCity

platform.

Source: (Fraunhofer FOKUS, 2014b)

Table 4-3: Preliminary analysis to classify FixMyCity platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges.

Classification Criteria FixMyCity Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s


VGI Typology Type 2


Structured/ Unstructured Mainly unstructured (free text),





Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide N/A


Data Heterogeneous Pre-set categories

Governmental Concerns Compatible version integrated within

the official bodies


46

4.2.2 FixMyStreet: British Applied Case

FixMyStreet is developed by mySociety which is a not-for-profit social

enterprise based in the United Kingdom (mySociety, 2014a). It has been

running successfully in the United Kingdom since 2007 and it is now

considered the largest service of its type, it sends over 5.000 reports to local

governments each month (GitHub, Inc, 2014). According to Walravens (2013),

FixMyStreet claims they can integrate with any backend system or existing fault

reporting service and collaboratively work with councils to keep the

functionality of both systems. If councils decide in to the back-office

integration, reports go straight into their fault management system, making the

follow-up process easier. Reports that come into an adapted council’s website

also appear on the general FixMyStreet site, in an effort to reduce duplication.

For data verification, reports cannot be made anonymously which means that

users need to at least leave an e-mail address (Walravens, 2013). For local

notifications, the platform provides various options such as sending e-mail or

set RSS alert that set by the user to be notified for updates within a set radius of

certain location or within a specified city area (mySociety, 2014b).

Table 4-4: Preliminary analysis to classify FixMyStreet platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges

Classification Criteria FixMyStreet Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s


VGI Typology Type 2







Nature Volunteered


47

Classification Criteria FixMyStreet Platform C

ha

lle

ng

es

Digital Divide N/A



Governmental Concerns Compatible version integrated within

the official bodies

4.3 Heritage Related Cases

Comparing to urban field, it is less popular to find VGI applied cases in heritage

field. However, the result of a survey made by Sylaiou et al. (2013) to study VGI

in Archaeology shows that it have been used in six main categories:

1. Archaeological site detection

2. Historical maps geo-referencing and rectification

3. Combating illicit trafficking of antiquities

4. Use the information to create 3D Web GIS

5. Archaeological research questions solving

6. Recording of archaeological sites by volunteers

To insure the integration of volunteers work, detailed instructions and

explanatory videos could be provided. This was applied in the pilot project by

the British Library to describe steps that should be followed by volunteers to

geo-reference England historical maps (Kowal and Pˇridal, 2012). The following

two applied cases were selected because they can have some similarity to the

Egyptian context, as they attempt to stop unaccepted actions to heritage. The

first one is a VGI platform aims to map the illegal excavations worldwide and

the second is a platform to map the endangered archaeology in Lebanon.

4.3.1 The Looted Heritage Project

The idea of Looted Heritage Project was embarked by a professor and some

students in 2011. The project team had used the torrent of archaeological

materials shared through social media streams, such as Twitter and blogs

(Graham, 2012a). It took the advantages of the Ushahidi platform, as it provides

various ways to be fed with information including the collection of RSS feeds

and trawling Twitter, copying tweets that contain particular keywords. The

project team have “set Ushahidi to search Twitter for #looting, #antiquities,


48

#looted, #illicit,” as well as they have subscribed to feeds from other social

media sources, such as “Art Theft Central, Conflict Antiquities, Illicit Cultural

Property, Looting Matters, and Saving Antiquities for Everyone” (Graham,

2012a). Thus, the Looted Heritage has used a data-trap to collect the tiny pieces

about looted cultural heritage out on the open access web through various social

media streams. Then study these pieces using data mining and text analysis to

turn those information into reports which are presented on map based on their

geo-location data (Graham, 2012b). Moreover, further development was

mentioned as future iterations, as the developing team incorporate data from

eBay to monitor and map the locations of sellers of sudden assemblages of small

finds which could point the way to tracking the field of operations of pot

hunters and subsistence looting (Graham, 2012a).

Figure 4-7: Snapshots for the Looted Heritage platform

shows typical functions provided by Ushahidi platform

Source: (Looted Heritage, 2014)

Typical time line for allocated reports that are seen on map

Typical menu bar:

Home: shows map

Reports: previous reports with comments and state of verifications

Submit a report: location and other basic information is required

Get Alert: set location point of interest to get updates within a range in its context

Typical representation of reports with proportional size to number of reports By default all categories are shown in red but it can be filtered to show a specific category


49

Table 4-5: Preliminary analysis to classify Looted Heritage platform in light of

the previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges.

Classification Criteria Looted Heritage Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s

Type of Knowledge Local - Scientific

VGI Typology Type 2







Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide N/A




4.3.2 Lebanese Crowd-mapping

Since 1975 Beirut city centre witness destruction firstly because of the civil war

(1975-1990) then the socio-economic transformation that led to the demolition

of urban heritage to build modern towers (Marot and Yazigi, 2012). Similar to

Egyptian context, many social initiatives attempt to raise their voice against

these actions. One of those initiatives is an NGO called the Association for the

Protection of the Lebanese Heritage (APLH) which was launched in 2010 and

originally established as Facebook group named ‘stop destroying your

heritage!’ who are fighting the demolition of Beirut’s historic architecture

(Harb, 2014). APLH applied the VGI approach through using Ushahidi platform

to create APLH crowd-map that enables public to locate heritage structures or

archaeology in their vicinity and highlight its status. The users can also put

detailed information for any Lebanese heritage and APLH has the moderation

task to validate reported information (APLH, 2013).

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=168459309874266#!/group.php?gid=107627755931716

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=168459309874266#!/group.php?gid=107627755931716


50

The mapped information can be filtered by reports date or any of the following

categories which are identified by the reporter:

1. Historical Buildings: (Traditional classical heritage building, Modern

heritage building)

2. Archaeological Sites (Prehistoric, Phoenician, Roman, Hellenistic,

Byzantine, Persian, Others)

3. Religious sites (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Others)

4. Public spaces (Public Square, Stairs, Natural site, Public Garden,

Bridges and roads)

5. Status (Facadism (Façades), Destroyed, At risk, Restored, Preserved,

Vandalism, Unknown)

Figure 4-8: Snapshot for the

Get Alerts screen of Lebanese

Crowd-mapping platform.

Source: (APLH, 2014)


51

The reporter can submit report via e-mail or Twitter with the hash-tags

#APLHCrowdmap and #LebaneseHeritage or through the mobile application or

by filling an online form on the APLH website. In addition to date and time

which is filled by default with report current date, the submission form has

mandatory fields to be filled. Those fields are the report title, description, at

least one specification of pre-set categories and the geographical location which

can be identified either directly on the map by marking a point, path or polygon

or by searching for it on the map using a location name or latitude/longitude

coordinates, and in case of any difficulties a reporter can write the full address

which can be later verified by the admin. Other fields are optional, such as

uploading photos or external links for videos or any other references in addition

to the reporter’s basic information. Moreover, users can get alerts when any

report is submitted within range from 1 to 100 km of a certain location that is

specified by the user, and the user has an option to specify some categories of

reports that would get alerted with, as seen in Figure 4-8

Table 4-6: Preliminary analysis to classify Lebanese Crowd-mapping platform

in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges

Classification Criteria Lebanese Crowd-mapping

Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s

Type of Knowledge Local - Scientific

VGI Typology Type 2


Structured/ Unstructured Mainly unstructured (free

description), Structured (category, subcategories, optional information)




Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide Not met as the reporting methods

just accept through web-based platforms


Data Heterogeneous preset categories



52

4.4 Egyptian Applied Cases

In Egypt, people started to use applications that have applied the VGI approach.

Some of them are developed by local initiatives that could use an international

platform as Ushahidi to attempt to solve a certain issue. For instance, criminal

and corruption, sexual harassment, traffic and electricity blackout issues were

tackled by VGI applications, such as ‘Zabatak’, ‘HarassMap’, ‘Wasalny’ and

‘Kahrabtak’, respectively. One of the most interesting observed phenomena that

taxi drivers started to follow the VGI traffic applications ‘By2ollak’ to prevent

traffic jams and to use an international taxi booking mobile application called

‘EasyTaxi’ which was facilitated through marketing campaigns. In the following

section an overview of applications related to social issues, and the other ones

are related to urban issues.

Figure 4-9: Snapshots for ‘Taree2y’ platform’s interface to

show the various user friendly interfaces.

Source: (taree2y, 2012)

One of the most interesting observed phenomena that taxi driver started to

follow the VGI traffic applications ‘By2ollak’ to prevent traffic jams and to use

an international taxi booking mobile application called ‘EasyTaxi’ which was

facilitated through marketing campaigns. In the following section an overview

of applications related to social issue and the other ones are related to urban

issues.


53

4.4.1 HarassMap Case

HarassMap has been launched in 2010 and it can be

considered one of the early used VGI approaches in

Egypt. It is “a volunteer based initiative with the

mission of ending the social acceptability of sexual

harassment and assault in Egypt” (HarassMap,

2014a). It is applied using Ushahidi platform so it

can receive reports through any of SMSs, social

media, e-mails, mobile application, directly through

the form on the website. Reports are accepted to be

anonymously to provide a safe environment for

harassment victims to share their experience (Young,

2014). To achieve sustainability, HarassMap is

applied within integrated components, such as

research, mass media, and communication

campaigns. Those components in addition to the

web-based platform are used to support the on-

ground mobilization effort across Egypt. The map

helps the on-ground teams, who are in most cases

volunteers, to reach reported areas and look for a

supporter who has street presence such as a

doorman or seller in a kiosk or shops. Showing him a

print out of the map and documented reports as a

factual reference help in order to convince him to be

committed by keeping his own place free zone of

harassment actions and he put a sticker to be

publicly known in addition to listing his place in the

website (TEDxAlmedalen - Rebecca Chiao -

HarassMap, 2012). Moreover, the map motivates

residents from those reported areas to voluntary

attempt to change their own community especially

after the widely covered topic in the media on both

national and international level. It was seen as a tool

that might help the law enforcement officials to

allocate personnel more efficiently in areas with

Figure 4-10: Shops with

harassment free zone

stickers

Source: (Gad and Hassan,

2012, p. 17)


54

frequent instances of harassment (Young, 2014)

The collaborative work is one of the main pillars of the success of the project.

Since the project has started, there is a continuous announcement for

volunteers on both individual and institutional level. At the time of writing, the

project has more than 1000 volunteered men and women in 21 communities in

17 governorates all over Egypt (HarassMap, 2014b) and have many companies,

institutions and NGOs working in over 600 public schools, as well as from

citizens’ committees (Gad and Hassan, 2012). Adding to that, the project got

two years grant from Canada’s International Development Research Centre

(IDRC) to explore the potential of crowdsourcing as a research methodology

based on reports submitted by the users of the crowdsourcing website and by

participants in focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews (IDRC, 2014;

Young, 2014).

Table 4-7: Preliminary analysis to classify HarassMap platform in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typology and challenges

Classification Criteria HarassMap Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s


VGI Typology Type 2

Objectivity Subjective






Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide Accept reports through SMS,

Providing contacts for phone calls

Data Quality

Most of reports are classified as unverified, however verification process exists but difficult to be

implemented


Governmental Concerns Target local community,

Concerns exist but the applications got community attractions


55

4.4.2 VGI Module for Agriculture Land-use Violations

As an example of application in the field of urban planning, there is a module

for agriculture land-use violation within a platform called Zabatak which was

initiated by young activists and academics to advocate against crimes, violations

and corruption that was raised up after the 2011 revolution. This module was

added to support a case study made by a professor in al-Fayoum University, and

it lasted four weeks with 60 human sensors who could report 123 valid reports

in al-Fayoum governorate. The platform was supported by awareness campaign

through “the web site and blogs educating the community on the long term

impacts of violations and giving them 123 guidance on how to spot and report

building violations” (Ismail, 2012, pp. 8–15). However, by observing the web-

site, it was noticed that the recent reported violations are related to non-urban

topics and when it was questioned to professor Ayman Ismail through an

interview, he answered as long as there is no taken action from the authoritative

bodies, community gradually lose the motivation to keep reporting (Ismail,

2014).

Table 4-8: Preliminary analysis to classify Agriculture Land-use Violations in

Zabatak platform in light of the previously mentioned VGI typologies and

challenges

Classification Criteria Agriculture Land-use Violations

in Zabatak Platform

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s


VGI Typology Type 2







Nature Mainly Volunteered, Initiated by f-

VGI


56

Classification Criteria Agriculture Land-use Violations

in Zabatak Platform

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide Initially overcome through culture awareness activities but later the

challenge is not addressed

Data Quality Possible verification,

Reputation model is designed but not applied

Data Heterogeneous pre-set categories

Governmental Concerns Target local community and unofficial agreement that was not effective after

the first phase of implementation

4.4.3 VGI Platforms for Monitoring Traffic Status

The most rapidly known VGI applications are three mobile applications called

‘Taree2y’, ‘Wasalny’ and ‘By2ollak’. They are developed to monitor traffic in the

main roads of the most crowded cities in Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria. The

applications, designed more friendly on mobile application, target the mobile

user, as it is preferred to get spatial information through the embedded GPS

receiver by which data quality could be maintained. However, they accept

receiving user generated data through social media and the traffic map is

available on the application formal web-site. On October 10th2010, it was the

first launch of ‘By2ollak’which is a brain child of five cousins aged between 23

and 30(Davies, 2011). Three of them are computer science graduates who were

responsible for development, one is a business administration graduate who

took on marketing and the last one is an architect by profession who was

responsible for the design and user interface (Messieh, 2011). The application

got more than 5000 registered users on the first launched day and Vodafone

which is one of the three dominant mobile phone companies in Egypt, had

approached the founders with an offer to sponsor the application. The company

promoted the application by spreading the word to its customers, posting

information about it on its official Facebook page, and launching an advertising

campaign onother websites (Messieh, 2011). Over the time the application has

achieved more success, which is indicated through their winning awards,

sponsored partners, thousands of registered users and followers (Bey2ollak,

2014).


57

Table 4-9: Preliminary analysis to classify traffic platforms in light of the

previously mentioned VGI typologies and challenges

Classification Criteria Platforms of Monitoring Traffic

Status (By2ollak, Wasalny, Taree2y)

VG

I T

yp

olo

gy

an

d M

ain

C

ha

ra

cte

ris

tic

s

Type of Knowledge Scientific - Local

VGI Typology Type 2


Structured/ Unstructured Mainly structured (Categories),

Unstructured (free text comments, photos)

Geo-spatial Data Capture Geocoding,

GPS

Cartographic Data Feature Point, Lines


Nature Volunteered

Ch

all

en

ge

s

Digital Divide

Promote result on radio, Possible to get information through

SMS services, Simple visualization to facilitate its

usage for illiterate

Data Quality Verifications based on number of

reporters who report the same information,


Governmental Concerns Target local community,

Concerns exist but the applications got community attractions

4.5 Preliminary Comparative Analysis

Studying the aforementioned cases helps to build knowledge about other

characteristics and functions that should be taken into consideration in

designing the framework of VGI platform. These characteristics are: scale,

possible adaptability in other contexts, possible involvement within official

systems, indicators of success, the need for integrated activities, the ability to

get alerts, and the financial support. These characteristics are used to compare

the studied platforms in order to get an overview of the previously mentioned

cases, as shown in table Table 4-10.


58

Table 4-10: Comparative analysis for the different characteristics of the studied

VGI case studies

Studied Cases S

ca

le

Ad

ap

tab

ilit

y f

or

o

the

r c

on

tex

t

Inv

olv

em

en

t w

ith

in

off

icia

l s

ys

tem

Ac

hie

ve

d s

uc

ce

ss

Integrated Activities for Support

Ab

ilit

y t

o g

et

ale

rts

Fin

an

cia

l su

pp

or

t

Cr

ed

ible

VG

I A

pp

lie

d C

as

es

Ush

ah

idi

Pla

tfo

rm

Sca

lab

le

Ad

ap

tab

le

N/A

See

n i

n m

an

y c

ase

s es

pec

iall

y

emer

gen

cies

re

spo

nse

Ba

se p

latf

orm

th

at

it c

an

be

ad

ap

ted

fo

r v

ari

ou

s is

sues

Ab

le

N/A

Op

enS

tree

tMa

p

Glo

ba

l

Ad

ap

tab

le

N/A

seen

in

th

e a

mo

un

t o

f a

dd

ed i

nfo

rma

tio

n,

cov

era

ge

an

d n

um

be

r o

f p

art

icip

an

ts)

Pa

rall

el b

log

fo

r u

sers

in

tera

ctio

ns,

T

ran

spa

ren

t a

nd

a

cces

sib

le r

ole

s o

f te

am

s a

nd

th

e w

ork

fl

ow

in

gen

era

l A

nn

ua

l co

nfe

ren

ce

N/A

On

lin

e ch

an

nel

fo

r D

on

ati

on

Civ

ic D

uty

Or

ien

ted

Sy

ste

ms

Fix

My

Cit

y

Sca

lab

le w

ith

in

Ger

ma

ny

N/A

Inv

olv

ed

See

n i

n i

ncl

usi

on

in

off

icia

l sy

stem

Uti

lize

th

e n

oti

fica

tio

n

com

po

nen

t to

m

ax

imiz

e ex

po

sure

Ab

le

N/A

Fix

My

Str

eet

Sca

lab

le w

ith

in

UK

Ad

ap

tab

le

Inv

olv

ed

seen

in

en

cou

rag

emen

t o

f o

ther

cit

ies

to

ap

ply

it

N/A

Ab

le

N/A


59

Studied Cases S

ca

le

Ad

ap

tab

ilit

y f

or

o

the

r c

on

tex

t

Inv

olv

em

en

t w

ith

in

off

icia

l s

ys

tem

Ac

hie

ve

d s

uc

ce

ss

Integrated Activities for Support

Ab

ilit

y t

o g

et

ale

rts

Fin

an

cia

l su

pp

or

t

He

rit

ag

e R

ela

ted

Ca

se

s

Th

e L

oo

ted

H

erit

ag

e

Glo

ba

l

N/A

No

t in

vo

lved

N/A

, P

rom

isin

g

bu

t n

ot

seen

N/A

Ab

le

N/A

Leb

an

ese

Cro

wd

-m

ap

pin

g

Sca

lab

le w

ith

in

Leb

an

on

N/A

No

t in

vo

lved

N/A

, P

rom

isin

g b

ut

no

t se

en

Pro

mo

tio

na

l si

mp

le

ma

teri

al

such

as

po

sta

l ca

rds,

G

ener

al

spir

it o

f p

rote

stin

g a

ga

inst

v

iola

tio

ns,

P

ara

llel

ale

rtin

g

thro

ug

h s

oci

al

med

ia

Ab

le

N/A

Eg

yp

tia

n C

as

es

Ha

rass

Ma

p

Sca

lab

le w

ith

in

Eg

yp

t

Ad

ap

tab

le -

use

d

ou

tsid

e E

gy

pt

No

t in

vo

lved

See

n i

n n

um

ber

of

sha

red

in

form

ati

on

in

gre

ate

r C

air

o

On

-gro

un

d a

ctiv

itie

s,

Cu

ltu

re a

wa

ren

ess

cam

pa

ign

s,

Fo

llo

win

g u

p a

nd

g

ivin

g h

elp

, N

etw

ork

ing

wit

h

oth

er p

art

ner

s h

av

e co

mm

on

in

tere

st,

Mo

nit

ori

ng

an

d

rese

arc

h u

nit

Ab

le

Res

earc

h g

ran

t,

Pa

rtn

ersh

ip,

Za

ba

tak

:(A

gri

cult

ure

L

an

d-u

se V

iola

tio

ns)

Sca

lab

le w

ith

in

Eg

yp

t

N/A

No

t in

vo

lved

Pro

mis

ing

bu

t n

ot

seen

yet

In t

he

init

ial

ph

ase

s:

Cu

ltu

re a

wa

ren

ess

cam

pa

ign

s

Init

ial

com

mu

nic

ati

on

wit

h

the

mu

nic

ipa

lity

Ab

le

N/A

,

Mo

nit

ori

ng

Tra

ffic

S

tatu

s (B

y2

oll

ak

, W

asa

lny

, T

are

e2y

) C

ity

lev

el

(met

rop

oli

tan

cit

ies

in E

gy

pt)

A

da

pta

ble

th

rou

gh

th

e cr

eato

rs

No

t in

vo

lved

See

n o

n i

ts w

ide

usa

ge

Usi

ng

med

ia f

or

mo

re p

ub

lic

pro

mo

tio

n t

o g

ive

the

au

die

nce

an

o

ver

vie

w o

f tr

aff

ic

sta

tus

N/A

Th

rou

gh

pri

va

te

com

pa

nie

s sp

on

sors

su

ch a

s m

ob

ile

com

pa

nie

s


60

4.6 Conclusion and Lessons Learned

This chapter illustrates the unlimited possibility that technology can do for the

daily lives. Accordingly, the VGI applications in several levels of users’ numbers

and specialities were demonstrated. The following points reflect the main

driven lessons:

The advanced technology can be used by everyone, and it is a matter of

tools accessibility rather than personal ability.

Providing various channels for data collection widens the scope for

various types of users to participate as data provider, and this is evident

in received SMS or by having facilitators who can overcome the digital

divide that is mentioned as VGI challenge.

In the Middle East context, media, marketing and physical campaigns

play an important role in highlighting issues and encouraging platforms

widespread. This can be seen in the widespread of ‘HarassMap’ in

comparison with current usage of ‘Zabatak’ platform for criminal and

corruption monitoring.

Accessibility to open data and providing information in digital form lead

to better data utilization. This was clear in case of emergency response,

as data could be used by others who are capable of providing support

that can be integrated to solve the main issue.

Institutional collaboration and good resource management assure

project success, this can be seen within the OSM foundation and the

HarassMap working teams. Additionally, these encourage others to be

involved and offer grants.

Automatic notifications are important functions that can be used in

various ways. On one hand, it facilitates for the data creator to spread

his shared information among many platforms in one time. On the other

hand, it facilitates a controlled channel for users to get updates of the

concerned topic. These notification functions can be used to overcome

the difficulty of changing local governmental system by providing easy

tool to get access to the desired information.

It is common to have little percentage of active users and that does not

mean that the other users are unimportant. The larger the number of

users the more likely for better information utilization and investment is


61

even in a way that does not directly affect the platform progress, while it

might have an indirect effect, such as motivating the inactive ones to be

active. This lesson is clearly driven from OSM platform.

Accordingly, these lessons are to be further used with the findings of the other

two pillars, - in Chapters two and five, of the study to guide in structuring the

framework that is presented in Chapter six as a conceptual framework to foster

the collaborative work and to facilitate the use of available GI in order to

safeguard the urban heritage in Egypt.

63

5 | Community Acceptance Analysis

As it was mentioned in the research methodology, two questionnaires have been

designed. One targets activists in the field of urban heritage and the other

targets public community who are spatially connected to urban heritage. To

share, respondents’ willingness to share information about urban heritage using

VGI platform and finally the respondents’ expectations about the attracted

community groups to use the suggested platform. The common questions have

been designed to compare the collected answers of the two groups in order to

evaluate how far the public participants’ perception in comparison to the

activists. The difference between the two designed questionnaires is on the level

of detailed questioning as it was simplified to public and there was more

consideration to the time taken for answering it. The first section of each

questionnaire aims to get the perceived identification of the urban heritage and

violations from each respondent. This chapter is going to show the major

findings of both questionnaires.

5.1 Samples Profiling

The questionnaire for activists is answered by 30 respondents with various

experiences. 60% of the sample size has more than 10 years of experience in the

heritage conservation field, seen inFigure 5-1. 55% of activists’ respondents

have been involved into international experiences such as UNESCO, AKTC-E,

American Research Center, Docomomo and Getty Institute. Almost similar

percentage is recorded for being active through web-based initiatives either

within groups or individually through personal blogs. As illustrated in

Figure 5-2, 34% of respondents have worked with official institutions such as

CHAPTER FIVE | COMMUNITY ACCEPTANCE ANALYSIS

64

NOUH, MSA and CULTNAT. For the public questionnaire, it is answered by 61

respondents. Since this sample size is relatively small sample size, it is used in

this study to get some preliminary findings that can be indications to the result

of examined issues.

Figure 5-1: Activists’ years of

experiences.

Figure 5-2: Activists’

experiences.

Figure 5-3: Public sample

geographic distribution from

governorates with exclusion of

Cairo.

Despite posting the questionnaire among several online groups in several

governorates to assure representative answers from each, the sample is

dominated by Cairenes’ respondents and only 30% of respondents were from

other governorates. This reflects the difficulties to reach the local community

there and the needs to support activists in those areas. Percentages in

Figure 5-3 also reflect that number of respondents proportionally increased in

governorates that have most active initiatives such as Alexandria, Al-Daqahlya

and Port Said where initiatives of Save Alex and Save al-Mansoura and Save

Port Said, respectively.

5.2 Questioning Existing Practice and Ideologies

The first questioned issue is the perceived urban heritage, asked question was

bout the context of a significant building whether it is perceived as part of the

heritage or not. As shown in Figure 5-4, 75% of the public respondents

considered the context is part of the heritage and should be reserved while the

other 25% just care about the significant buildings.

27%

20%

17%

23%

13%

Less than 5 years

From 5 to < 10 years

From 10 to <15

More than 15

Not valid answer

59%55%

34%

24%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

We

b b

ase

d i

nit

iati

ve

Inte

rna

tio

na

lex

per

ien

ce

Off

icia

l in

stit

uti

on

s

Aca

dem

ic

22%

22%

22%

11%

5%

6%6%

6%

Alexanderia Al-Daqahlya

Port Said Al-Giza

Al-Gharbeya Al-Fyoum

Al-Behira Aswan


65

For activists, the questioned issue is asked through three sub-questions. Two of

them are about the identification of significance of buildings which are not

officially registered in NOUH list; if building typology that reflects certain built

era or the uniqueness of built features or designs are perceived as significant.

The third is about the open spaces that form the urban fabric even if it was

privately owned. For the three sub-questions, almost 90% of respondents agree

that all considered as urban heritage as seen in Figure 5-5.

Figure 5-4: Public respondents’ perception of urban heritage

Figure 5-5: Findings of the three sub-questions

Perception of the urban heritage violations was questioned by giving seven

options of violations; three of them are related to the urban fabric and the rest

to building. The options are varied degrees of violation such as neglect and lack

of maintenance, modification, inappropriate usage, and deconstruction.

0%

25%

75%

Very old and should be replaced by new ones.

Some of them have valuable design or decoration and onlythose should be preserved.

The context is considered valuable as it form the urban heritage and should be preserved/conserved/rehabilitated even if the building doesn’t have valuable features but it add value to its context.

90%

93%

90%

10%

7%

10%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Buildings have unique features or design, neither amonument nor included in NOUH list, is an urban

heritage

Buildings that was built before the twenty firstcentury and reflect building typology or

architectural style at the date built era is an urbanheritage

Spaces that forms urban fabric, this includesprivately owned spaces, is an urban heritage

Disagree Agree


66

Figure 5-6: Comparison of findings of activists’ and public

responses

As illustrated in Figure 5-6, more than half of the sample size of public

respondents agrees that all given options are considered as violations.

Violations that are related to buildings were more perceived as violations than

the other related to the urban fabric. The inappropriate usage was the least

action considered as violation as only 53% of public respondents agreed on

considering it as kind of violation. The highest percentage was 85% which was

for deconstruction of valuable buildings. The next percentage is 83% which is

for neglect and lack of maintenance for significant buildings. Then the following

order, modifications that hide original design, constructing new building that

negatively influence the urban style for an area, inappropriate usage for

building, and modifications that affect the urban fabric.

Findings from activists’ responses are almost have the same order but the

percentages are higher as the highest percentage is 100% that is for the

respondents agree on the deconstruction action is kind of violation and the least

percentage is 79% for urban fabric alterations are kind of violations. This

indicates that both activist and public have a common sense towards the urban

heritage context. Open spaces that form fabric are not yet a fully recognized

from public which is seen in the acceptance of the inappropriate usage for

97%

96%

79%

96%

89%

89%

100%

83%

75%

54%

61%

61%

53%

85%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

Lack of maintenance that reaches deteriorated conditionis kind of urban heritage violations

Alterations that partially hide/destroy the original designis kind of urban heritage violations

Alterations that affect urban fabric or architectural style iskind of urban heritage violations

Constructing new building in the context that negativelyaffect the urban style (visually) is kind of urban heritage

violations

Inappropriate building usage is kind of urban heritageviolations

Inappropriate space usage is kind of urban heritageviolations

Deconstruction of valuable building is kind of urbanheritage violations

Public Responses Activist Responses


67

spaces by 10% of activists respondents while they do

not accept the inappropriate usage when it comes to

heritage buildings. That proves that violations

actions are debatable even among activists.

The next part is about respondents’ previous

experience of sharing knowledge which is simply

asked in the questionnaire for public. As shown in

Figure 5-7 , around 50% of respondents showed their

willing to express their thoughts however they never

did except among their friends, while few

percentages of respondents previously shared their

knowledge among interested experts, or connected

the local authorities and responsible officials.

For activists it was asked in more details as the

question was about the frequency of sharing various

options of information. As illustrated in Figure 5-8,

all the giving options were answered as regularly

used by more than 50% of respondents except the

sharing original documents that was by only 17%.

The highest percentage was for the often expressing

for urban heritage violations which are reported by

73% of respondents. Then the following order for the

often use: the historical information related to

heritage areas, web links, highlights of valuable

features and elements, and edited articles or

magazine.

Additional question was asked to the activists only; it

is about their opinion and evaluation for the

effectiveness of each type of sharable platforms. As

seen in Figure 5-9, Almost all giving options where

considered as very effective or effective by more than

60% of respondents except for personal blogs that

does not focus on urban heritage.

Figure 5-7: Public answers

about their previous

experience in expressing

noticed violations

55%

22%20%

45%

5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Fri

end

s

Pro

fess

ion

als

or

NG

Os

wh

o a

re t

ryin

g t

o s

av

e h

erit

ag

e

Lo

cal

au

tho

riti

es o

r g

ov

ern

men

tal

bo

die

s w

ho

are

res

po

nsi

ble

Lik

e to

sh

are

bu

t n

ever

did

Nev

er c

are

ab

ou

t th

at


68

Figure 5-8: Activists’ answers to question about their

previously shared information

Figure 5-9: Activists’ evaluation on the effectiveness of the

sharing tool according to widen distribution, public

interaction, considerable from decision makers

53%

17%

70%

62%

73%

63%

33%

57%

30%

31%

20%

27%

3%

17%

3%

3%

7%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

Fully or partially edited article, report, magazine, book …etc

Copy of original documents such as design plansand elevations

Historical information related to the building/area

Highlights of valuable features or elements

Urban heritage violations

Web links

Often Rarely Once Never

14%

62%

7%

0%

28%

11%

24%

48%

7%

21%

52%

59%

28%

69%

55%

52%

70%

52%

41%

55%

48%

48%

17%

3%

10%

17%

0%

0%

21%

7%

34%

28%

0%

10%

7%

14%

28%

21%

19%

3%

3%

3%

3%

0%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Organization official web site

Facebook page or group created this issuesspecifically

Personal Facebook timeline

Personal blog that contains different topics

Personal blog have been created for this issuesspecifically

Other institutions who have the same interest

Academic lectures

Organized public events or open discussions

Closed discussion among group members

Conferences

Newspapers and public media

Very Effective Effective Ineffective Do Not Know


69

The top three choices that were considered as ‘very effective’ tools for sharing

knowledge are: Facebook pages or groups created for heritage topic,

newspapers or public media, and organized public events or open discussions,

by 62%, 48% and 52%respectively. It was remarked that the effectiveness of

newspapers and public media was no single doubt. The rest of the giving

options for tools where considered as ‘effective’ by almost 50% of respondents,

While, sharing knowledge among personal Facebook time line and sharing it

through other institutions that have the same interest were considered effective

by almost 70%. This proves that social media and initiatives are perceived as

either a ‘very effective’ or an’ effective’ tool for sharing such a related knowledge

in Egyptian context.

5.3 Questioning VGI Practice

The next part is about the expectation for the new approach proposed. It was

questioned by giving examples of crowd-sourced applications that have been

recently used for traffic status. In the public participants’ questionnaire, the

question combined three aspects. The first aspect is about the geographic

distribution of attracted citizen which were specified either to cover the country

or be limited to the large cities. The second aspect is about the attracted groups

which were specified as officials’ responsible bodies, citizens who are in

profession or study related to the topic and general public citizens. The third

aspect is about questioning general achievements such as usefulness, reliability

and most updated.

Figure 5-10: Public expectations about the attracted

community group.

31%

75%

43%

38%

19%

19%

20%

4%

24%

11%

2%

15%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Attractive for public citizens whose study orprofession is not related

More attractive for citizens who study or work onthe same field

Attractive for governmental bodies and localauthorities who responsible of urban heritage

management

Do not know or unpredictable issueI do expect it would not beAgree and expect to enclosed for large cities


70

The findings of this complex question is shown in Figure 5-10, it shows that

most of the respondents agree that it will be attracted to the group whose study

or profession is related to the urban heritage on country levels as it was

reported by 75% of respondents.. For authorities and governmental bodies, 62%

of respondents expect that it will be attractive to them and most of the rest

think it would not attract them. It is believed that it can attract professionals

and authorities in the whole country, but it would not be like that in case of

public citizens and most probably it will be enclosed to large cities.

Figure 5-11 shows that more than 70% agree that a platform would be useful

and would include the most updated information. Meanwhile this percentage

decreased to 51% when it comes to reliability of information as 41% see that it is

hard to be predicted and 8% see that it would not be reliable.

Figure 5-11: Public expectations about the suggested

platform.

For activists group, the questions were going through more details so it was

divided into two questions. The first was asking about the user’s groups and

level of interaction. The second was asking about objectives and the expected

time of achievement whether long or short time. Also another question was

asked before those two, it aimed to set a base understanding of the expected

features in the new VGI platform. Twelve characteristic points were asked to be

evaluated as very important, important, unimportant or do not know. As seen in

Figure 5-12, ten of the twelve points were perceived by more than 80% of

respondents as either important or very important. The two points that were

not in the interest of the respondent were more of technical issues for the GI.

That reflects the lack of activists’ knowledge about how the geo-spatial analysis

33%

55%

50%

18%

22%

28%

8%

0%

9%

41%

24%

14%

0% 20% 40% 60%

Reliable

Most updatedinformation

UsefulDo not know orunpredictable issue

I do expect it would notbe

Agree and expect toenclosed for large cities

Agree and expect it oncountry wide


71

takes place. This was clear as 40% answered with ‘no idea’ about exporting the

information to be analysed in other advanced GIS application. However,

marking the location, and the ability to share photos and videos as sources of

verification were equally the first important features. The following table

represents ranking features on the base of weighted value of importance for the

twelve points of evaluation. (unimportant =1, important=2, very important=3).

Table 5-1: Analysis to rank activists’ expectations on the importance of given

possible properties of the VGI platform.

Ra

nk

Property

Imp

or

tan

ce

(W

eig

hte

d

va

lue

)

% o

f a

ns

we

rs

1 Photos and videos are sources of verification for violation 2.60 100%

2 Posts about physical location must have location mark or

address or GPS point 2.60 100%

3 Provide downloadable application on mobile which can save GPS location point and work offline and upload once there

is internet connection available 2.37 93%

4 Posts should be verified with valid sources of verification 2.37 100%

5 Collaborative management of the platform (Community

Based Organization(s) + Official governmental body) 2.31 93%

6 Posts can be directly sent to the official body based on post type with receiving confirmation from the official system.

2.28 93%

7 Posts must be classified while posting either violation report

or data for archiving or call for technical support or offer support or indicator of possible violation

2.21 90%

8 Many comments can be added by others to each post 2.20 97%

9 Provided interactive map can be filtered based on time, area

and type of posts 2.20 93%

10

User can fill in a building inventory form to share more detailed information such as construction date, building architecture style, building uses, occupation status, and

others.

2.13 97%

11 Provided map can be edited to add points, polygons or lines

such as Google earth 1.73 87%

12 Geographic data can be exported to KML file to be used in

other geographic analysis 1.37 60%


72

Figure 5-12: Activists’ responses to evaluate the suggested

properties for VGI platform.

For activists, questioning the expected group that would be attracted to use the

platform was based on evaluating the interaction on four levels from none to

huge. The results of public respondents show that initiatives and citizens with

related professions are expected to be the most attracted group. The initiative

group got the highest expectation for interactivity. 83% of respondents expect it

to have a huge usage. The following table represents the result of ranking

groups. (none=1, limited=2, medium=3 and huge=4)

55%

63%

30%

45%

50%

63%

48%

33%

53%

37%

17%

23%

28%

33%

63%

41%

37%

33%

38%

50%

37%

53%

53%

30%

10%

3%

3%

3%

13%

3%

7%

13%

3%

3%

17%

7%

7%

3%

10%

7%

3%

7%

7%

13%

40%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

Collaborative management of the platform (CommunityBased Organization(s) + Official governmental body)

Posts about physical location must have location mark oraddress or GPS point

Many comments can be added by others to each post

Posts must be classified while posting either violationreport or data for archiving or call for technical support or

offer support or indicator of possible violation

Posts should be verified with valid sources of verification

Photos and videos are sources of verification for violation

Posts can be directly sent to the official body based on posttype with receiving confirmation from the official system.

User can fill in a building inventory form to share moredetailed information such as construction date, buildingarchitecture style, building uses, occupation status, ..etc.

Provide downloadable application on mobile which cansave GPS location point and work offline and uploaded

once there is internet connection availability

Provided interactive map can be filtered based on time,area, type of posts

Provided map can be edited to add points, polygons, orlines such as google earth

Geographic data can be exported to KML file to be used inother geographic analysis

Very Important Important Unimportant Have No Idea


73

Table 5-2: Activists’ expectations on the groups that would be attracted to use

the platform

Rank Examined Group Usage

(weighted value)

Percentage of Answers

Highest Percentage

1 Initiatives or institutions who care about urban heritage

3.8 100% 83% Huge

2 Professionals such as architects, planners,

archaeologists, historians, .. etc

3.7 100% 72% Huge

3 International urban heritage institutions

3.6 90% 62% Huge

4 Foreigners who are living in Egypt

3.3 90% 41% Huge

5 Educated citizens 3.0 97% 66% Medium

6 NOUH 2.9 72% 28% Huge

7 Young citizens 2.8 97% 48% Medium

8 Related ministries 2.7 83% 31% Huge

9 Residents of historic areas 2.6 100% 52% Limited

10 Citizens living in large cities 2.4 90% 41% Limited

11 Citizens living in relatively small or remote areas such as

Siwa, New Gourna village (Hassan Fathy), ..etc

2.3 93% 41% Limited

12 Local authorities 2.2 86% 31% Limited

13 Owners of significant properties

2.0 100% 48% Limited

This ranking shows the huge gap between the activist and the local authority

that has the right to take actions to stop the violations to the urban heritage. It

also shows that there is a doubt of the participation of the responsible

ministries and NOUH as there are many respondents could not expect their

participation. Thus, they got huge as the highest categorization but this

categorization was identified by only one third of total respondents. As seen in

Figure 5-13, 28% of respondent could not expect NOUH’s level of interaction.

This reflects that the effort done by this organization is not clear for the all

activist. Yet, only young and educated citizens groups got 2.8 and 3.3,


74

respectively, which means that their usage is near to

medium usage while other citizens groups got less

than 2.5 which means they are near to the limited

usage than the medium. That reflects that there are

certain difficulties to attract this large group. The

location factor was measured just for citizens’

community group. The result is similar to the one got

from public questionnaire; it shows that this factor

has a slight negative effect of the usage. Interactivity

was expected to be higher in large cities than the

small or remotely areas. The high expectation of the

non-Egyptians interaction should not be neglected as

it can positively add a value to the impact of this kind

of platform.

As mentioned before, objectives have been

questioned by listing fifteen possible options, and

respondents were asked to evaluate it based on the

expected time of achievement either ‘long’ or ‘short

term’ or ‘unachievable’. Twelve of the fifteen

suggested objectives were expected to be achievable

by more than 90% of respondents while the other

three were expected as achievable as ‘long term’ but

with some doubts of achievement that should not be

underestimated. Those three are related to officials’

responsibility and official organizations which

confirm aforementioned results related to the groups

interactivity. The following table shows the

classification for each of the listed objectives and

percentages of respondents who have classified them.

24%

31%

24%

7%

14%

None Limited

Medium Huge

No Idea

7%

24%

14%27%

28%

None Limited

Medium Huge

No Idea

Figure 5-13: Expected level

of interaction of local

authorities.

Figure 5-14: Expected level

of interaction of NOUH.


75

Table 5-3: Activists’ expectations on the possible achievement by the proposed

platform

Possible Listed Objectives Classification Percentage of Respondents

Provide a communication platform for community interaction

Short Term 71%

Provide a pool for the most updated information Short Term 64%

Be a documentation tool Short Term 61%

Can motivate heritage experts to offer their support

Short Term 61%

Tool to know the distribution pattern by knowing the violation time, building conditions

and occupation status Short Term 56%

Give a wider perspective of size of urban heritage problems

Short Term 54%

Provide transparency and accountability tool Long Term 71%

Be a tool for monitoring urban heritage change Long Term 68%

Be a motivation tool to develop social intervention projects which can have a positive impact on conservation such as (system to get support for rent or adaptive reuse, activities to

raise community awareness, cultural mobilization for the area, campaigns to get

public sector support in the area … etc.)

Long Term 64%

Facilitate communication channels between public and governmental sector

Long Term 57%

Be a helpful tool to predict similar cases that could be endangered

Long Term 54%

Be a tool to prioritize areas for interventions Long Term 54%

Could be a tool to highlight areas to be included as a heritage areas

Long Term 54%

Motivate institution such as CULTNAT to professionally document endangered heritage

Long Term 54%

Motivate officially responsible actors to develop the official management tools

Long Term 46%


76

Figure 5-15: Activst’s expectations on the possible

achievement by the proposed platform

32%

71%

18%

18%

64%

61%

54%

56%

39%

39%

39%

21%

29%

29%

61%

68%

25%

57%

71%

36%

39%

46%

41%

54%

54%

54%

46%

64%

54%

36%

0%

4%

25%

11%

0%

0%

0%

4%

7%

7%

7%

32%

7%

18%

4%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Be a tool for monitoring urban heritage change

Provide a communication platform for communityinteraction

Facilitate communication channels betweenpublic and governmental sector

Provide transparency and accountability tool

Provide a pool for the most updated information

Be a documentation tool

Give a wider perspective of size of urban heritageproblems

Tool to know the distribution pattern by knowingviolation time ,building conditions, occupation

status

Be a helpful tool to predict similar cases could beendangered

Be a tool to prioritize areas for interventions

Could be a tool to highlights area to be included asa heritage area

Motivate officially responsible actors to developthe official management tools

Be a motivation tool to develop social interventionprojects which can have a positive impact on

conservation such as (system to get support for…

Motivate institution such as CULTNAT toprofessionally document endangered heritage

Can motivate heritage experts to offer theirsupport

Not Achievable Long Term Short Term


77

Most of the respondents are willing to share their

knowledge and use the proposed platform. As seen in

Figure 5-16, 77% of respondents to public

questionnaire and all the activists are willing to

participate through it. As seen in Figure 5-17, 86% of

activists expect to have huge interaction and only 11%

expect medium interaction.

Similar to the activists, sharing photos is the most

expected data type for use according to public

respondents, but the use of GPS or marking on map is

expected to be used by 59% of respondents, as seen in

Figure 5-18.

5.4 Conclusion and Highlighted Findings

Both questionnaires’ answers showed general

community acceptability to the general idea of having

VGI platform to share information related to urban

heritage. The activists’ responses showed that

violations are the frequently shared information, that

confirm that the currently core issue is the violations

against urban heritage.

The findings showed the habitual use of technologies

and the appreciation of the value of sharing location

and photos although there is a certain lack of

knowledge about the value of geographic analysis; this

indicates the importance of providing training

materials for the possible utilization of such an

analysis and how to make use of it to safeguard the

urban heritage.

5%

18%

77%

Not willing

May be

Willing

3%11%

86%

Limited

Medium

Huge

Figure 5-16: Public

willingness to use the

suggested platform.

Figure 5-17: Activists

respondents’ willingness to

use the suggested platform.


78

Figure 5-18: Expected data type for users.

Most of the respondents showed their willingness to use the suggested VGI

platform despite of their expectation of the lack usage from the authoritative

bodies; that reflects the respondents feeling of responsibility to share

information when there is an easy accessible channel for that and could also

reflects possible seen promise from other support from other groups such as the

international organizations or indirect support through professionals and local

initiatives. However, this shows a certain need to find other ways for

coordination to interlink with the local authorities. This also confirms the need

for on-ground activities that integrate with the VGI platform in order to attract

the expected ideal groups.

The aforementioned analyses show there is no big difference in perceiving the

urban heritage and violations between the public and activists responses, thus it

is expected to have data homogeneous and possibly integrated. However, it

should be taken into consideration that the public sample size could have

influence on this result

The highlighted effectiveness of newspapers and media to share information

should be considered and adds another important target group that can highly

support the overcoming of the broader problem: The continues loss of urban

heritage

81%

40%36%

24%

50%

59%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Photos Videos Text URLs Address or nameof geograhical

place

Use GPS pointsor mark on map

81

6 | Framework Development

Based on the findings of the previous chapters - the analysis of problem tree

that shows two needed strategies which are the development of information

systems and the collaborative work discussed in Chapter Two, the challenges of

VGI that needed to be considered discussed in Chapter Three, the supported

tools and functions in the applied cases in Chapter Four, and the community

acceptance of applying VGI to share information about issues that threatened

the heritage fabric in Chapter Five - this chapter recommends a conceptual

framework to sustain the use of the public shared information. The framework

attempts to overcome all the above mentioned challenges through following

some of the previously applied strategies and introducing others to match the

local context.

6.1 Objective

The broader objective of the suggested framework is to achieve early warned

stakeholders who work collaboratively to stop the continuous loss of urban

heritage. The framework has two sub objectives; the first one is to expand the

foundation of resources through widening the range of contributors and

widening exploration to reach the authorized urban heritage responsible bodies.

The second is to consider the spatial relations among the shared information

between contributors. Both sub objectives can be supported by applying the

VGI approach.

6.2 Key Actors

The framework has four key actors: experts, local partners, mappers and

donors. Those key actors are the pillars to sustain the suggested framework.

CHAPTER SIX | FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT

82

Figure 6-1: Key actors of the suggested framwork


83

6.2.1 Groups of Experts

Involvement of different experts is needed in order to strengthen the quality of

information within the suggested framework. This section shows roles of the

main needed experts for the core fields of the framework which are information

technology (IT), GI, urban heritage, trainings and liaison. However, other

experts could be included in certain phases such as lawyers and accountants.

6.2.2 Information Technology

IT experts are needed to create the VGI platform, develop software, and keep

the software maintenance. They are responsible to develop platform interfaces

that are user friendly and visually attractive in order to facilitate and attract

various types of users for participation. For instance, enabling users to

customize the application interface might help users to easily reach the

frequently used functions, and developing functions to facilitate notification,

such as automatically posting and getting information from social media.

6.2.3 Geographic Information Experts

The first responsibility of GI experts is to provide IT experts with identification

of the needed geographic layers such as monuments, registered buildings or

areas by NOUH, and other significant buildings or urban areas that are

suggested by activists. They are responsible for designing the geographic

database that would be used to store collected information. Further, they should

manage the collected geographic data and analyse it. Thus, they would be able

to identify gaps and highlight them to other key actors in order to look for

methods and propose interventions to overcome these gaps.

6.2.4 Urban Heritage Experts

Urban heritage experts should provide the technical information related to the

historical and urban values in order to negotiate with official responsible bodies

in case of requests for adding a certain valuable building or requests for

reconsidering the removal of a valuable one from the list. Furthermore, they

should participate in preparing trainings for urban valuation to improve the

quality of the collected information.


84

6.2.5 Trainers

Preparing trainings for various actors helps to standardize framework

processes. Many of these trainings are provided online to match the dynamics

of the designed framework. Some of these trainings are to be prepared

collaboratively with GI experts and urban heritage experts, such as training for

adding or modifying geo-spatial location and training for urban heritage

valuation, respectively. In general, trainers are responsible for providing

training for the use of platform, data validation, data manipulation, and

mobilization for different other users.

6.2.6 Liaisons

Since coordination with officials and negotiating issues need social and

presentation skills, the framework is designed to have specialists for this task.

Liaisons can approach other organizations to convince them to intervene with

possible solutions. For instance, liaisons should approach official bodies to take

actions or approach specialized organizations to implement certain actions,

such as CULTNAT to start documentation of urban heritage that is prone to

loss.

6.2.7 Local Partners

Since the coverage of the whole country is one of the main concerning issues,

there is a need to assure representation of local partners from several areas. The

local partner should be able to mobilize the community to participate in the VGI

platform and approach the responsible official bodies to take advantage of the

gathered information to take a prompt action to address issues. They also

should develop on ground activities such as organizing sessions and workshops

that are integrated with the platform to raise culture awareness.

In order to maintain the data quality, they can validate posted information on

the platform based on their presence in the area. They might have their own

trusted network that can check, if the posted information is correct or

misleading. They also should use the reputation models to build network with

the trusted mappers in order to get support in data validation. They should use

the notification function on the VGI platform to be notified with any posted

information in their local area in order to overcome any delays that might affect

resolving the posted issues.


85

Those local partners could be community based organizations (CBOs) and local

activists who have self–motivation to participate in community activities. They

can also act as facilitators for local community to overcome the digital divide

that is one of the VGI challenges.

6.2.8 Mappers (data providers)

Mappers are the ones who can participate with uploading geographic

information, link public shared information to a certain location on the VGI

map, and update information with geographic location. They can enhance

located SMS information or any other manual mapped information that might

not be correctly added to the map.

Many of the current actors can play this role; for instance, the NOUH have

already shared geographic information, and they can participate with uploading

this information, in case they are willing to support and participate in the VGI

platform.

Activists, who currently share issues that can possibly be added to the VGI map,

can post their information on the VGI platform, and this information can be

automatically posted on their social media accounts, such as Facebook page or

blog on the same time by using notification functions. Other IT functions can be

used to facilitate activists’ mapping, such as enabling the activists through

software settings to authorize the VGI platform to get the posted information

from certain resources - such as personal blogs and Twitter - and present it on

the VGI map. This can be done with the assistance of any other volunteered

mappers within guidance of online guides and trainings.

Local community mappers are the target group who are needed to widen the

scope of the collected information and assure its updates. They are the data

providers for the urban heritage issues through acting as sensors to report

changes to the urban heritage in their contextual area. They are approached by

the local partners to participate with their knowledge and supported by online

trainings for the use of VGI platform and urban heritage valuation.

Furthermore, they are welcomed to join other working teams based on their

willingness and capacities.


86

6.2.9 Donors

In order to sustain the financial aspect, there should be a channel for donation

to cover the cost of needed materials for mobilization, trainings, software

development and maintenance, and other logistic costs. Possible donors are

international organizations, private sector and local community who have

interest in urban heritage.

6.3 Processes

The suggested framework includes several processes. There are some processes

that can be classified as institutional processes, such as initiation, management,

roles description and networking. On the other hand, some processes are

mainly regulating the relations among platform users, such as: training,

mobilization, reporting, mapping, notifications, data validation and many

others. Some of these processes are described below in order to build an

overview of the designed process.

6.3.1 Initiation

In order to implement the suggested project there should be an initiation group

which can collectively play the aforementioned roles. This group could be a

certain active group or a combination of activists who are motivated to apply

the VGI approach. The group should initiate guidelines that can be developed

and updated through the development process.

6.3.2 Management

There should be a management board selected from the aforementioned experts

and local partners who will be responsible for assuring the best use of resources,

the flexibility of voluntarily participation, and the quality control.

6.3.3 Roles Description

Documentation of the roles description is a distributed responsibility for each of

the experts and the local partners. All documents are initiated and publicly

shared on the platform in order to keep transparency and be open for

developing suggestions.

The groups who are responsible for certain tasks are the ones who are

authorized to modify or update in the documents related to these tasks. For


87

instance, the trainers are the only ones who can modify or update the

documentation related to training and roles of trainers. The platform system is

designed to archive all versions of documents that can be retrieved. In general,

there should be a regulation system for documentation that should be

developed within the working groups.

6.3.4 Building Networks

Strengthening the networks and collaboration among the current activists is

essential in order to empower each other. These networks help to reach out to

the local partners and thus widen the activists’ networks.

New networks would be built through the collaboration within the working

teams in order to organize their tasks. There would be another networking

among local partners and local mappers and the approached local authorities or

other responsible bodies.

Since the suggested platform is designed to have an online forum that

encourages open discussions among platform users, there should be a certain

kind of control to avoid any abuse. Through this forum, many virtual networks

are expected to be built among its users.

6.3.5 Sharing Information

Sharing information takes several forms, such as adding information whether it

is reporting violations or highlighting values, commenting on existing added

information, mapping reports, and getting notifications when data is added

related to a certain place. Similar to Ushahidi platform, the suggested platform

is designed to include multiple channels for reporting and mapping reports

such as e-mail, social media platforms, SMS and mobile application. Moreover,

the local partners can act as facilitators to get other types of information and

interpret it into the appropriate digital form.

The notification function is designed to be used to spread information through

many possible channels, such as media, social media, organizations interested

in documentation or donation. The forum is another channel to share other

types of information, as it is more oriented to discussions, questions and

answers.


88

Figure 6-2: Relationships among key actors


89

6.3.6 Data Quality Control

In order to control data quality and avoid data heterogeneity, guidelines are

prepared by experts and trainers to provide needed guidance to local partners

and mappers. Furthermore, the local partners are responsible to validate the

posted information based on the author’s sources of validation and his/her

reputation based on previous participation, comments added by other users,

and their own local network, to get correct information. By enabling local

mappers to enhance located information in their local areas, errors can be

reduced, and quality would be raised.

6.3.7 Coordination with Official Bodies

Official bodies such as decision makers, media, private sector, international

organizations can freely use the notification functions to get immediate

notification on their e-mail or any other channel they set through the platform.

This overcomes any existing bureaucracy in the official organization system that

causes delays of data reach and discourages public to make connections. As

mentioned before both local partners and liaisons are responsible to approach

possible organizations that can positively intervene to resolve the reported

issues. This coordination is needed to encourage local mappers to build trust of

the platform and its key actors.

6.4 Assurance of Success

According to Shkabatur(2014), there are six factors that influence the success of

interactive community mapping, which is similar to the suggested platform.

These six factors are needed to “create a valuable participatory process and

produce tangible outcomes” (Shkabatur, 2014, p. 12).

1. Information infrastructure

2. Identified need for information

3. Civil society capacity

4. Government cooperation

5. Community’s incentives to participate

6. Data quality


90

The suggested framework is analysed upon these six factors by identifying the

actors who are supposed to achieve the success factor and the processes that

indicate the consideration to the factor, see Table 6-1.

Table 6-1: Preliminary analysis to check the coverage of the proposed

framework to the six factors of success

Factors Actor Process

Information infrastructure

* IT experts * Geographic Information experts

* Initiation: initiate the infrastructure * Management: Assure that the responsible actors keep maintenance

Identified need for information

* Urban heritage experts * Geographic information experts * Local partners * Mappers

* Sharing Information * Analyze data and identify gaps

Civil society capacity * Local partners * Trainers * Urban heritage experts

* Trainings * On-ground activities by local partners * Online guidelines for usage

Government cooperation * Urban heritage experts * Local partners * Presenters

*Coordination with Official Bodies

Community’s incentives to participate

* Local partners * Self-motivated Mappers

* On-ground activities by local partners to raise community awareness * Mobilization

Data quality * Urban heritage experts * Local partners * Trainers

* Data Quality Control: * Data Validation * Trainings * Guidelines * Standardization for basic shared information


91

6.5 Outputs

The following are the direct achievements that are expected to be achieved by

implementing the suggested framework:

Built institutionalized dynamic framework based on regulations and

guidelines that are followed by working teams who can flexibly

participate to the process.

Early alerted local partners who work collaboratively with liaisons to

approach the official bodies in order to resolve issues

Built network among key actors

Developed easy accessible VGI platform that includes searchable

geographic information database where geo-spatial relations among

issues and information that publicly shared are stored and easily

retrieved.

Enabled platform users to export data in various forms to maximize its

utilization and integration with other types of information

Enabled platform users to visualize information in different forms which

can be filtered according to many factors, such as: date, geographic area,

topic, type of data, source of information, and other factors that can be

developed through the platform implementation

6.6 Outcomes

The following are the indirect achievements that are expected to have by

implementing suggested framework and achieving the aforementioned outputs:

Identified distribution pattern of issues when analysing the geographic

distribution with the contextual conditions

Prioritized interventions based on studying the classified needed areas

and the availability of resources

Encouraged local community for mapping issues and look for existing

potentials for resolving issues within their geographical context in order

to save heritage in their areas

Encouraged official bodies to use the platform to get early alerts for

issues


92

Encouraged community and other currently urban heritage stakeholders

to participate or act as key actors

Encouraged media to follow issues and highlight it in other publication

channels

Publicly shared updated information on the national level

6.7 Impacts

The following are the expected long term effects of the suggested framework:

Safeguarded urban heritage that was prone to loss

Early response by decision makers or any empowered body to alerts that

are raised up on the platform

Develop direct official communication channels with the official

governmental bodies to assure responding to issues

Developed projects that can integrate with the suggested framework,

such as project for heritage restoration, projects for documentation or

any other innovative ideas

Raised awareness of the values of participation for community and

official bodies, and increased motivation to develop it to reach forward

steps in the ladder of participation

Increased motivation to build knowledge of updated information

technologies and new approaches for best use of information


The framework discussed in this chapter is developed to address the urban

heritage issues through a relatively new technological approach. It is developed

based on the analysis of the urban heritage issues in the Egyptian context; the

lessons learned from the VGI applied cases, and the study of community

acceptance.

The framework is described through identifying its objective, key actors,

processes. Assurance of success is examined through analysing the suggested

framework to the six factors that are identified for a similar model for

interactive community mapping. Finally, expected outputs, outcomes and

impacts are mentioned based on the preliminary analysis of the studied cases

and the findings resulted from community acceptance survey.

95

7 | Conclusion and Recommendations

The objective of this thesis is to promote the potential of the VGI approach to

safeguard the urban heritage in Egypt through a conceptual framework that can

enhance the degree of sharing geographic information among local initiatives.

This chapter gives a summary on the previous chapters of this research,

demonstrates the challenges encountered throughout the research and

concludes with recommendations for future study.

7.1 Summary and contribution

This research aims to contribute to the field of heritage conservation by

building a conceptual framework that utilizes VGI approach in the urban

heritage context in Egypt.

In Chapter Two, major actors of urban heritage in Egypt are discussed with

focus on the tools used for sharing information with urban heritage issues. Also

the use of geographic information and the urgent need for providing it through

an accessible platform to the public was highlighted. Moreover, a preliminary

evaluation of practice is made in the light of the popular ladder of participation.

The chapter concludes with displaying the core problem and the main strategies

needed for addressing it; the development of information system and

collaborative work on one hand and new geographic approaches.

Chapter Three deals in depth with the VGI approach; its terminology and

typologies in a way to determine the level of structure and flexibility needed to

encourage public participation. Also the main challenges to VGI approach –

CHAPTER SEVEN | CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

96

digital divide, data quality, data heterogeneity and governmental concerns - and

means for overcoming them are discussed.

Chapter Four demonstrates the application of VGI in different cases of study

that highlight the potential of advanced technology tools accessibility,

enhancing user’s participation as data provider, using different methods for

wide spreading platforms, availability of digital data, the effect of institutional

collaboration and resource management on project success, the importance of

automatic notifications for a wider spread of information in an updated

manner, and the motivation of inactive users.

Chapter Five mainly deals with the results of the two questionnaires that show

the acceptability of the community to the integration of VGI platform in sharing

data with regards to urban heritage. The lack of geographic analysis highlights

the necessity of training materials for using geographic analysis in safeguarding

urban heritage. Moreover, the influential role of media is to be highly

considered in information dissemination.

Chapter Six finally builds on the results reached in the previous four chapters to

come up with a framework that addresses urban heritage issues using VGI

approach. The objective of the framework, its key actors and processes are

identified. The framework is further analysed to measure the level of its success

according to the preliminary analysis of cases of study and community

acceptance survey.

7.2 Research Challenges

Time is the most pressing challenge in the research; there was a need to reach

many expertise and people related to the topic of research in a very short time,

and this was eventually overcome through designing questionnaires to different

groups of people.

Another challenge is scarcity of data; studies on initiatives are rare and hard to

find especially that most of the initiatives have been created after the 2011

Revolution. Also, the past three years have witnessed a great deal of violations

to urban heritage, which have not yet been well documented, and so most of the

information gathered was from primary sources, such as Facebook pages, blogs,


97

interviews, newspapers, in addition to my personal experience based on my

participation in such heritage related activities.

Digital divide is one more concern in this research. This is apparent in the

questionnaire distribution shortage, as only internet literate public was

targeted, while other categories who are not familiar with internet are excluded

in the questionnaires. Yet, this obstacle has been overcome in designing the

framework where the local partners facilitate the inclusion of different public

categories despite their digital literacy through on ground activities. Moreover,

less complicated technologies, such as SMS, are adapted as alternative channels

for direct connection to the VGI platform.

Another difficulty to this research is that VGI is rarely applied in urban heritage,

and so examples of VGI applications in other fields of expertise are sought to

show the potentials of applying VGI approach.

Other challenges to the application of the framework are represented in the

level of community awareness, conflict of interests among stakeholders,

deficiencies in local authorities performance, and the gaps and lack of vision in

local laws concerned with the urban management which in turn affect their

application in real ground. So, there is a need for practical application of the

suggested framework to be accommodated and developed according to such an

on ground experience.

7.3 Recommendations for Future Research

One of the essential recommendations is implementing the suggested

framework through a pilot project in which users’ interactions can be evaluated

and feedback from key actors can be collected.

Further investigation is needed to measure the mutual effect of the platform on

one hand and of antagonists with conflict of interest on the other hand. For

instance whether the platform eliminates violations, or it will cause antagonists

to invent new tricks to continue with their violations.

Additional study is highly recommended to investigate the level of interaction of

the official bodies with the platform and whether it can be incorporated within


98

their system to reach a higher degree of participation; varying from placation

level to higher levels of ‘degree of power’ of the community.iii

Also the degree of community awareness needs to be studied to understand how

far the different groups of the society can contribute to the platform and how far

they are influenced by the on ground activities.

Applying the platform through phases might be considered. In the earlier

phases, effort would be focused on institutionalization, mobilization and quality

control that would be a solid base for further development. While in later

phases, the trust among the various users would be achieved, and accordingly,

more interactivity and collaboration are realized.

It is worth mentioning that the framework components need to be further

studied, such as the software visual design, on ground activities, and trainings

that facilitate user interaction with the platform.

A final recommendation would be having an area within the framework that

enhances research for new technologies that can contribute to urban heritage.

iii See Chapter Two, 2.3.1 General Analysis In light of Public Participation Approach, page 16

101

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Appendices

APPENDICES

111

Appendix A| Questionnaire for Activists

1. The collected data through this questionnaire will be used only for academic research purpose. The questionnaire is designed by Heba M.Hosny Badr as a part of master thesis research. It will help in studying the community response to urban heritage and the use of new information technology for interaction. It will also help to identify potentials of community involvement in the urban conservation process in Egypt. Your contribution by filling in this questionnaire is so much appreciated.

Name:

Nationality:

E-mail:

Profession:

Years of experience in Egyptian heritage:

APPENDICES

112

2. List all names of the initiatives or institutions that heritage conservation is one of their main interest and you have been active member or have worked in it.. (that include virtual group initiatives on Facebook, personal blogs, magazine, ..etc) (please indicate if you were one of its founders)

3. Which of the following you agree with:

Agree Disagree

Buildings have unique features /design (neither a monument nor included in NOUH list) is an urban heritage

Buildings that was built before the twenty first century and reflect building typology or architectural style at the date built era is an urban heritage

Spaces that forms urban fabric (this includes privately owned spaces) is an urban heritage

Lack of maintenance that reaches deteriorated condition is kind of urban heritage violations

Alterations that partially hide/destroy the original design is kind of urban heritage violations

Alterations that affect urban fabric or architectural style is kind of urban heritage violations

Constructing new building in the context that negatively affect the urban style (visually) is kind of urban heritage violations

Inappropriate building usage is kind of urban heritage violations

Inappropriate space usage is kind of urban heritage violations

Deconstruction of valuable building is kind of urban heritage violations

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113

4. How often do you share information that related to Egyptian urban heritage with public? specify for each the following types

Never Once Rarely Often

Fully or partially edited article, report, magazine, book …etc

Copy of original documents such as design plans and elevations

Historical information related to the building/area

Highlights of valuable features or elements

Urban heritage violations

Web links

Other (please specify)

5. Based on your professional experience, please evaluate the effectiveness of each the following sharing tool according to widen distribution, public interaction, considerable from decision makers

Very Effective

Effective In-

effective Do not know

Organization official web site

Facebook page or group created this issues specifically

Personal Facebook timeline

Personal blog that contains different topics

Personal blog have been created for this issues specifically

Other institutions who have the same interest

Academic lectures

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114

Organized public events or open discussions

Closed discussion among group members

Conferences

Newspapers and public media

Other (please specify)

6. The following are some ideas for designing a web based platform for public community participation in urban heritage conservation to share violations or other related information, could be similar to ‘wasalny’, ‘by2ollak’ or ‘Taree2y’ which designed to have public real time updates of traffic, please evaluate each

Very Im-portant

Important

Unim-portant

Have no idea

Collaborative management of the platform (Community Based Organization(s) + Official governmental body)

Posts about physical location must have location mark or address or GPS point

Many comments can be added by others to each post

Posts must be classified while posting either violation report or data for archiving orcall for technical support or offer support or indicator of possible violation

Posts should be verified with valid sources of verification

Photos and videos are sources of verification for violation

Posts can be directly sent to the official body based on post type with receiving confirmation from the official system.

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115

User can fill in a building inventory form to share more detailed information such as construction date, building architecture style, building uses, occupation status, ..etc

Provide downloadable application on mobile which can save GPS location point and work offline and uploaded once there is internet connection availability

Provided interactive map can be filtered based on time, area, type of posts

Provided map can be edited to add points, polygons, or lines such as google earth

Geographic data can be exported to KML file to be used in other geographic analysis

7. Based on your experience in this field, can you expect the level of interaction with the proposed platform of the following community groups

None Limited Medium Huge

Professionals such as architects, planners, archaeologists, historians,.. etc

Initiatives or institutions who care about urban heritage

Residents of historic areas

Owners of significant properties

Young citizens

Educated citizens

Citizens living in large cities

Citizens living in relatively small or remote areas such as Siwa, New Gourna village (Hassan Fathy), ..etc

Local authorities

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116

NOUH

Related ministries

International urban heritage institutions

Foreigners who are living in Egypt

Yourself

8. Which of the following you think it can be achieved by the proposed platform, specify either on the short or long run

Short

Term Long Term

Not Achievable

Be a tool for monitoring urban heritage change

Provide a communication platform for community interaction

Facilitate communication channels between public and governmental sector

Provide transparency and accountability tool

Provide a pool for the most updated information

Be a documentation tool

Give a wider perspective of size of urban heritage problems

Tool to know the distribution pattern by knowing violation time ,building conditions, occupation status

Be a helpful tool to predict similar cases could be endangered

Be a tool to prioritize areas for interventions

Could be a tool to highlights area to be included as a heritage area

Motivate officially responsible actors to develop the official management tools

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117

Be a motivation tool to develop social intervention projects which can have a positive impact on conservation such as (system to get support for rent or adaptive reuse, activities to raise community awareness, cultural mobilization for the area, campaigns to get public sector support in the area … etc)

Motivate institution such as CULTNAT to professionally document endangered Heritage

Can motivate heritage experts to offer their support

9. What are the obstacles that you think it can be faced while implementing the suggested platform?

7. 8. 9.

10. Please write below your additional comments (suggestions, successful examples..etc)

APPENDICES

119

Appendix B| Questionnaire for Public Citizens (Arabic version)

كافة البيانات التي ستجمع من خالل هذا االستبيان ستستخدم بغرض البحث العلمي فقط. تم تصميم .1االستبيان بواسطة هبه محمد حسني بدر كجزء من بحوث رسالة الماجستير. الغرض منه دراسة ين استجابة المجتمع للتراث العمراني واستخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات الحديثة للتفاعل والمشاركة ب

المجتمع . وسوف يساعد أيضا على تحديد العقبات واإلمكانيات إلشراك المجتمع المحلي في عملية .الحفاظ على التراث العمراني في مصر. تعد مساهمتك بمليء هذا االستبيان محل الشكر والتقدير

موافق

المعلومات االساسية .2

:االسم

(:انثي/ ذكر)النوع

: تاريخ الميالد

:لتعليما

:المجال المهني

هل سبق لك السكن او العمل لمدة

تزيد عن سنة بجوار منطقة عمرانية

(:ال/نعم)ذات طابع تراثي

: المحافظة

: العنوان

mail:-E

APPENDICES

120

كيف ترى المباني القديمة سواء العمارات السكنية أو الفيالت فى مناطق كمصر الجديدة، المعادي، .3

سالمية، االسكندرية، المنصورة، السوي،، االسماعيلية وسط البلد، القاهرة اال

قديمة جدا ويجب استبدالها بأخرى ذات طابع حديث

بعضها له قيمة من حيث التصميم أو التاريخ وهذا فقط ما يجب الحفاظ عليه

تى إن لم ذو قيمة ألنه يشكل التراث العمراني وينبغي الحفاظ عليه ح العمرانييعتبر السياق المحيط

يكن ذو قيمة عالية لكنه يضيف للقيمة االجمالية للمنطقة

أخرى ، حدد

أي من االختيارات التالية تعتبره نوع من االنتهاكات أو التعديات على التراث العمراني .4

عدم صيانة لبناء ذو قيمة تصميمية أو تاريخية وصوال لمرحلة التدهور

مر التصميم األصلي سواء بشكل كلي أو جزئيالتعديالت التي تخفي أو تد

(التعديالت التي تؤثر على النسيج العمراني )المنطقة وطابعها

إنشاء مبنى حديث في محيط مبنى قيم مما يؤثر سلبا على الطابع العمراني من الناحية البصرية

استخدام غير الئق للمبنى القيم

المباني القيمة كالحدائق المحيطة بالمبنىاستخدام غير الئق للفراغات حول

هدم مبنى ذو قيمة

أخرى ، حدد

APPENDICES

121

هل سبق لك أن الحظت أحدى االنتهاكات للتراث العمراني وعبرت عن ذلك أو .5نقلته ألحد )يدخل ضمن ذلك مثال أن تكون قد قرأت مقال أوتعليق عن انتهاك ما

)وأرسلته ألحد عبر وسائل االتصال الحديثة

األصدقاء

المتخصصين أو المنظمات غير الحكومية التي تحاول الحفاظ على التراث

السلطات المحلية أو الهيئات الحكومية المسئولة

ترغب في التعبير والمشاركة ولكنك لم تفعل

األمر ال يعنيك ولم تفكر به من قبل

مساهمة بادالء خبراتهم مع الطرق تطبيقات "وصلني"، "بيقولك"، "طريقي" يتيحن للعامة ال .6المرورية عما إذا كانت مزدحمة أو ال في لحظة وجودهم بالطرق عن طريق وسائل االتصال الحديثة ،

فما رأيك إذا ما تم عمل تطبيق مشابه إلعطاء عموم المجتمع فرصة للمساهمة بإدالء مالحظاتهم تراث العمراني هل تعتقد أن هذا التطبيق بالنسبة لالنتهاكات والتعديات التي تؤثر سلبا على ال

:سيكون

رجاء أضف تعليقك

نعم سيكون كذلك على مستوى الجمهورية

نعم و لكن سيقتصر ذلك على مستوى

المدن الكبرى

ال لن سبكون كذلك

ال أعرف فهو أمر صعب التوقع

مفيد -أ

جاذبا للمزيد من عموم المجتمع ممن ال -باث يعملون في مجال التر يدرسون أو

العمراني

أكثر جذبا لذوي المهن أو الدراسة التي -ج العمراني ترتبط بالتراث

جاذبا للهيئات الحكومية الرسمية والجهات -د عن إدارة التراث العمراني المسئولة

محل ثقة -هـ

مصدر ألحدث المعلومات -و

APPENDICES

122

تعتقد أن هذا النوع من التطبيق سيشجعك على اإلدالء بمعلوماتك أو رأيك عندما تالحظ انتهاك، هل .7 وبالتالي تساعد في تشكيل آداة لرصد التغير واالنتهاكات بالتكامل مع مشاركات اآلخرين

نعم كثيرا

احتمال

ال

أخرى ، حدد

لبيانات التالية سوف تستخدمهاإذا كنت على اقتناع بالمشاركة فأي من أنواع ا .8

صور

فيديو

نص

URLالروابط

تذكر العنوان أو اسم المنطقة جغرافية

تحدد الموقع الجغرافي بالخدمة المتاحة في األحهزة الحديثة أو تحدد المكان بنفسك على خريطة جوجل

أخرى ، حدد

م .9 ت، تحديات، مشاكل ، أمثلة ناجحةن فضلك أكتب أي تعليقات إضافية سواء إقتراحا

APPENDICES

125

Appendix C| Questionnaire for Public Citizens (translated Version)

1. The collected data through this questionnaire will be used only for academic research purpose. The questionnaire is designed by HebaM.HosnyBadr as a part of master thesis research. It will help in studying the community response to urban heritage and the use of new information technology for interaction. It will also help to identify potentials of community involvement in the urban conservation process in Egypt. Your contribution by filling in this questionnaire is so much appreciated.

Agree

2. Basic Information

Name:

Gender:

Birthday:

Education:

Work field:

Have you ever lived or worked for more than a year near to the urban

APPENDICES

126

nature heritage (Yes / No):

Governorate:

Address:

E-mail:

3. How do you perceive old buildings/residential building, villas

in Heliopolis, Maadi , downtown, Islamic Cairo, Alexandria,

Mansoura, Suiz , Ismailia?

Very old and should be replaced by new ones.

Some of them have valuable design or decoration and only those

should be preserved.

The context is considered valuable as it form the urban heritage and

should be preserved/conserved/rehabilitated even if the building

doesn’t have valuable features but it gives value to the context.

Other, specify

4. Which of the following do you consider as a kind of urban

heritage violation

Lack of maintenance of valuable building 10.

Alterations that hide/destroy original design (fully or partially) 11.

Alterations that affect urban fabric 12.

APPENDICES

127

Constructing new building in the context that negatively affect the

urban fabric (visually) 13.

Inappropriate building usage

Inappropriate space usage

Deconstruction of valuable building 14.

Other, specify

5. Have you ever noticed urban heritage violation and shared it

with

Friends 15.

Professionals or NGOs who are trying to save heritage 16.

Local authorities or governmental bodies who are responsible 17.

Like to share but never did 18.

Never care about that 19.

6. What do you think of developing a platform similar to

‘wasalny’, ‘by2ollak’ or ‘Taree2y’ where public share real time

updates of traffic, to give public the opportunity to share

urban heritage violations?

20. Unpredictable 21. No 22. Yes 23.

24. Useful

25. Attractive for more public who are not

studying or work in urban heritage field?

26. Attractive more for public whose

professions are related to urban

APPENDICES

128

Please add your comment:

7. Do you think this type of platform will encourage you to share your

knowledge whenever you notice violation, so it form a monitoring tool

collaboratively with others

Yes very much

Maybe

No

Other,

specify

8. If you are willing to share which of the following data types you will use

Photos

Videos

Text

URL links

Address or geographic area name that you mention

GPS point or marked location on google map

heritage?

27. 28.

29. Attractive for official governmental bodies who are responsible of urban heritage management?

30. 31. 32. Reliable in different heritage area in

allover Egypt such as Siwa, upper Egypt

33. 34. 35. A pool for the most updated

information?

APPENDICES

129

Other, specify

9. Please write any additional comments, suggestions, challenges, problems, successful examples

APPENDICES

131

Appendix D| Interviewees

Date: 23/3/2014

Name: Nevien Akl

Brief Description:

Architect, Master of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo

University, Co-founder, Takween Integrated Community Development

Aim of Interview:

Understanding the practical experience gained from Al-Darb Al-Ahmar

Revitalization project and other local initiatives by Takween Integrated

Community Development.

Reference: http://www.tadamun.info/about/tadamun-team/?lang=en

Date: 29/3/2014

Name: Dalia Nabil

Brief Description:

Heritage Conservation Specialist, Master of Science, Conservation of

Monuments and Sites, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Co-founder, Treasures of Egypt at Risk

Aim of Interview:

Discussions about the situation of urban heritage issues. to build

knowledge about the community participation and interaction based on

Dalia's experience in many community initiatives such as founding

http://www.tadamun.info/about/tadamun-team/?lang=en

APPENDICES

132

Treasures of Egypt at Risk and participate with Heliopolis Heritage

initiative and working in Al-Athar Lana project by Megwara NGO.

Date: 13/4/2014

Name: Prof.Dr.Ayman Ismail

Brief Description:

Professor of Environmental Planning. Department of Architecture,

Faculty of Engineering, Fayoum University, Al Fayoum, Egypt

Aim of Interview:

Further questions related to the published article named: People GIS A

Web2.0 Approach to Confronting Landuse Violations. Basically, asking

about the experience of building VGI module for reporting landuse

violations and the coordination with official bodies.

Reference: http://eg.linkedin.com/pub/ayman-ismail/b/172/5ba

Date: 21/5/2014

Name: Dina Bakhoum

Brief Description:

Conservation Programme Manager, Aga Khan Cultural Services - Egypt

Aim of Interview:

Open discussion to build more knowledge based on her experience and

get a Feedback from about the suggested integrating of VGI approach

within the urban conservation.

Reference: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/about/staff_21.html

http://eg.linkedin.com/pub/ayman-ismail/b/172/5ba

http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/about/staff_21.html

الذي ظهر في منتصف العقد الماضي متأثرا بانتشار وسائل يةمنهج المعلومات الجغرافية التطوع

االتصال المتقدمة وسهولة توفر شبكة االنترنت. وقد تم تطبيق هذا المنهج في العديد من المجاالت

يقات المحلية على انتشار انتشاره محليا خالل السنوات القالئل الماضية. اعتمدت معظم التطب أعالميا، وبد

استخدام الهواتف المحمولة المتقدمة ، أشهرها تطبيقات انتشرت بواسطة شركات المحمول الرائدة محليا

ه الرسالة الدراسية عرض لهذا ذناحية الكثافة المرورية. تقدم ه لتوفير معلومات عن حالة الطرق من

لفة وذلك بعد اإلشارة للمجهودات المجتمعية المتبعة المنهج مع األمثلة التوضيحية لبعض التطبيقات المخت

وسيلة منصة للتعاون والستخدام هذا المنهج ك فكريفي مجال الحفاظ العمراني بهدف التوصل إلطار

ا اإلطار على أساس دراسة تحليلية للمشكالت التي ذلتعزيز أسلوب المشاركة من أسفل ألعلى. بني ه

يات على المباني التراثية باإلضافة لتحليل بعض معلومات أولية تم أدت النتشار حاالت الهدم والتعد

تجميعها من عينة مجتمعية بواسطة استبيان هدف الستكشاف مدى تقبل المجتمع لتطبيق منهج المعلومات

في مجال الحفاظ العمراني. يةالجغرافية التطوع

البحث ملخص

ني المميزة واستمرار التعديات التي أدت إلى تدهور لوحظ في اآلونة األخيرة تكرار هدم الفيالت والمبا

المناطق التاريخية ومحو المالمح الفريدة والنسيج العمراني الذي يعكس عمارة العصور السابقة في

اخر. ال يمكن إنكار تراكم المشكالت العمرانية ووجود العديد من األسباب التي أدت زتاريخ مصر ال

قافة المجتمعية، وعدم وضوح أهمية الحفاظ على هذا التراث العمراني لظهور هذه المشكلة، كضعف الث

خاصة في ظل ضعف الحالة االقتصادية وتجمد القيم اإليجارية منذ تم تحديدها في خمسينات القرن

الماضي، باإلضافة لقلة البدائل المتاحة وعدم توافر الفرص لحسن استغالل هذه المباني، وأسباب أخرى

بإدارة العمران في مصر وباألخص إدارة المباني والمناطق ذات القيمة. ولكن هذا ال يعني عديدة تتعلق

االستسالم للموقف الحالي، وإنما البد من السعي إليجاد حلول بديلة بالتشارك مع كافة المهتمين بهذه

ة. ظهرت عدة المشكلة، والدعوة لتطوير األنظمة المتبعة في سبيل الحفاظ على تلك الثروة غير المقدر

تهدف للتنبيه عن هذه الخسائر المستمرة -1122خاصة بعد ثورة يناير -مبادرات مجتمعية نتيجة لذلك

للتراث، كمحاولة للتصدي لتلك األعمال التخريبية وكذلك للسعي لكسب دعم المجتمع لهذه القضية

األثريين المهتمين الذين استطاعوا العمرانية. معظم القائمين على هذه المبادرات من شباب المعماريين أو

أن يضموا إليهم فئات أخرى من المجتمع أغلبهم من سكان هذه المناطق أو ممن على ارتباط بها، سواء

كان هذا االرتباط ناتج عن ذكريات شخصية أو استشعار لبعد معماري أو ارتباط معرفي بقيمة هذا

الجتماعي خاصة بعد ثبات نجاحها في ثورة يناير، تم التراث. ونظرا النتشار استخدام وسائل التواصل ا

استخدامها كذلك في نشر المعلومات بين تلك المبادرات. تقوم تلك المبادرات بنشر صور وروابط

ه المعلومات ذزالت ه. الالمبانيلمقاالت ترصد التغيرات التي تؤثر سلبا على عملية الحفاظ على

جغرافي بينها، على الرغم من أن أي محاوالت لدراسة الموقف المنشورة تفتقد إلى وضوح الترابط ال

العمراني وإيجاد حلول تنموية تحتاج الي خرائط معلوماتية تعكس حجم المشكلة المطروحة وعالقتها

ومن هذا المنطلق ظهرت فكرة هذه الدراسة إلدماج النظم المعلوماتية الحديثة وباألخص بالسياق المحيط.

إقرار

هذه الرسالة مقدمة في جامعة عين شمس وجامعة شوتجارت للحصول على درجة العمران المتكامل والتصميم المستدام. إن العمل الذي تحويه هذه الرسالة قد تم إنجازه بمعرفة الباحث سنة 2014

هذا ويقر الباحث أن العمل المقدم هو خالصة بحثه الشخصي وأنه قد اتبع اإلسلوب العلمي السليم في اإلشارة إلى المواد المؤخوذه من المراجع العلمية كٌل في مكانه في مختلف أجزاء الرسالة..

وهذا إقرار مني بذلك،،،

التوقيع:

الباحث: هبة محمد حسنى السيد سليمان بدر

التاريخ: 21/07/2014

التوقيع

hتاريخ المناقشة:..............

أجيزت الرسالة بتاريخ:.............موافقة مجلس الجامعة .../.../...

لجنة الحكم

أ.د. هاني عياد أستاذ التخطيط اإلقليمي والعمراني

جامعة االسكندرية

أ.م.د.مهاب عبدالمنعم الرفاعي أستاذ مساعد التخطيط العمراني

جامعة عين شمس

أ.د.محمد عبد الباقي ابراهيمأستاذ العمارة والتخطيط العمراني


أ.د. أنتيا شتوكمان أستاذ التنسيق الحضري والبيئي

جامعة شتوتجات

الدراسات العليا

ختم اإلجازةموافقة مجلس الكلية .../.../...

21/07/2014

إدماج تكنولوجيا المعلومات في الحفاظ علىالتراث العمراني في مصر

إطار فكري الستخدام منهج المعلومات الجغرافية التطوعية

كمنصة للتعاون

مقدمة للحصول على درجة الماجستير في العمران المتكامل والتصميم المستدام

أعداد: هبه محمد حسنى السيد سليمان بدر

لجنة أشراف

جامعة شتوتجارت

جامعة عين شـــــــمس

أ.د. أنتيا شتوكمان أستاذ التنسيق الحضري والبيئي


د.مروة عبد اللطيف مدرس التخطيط العمراني




2014

جامعة شتوتجارت جامعة عين شـــــــمس

المشرفون

إعداد هبه محمد حسنى السيد سليمان بدر

أ.د. أنتيا شتوكمانأستاذ التنسيق الحضري والبيئي


د.مروة عبد اللطيفمدرس التخطيط العمراني




رسالة مقدمة للحصول على درجة الماجستير في العمران المتكامل والتصميم المستدام

إطار فكري الستخدام منهج المعلومات الجغرافية التطوعية كمنصة للتعاون

إدماج تكنولوجيا المعلومات في الحفاظعلى التراث العمراني في مصر

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