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Mapping Afghanistan

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:03:00 +0000

Mapping Afghanistan Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2020 - 08:03

Steven Boyd Saum

Put rural communities on the map and you might literally be building roads to prosperity. For Walker Kosmidou-Bradley, that’s the plan.

Here’s a story Walker Kosmidou-Bradley (IntlAf’09) tells about his early life with maps: On a Boy Scout backpacking expedition up a slot canyon in southern Utah, when he was about 17, he and the hikers he was leading plotted their course along a river using U.S. Geographical Survey quads — navigating terrain and choosing where they would make camp. When they set off, they discovered a problem: The geography no longer matched the maps.

“The river was no longer on the far side of the canyon,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “So our proposed campsites were underwater.”

It was an important reminder from nature: The courses of rivers can change. One intense flood can rewrite geography. So you readjust to the realities on the ground. And perhaps one day help correct the maps.

A Country's Future

As a geographer working with the World Bank as part of the South Asia and Middle East/North Africa poverty team, Kosmidou-Bradley has found himself not just correcting maps but frequently filling in the blank spots that still exist.

Much of his work the past three years has been focused on Afghanistan. He leads teams to build maps with accurate and complex layers of data that can have a profound effect on the livelihood of people: helping set priorities for humanitarian aid and infrastructure development, ensuring that communities have access to health care, clean water, schools and a market for their crops — and perhaps tipping the scales to take them from extreme poverty into a more prosperous and hopeful future.

For a country that has faced conflict for decades, that matters profoundly: Where are the roads — and are they paved or gravel or bare earth? Where are the hospitals and schools — and how long does it really take to get there from each village? Where are the electrical lines? And where do they need to be, in terms of where people really live?

“There were villages that were not on the map,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “Now they’re on the map.”

That matters because in rural areas where the overall population density might be thin, people actually are clustered in a few areas. If there’s funding to build 20 wells in a district, for instance, that helps inform where the wells should be.

This type of mapping makes use of geospatial data, which is tremendously useful if it’s accurate and current — and publicly available. In the developing world, often none of those conditions are true. So Kosmidou-Bradley and others set out to change that in Afghanistan, with data contributions made by scores of contributors in Afghanistan and Washington, D.C., alike. They apply data gleaned from satellite imagery as well as crowdsourced data input on low-cost smartphones out in the field. Teams of contributors trained in the mapping protocols and software tag features. They apply data from — and for — infrastructure projects and agriculture, education and healthcare.

“It’s not just a single data source, but it’s many different data types coming together,” he said. “That is where the real power comes in.”

Focusing on Afghanistan, Kosmidou-Bradley has hosted “mapathons” in both Kabul and at the World Bank Building back home, enlisting work by government ministry officials, students and professors. Following a multi-day workshop introducing participants to a graphic information system (GIS), 25 people took part in the biggest mapathon in Kabul. Back in D.C., some 40 took part.

During winter, when roads aren’t under construction in Afghanistan, they have also tapped field surveyors and construction engineers to enter data on what they built.

Stateside, Johanna Belanger was one of the collaborators on a project map - ping road data in the province of Ghor, in northwestern Afghanistan. She was a student in Washington, D.C., at the time; the project offered a powerful lesson in how poverty and development are inextricably tied to geography. She’s now a consultant to the World Bank.

“...perhaps I can in fact make a difference in the world, one edit at a time.”

With all those efforts, the work is not just about the resulting map; it nurtures a community of people who have the skills and commitment to continue the work and, in turn, to train others.

The true value of the maps is that the data isn’t locked on a computer belonging to the World Bank or a government ministry. Instead, the open-source platform they use for mapping the data, OpenStreetMap, allows for the created data to be available to the world in minutes. And, as consultant Belanger said, working on this platform “gives me a sense of global citizenship and the feeling that perhaps I can in fact make a difference in the world, one edit at a time.”

Lessons from the Map Library

It was in �� Boulder’s map library that Kosmidou-Bradley learned to read geography and history as charted on paper. Other lessons he learned: Everything happens somewhere. That and, he said, “Humans are inherently visual creatures. We process information visually at a shockingly fast rate. Humans are also inherently spatial. When people think of maps, they often think of just normal geography, but it can include everything.”

He took that knowledge to work for the Department of Defense in 2010 and learned to navigate digital mapping environs. (And in moving from Colorado to Washington, D.C., he learned the lesson that you don’t map work-to-home in terms of geographical distance but time — especially during rush hour.)

At the World Bank, which he joined in 2016, he learned the value of a holistic approach: Where the agriculture team in Afghanistan has identified a project could have great impact, partner that with the transport team to ensure better roads to market and that amplifies the value of both projects. Or by logging where certain diseases are showing up, you might see that by pairing that with information on water and sanitation, the answer to better health for the community might not be simply more doctors — but more wells.

Kosmidou-Bradley has hosted “mapathons” in Kabul and at the World Bank Building in Washington, D.C., enlisting work by government ministry officials, students and professors.

The community working with the data needs to be broad-based, too.

“When people say geospatial data, geospatial analysis or just geography, that is a huge field,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “No single person knows all of it.”

But by training a range of team members, he hopes to build a sustainable skills pipeline.

“Some people will go into government, some people go into the private sector,” he said, which in turn could foster entrepreneurship.

And if all goes well, he works his way out of a job.

Though, of course, OpenStreetMap isn’t only for the workday. It takes the Wikipedia ethos but identifies a username with each data point that gets added — which ensures accountability. Kosmidou-Bradley has used the platform around the world — from Greece, where his wife is from, to roads north of Winter Park, Colorado, where they held their wedding. In the mountains, he said, “I realized that some of the roads in OpenStreetMap up there were not entirely correct. So I went through and corrected those.”

Suit and Pack

On a Tuesday afternoon in March when we met at the World Bank Building in Washington, D.C., Kosmidou-Bradley wore a gray suit and a red-and-silver tie. He is trim and fit with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. It just so happened that a few days before, the United States had signed a peace agreement with the Taliban, a remarkable milestone in the history of Afghanistan. As for what that will mean for his work, Kosmidou-Bradley won’t speculate — so much can change week-to-week — though he’s seen firsthand the cost of conflict in the country.

Through the mapping of Afghanistan, he has also come to know the settlements and castles along the ancient Silk Road in the north. He was stunned to discover city fortifications that ran for 10 or 15 kilometers at a stretch. Having professors and students map these parts of the country’s heritage also matters to organizations like UNESCO: what is there and what should be protected.

“Now that I’ve seen some of these castles, I’m going to go visit them,” Kosmidou-Bradley said brightly.

Years ago, before going to work for the World Bank, he backpacked through Pakistan. And through his work in Afghanistan he’s seen landscapes that spark his desire to explore terrain that’s entirely new — yet hit close to home.

“When I was a Boy Scout leader we spent a lot of time in southern Utah doing slot canyons,” he said. And in Afghanistan, he said, “I see a lot of slot canyons.”

Photos courtesy Walker Kosmidou-Bradley

Put rural communities on the map and you might literally be building roads to prosperity. For Walker Kosmidou-Bradley, that’s the plan.

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A �� Love Story, With Maps

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 21:05:00 +0000

A �� Love Story, With Maps Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 14:05

Eric Gershon

One recipe for enduring love: Wes and Linda, a typewriter and a 1902 map of Colorado.

The old map was priced at $15 and Wes Brown didn’t have it.

Neither did his new girlfriend, Linda Frey, a recent transfer student from Chicago.

This was fall 1973.

The pair had met in class, introductory economics. She was shy. His hair was long. She sat near him. He started a conversation.

It was pretty much love at first sight.

Wes (Econ’76) was into maps, and he took Linda (Psych’76) to see one he’d fallen for at a Pearl Street book and print shop — a 1902 Nell’s pocket map of Colorado. They admired it and went on with the day.

Afterward, Linda did what any love-soaked teenager might: “I hocked my typewriter.”

It was an electric Smith Corona, the one she used for school, and it fetched just enough at a local pawn shop to meet the need.

She returned to the store, Stage House II, bought the map and gave it to Wes for Christmas.

He hung it in his apartment, beside the Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin posters.

Later, during a long career in investment banking, he displayed it in his offices.

Over the decades, Wes — Linda’s husband since 1979 — built a major map collection, now said to be the world’s best private trove of antique maps of Colorado and the Intermountain West. (The Denver Public Library, a favorite haunt, has a bigger and better collection, he said.)

Among his treasures are an 1810 Zebulon Pike map that was the first to show any part of Colorado; an 1862 Frederick Ebert map that was the first detailed survey of the state; and the first aerial view of Boulder, from 1874 — one of two known copies.

He also owns maps of other parts of the world, including a 1511 Pieter Martyr map of the Caribbean, the first map of the “New World.”

Lately he’s become interested in 17th- and 18th-century Spanish maps of the American Southwest.

“It’s the history of exploration that I find fascinating,” he said. “A map is a vehicle to understand the history of exploration.”

The map that started it all — the 1902 Nell — recently returned to Boulder for good: Last summer, after noticing it would fill a hole in �� Boulder’s primary map collection, and having acquired a second copy and run the idea by Linda, Wes offered it to the university.

“What better place for it to permanently reside than in the city it was lovingly purchased 45 years ago,” Wes said, quoting Linda.

Wes’ interest in maps was practical at first. As a teenager, he discovered mountain climbing. Maps helped him plan and navigate his trips.

Later he began poking around antique shops with a high school friend who liked old things. Many of the shops carried maps, often pages from 19th-century atlases of the United States. They described a world at once familiar and foreign.

By the time Wes arrived at ��, he said, “I was totally crazy for old maps.”

Around the time he met Linda, he came across the 1902 Nell.

Louis Nell emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1865, according to Wes’ own research. Trained as a civil engineer and surveyor, he spent most of the 1870s helping the federal government chart the American West.

In 1880, Nell began printing and selling his own highly detailed maps of Colorado. He updated them often through 1907, operating out of an office on Larimer Street in Denver.

The maps, which came folded inside hard covers, stood out for their color, detail, precision, portability and durability. An early reviewer called them “a vast improvement both in style and in correctness…over anything heretofore published for sale in this country."

For the miners, railroaders, real estate speculators and other entrepreneurs of late 19th-century Colorado, they were ideal for navigating the landscape of a new and rough-hewn state.

“He ends up dominating” the Colorado map business for a quarter century, Wes said.

In all, Nell produced 19 different versions over 28 years, providing a detailed record of the state’s physical transformation in the first decades after statehood. Towns and cities emerge and expand. Some vanish. County boundaries morph. Railroads reach new places. Colorado matures.

Because Nell updated them often, viewers can trace small changes, useful today for scholars and students.

Over the years, about a dozen of Nell’s maps made their way into �� Boulder’s cartographic collections, housed primarily in the Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences & Map Library.

Heavily focused on Colorado and the West and numbering more than 220,000 items in all, including about 1,500 antique maps, there are mining maps and railroad maps, topographic, geologic and political maps, town maps, insurance maps and road maps — most of them available for inspection without appointment.

A few years ago, map librarian Naomi Heiser began attending meetings of the Rocky Mountain Map Society in Denver. That’s how she got to know Wes Brown, who co-founded the group in 1991.

Heiser had always liked the Nell maps for their color and exceptional detail, but she didn’t know much about them, or about Nell, an obscure historical figure still. Wes filled her in.

With his encouragement, Heiser undertook a project to digitize the library’s Nells, making them available online for the widest possible audience.

When the work was done, she emailed Wes a link. He noticed that �� was missing the 1902 map.

The next time they met, over lunch on campus, Wes said he’d like to donate it.

“He surprised me with it,” said Heiser, who was moved as much by the backstory as by the gift itself.

“It was very precious to him, and he wanted us to preserve it,” she said. “It was very touching.”

As for Linda’s typewriter, she used her 1973 Christmas money to buy it back from the pawn shop, plus interest.

“I kept it for a long time,” she said. “But then an electric typewriter that could remember about 10 lines of copy came out and I got that. I think the Smith Corona went to Goodwill. Wish I still had it!”

Contact Eric Gershon at editor@colorado.edu. This story appeared in print (Winter 2018 issue) under the headline "Christmas 1973."

Nell’s topographic map of the state of Colorado, 1902 Image courtesy �� Digital Library; Photos courtesy Wes and Linda Brown

One recipe for enduring love: Wes and Linda, a typewriter and a 1902 map of Colorado.

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A Century of Views of Colorado

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:03:09 +0000

A Century of Views of Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/15/2018 - 09:03

A Century of Views of Colorado: 1820-1920

See the drawings and maps of early Colorado settlers at the �� Boulder Earth Sciences & Map Library in the Benson Building.

The University Libraries’ exhibit, “A Century of Views of Colorado,” will be on display until May 25, 2018.

According to University Libraries, some of these rare drawings were created by artists accompanying government explorers to highlight economic and migration opportunities of the West to those living in the East. Others were commissioned by private companies.

On March 8, Antiques Roadshow print and map appraiser Christopher W. Lane discussed some of the more unusual maps at an event on campus.

Learn more.

Maps and illustrations courtesy University Libraries

�� Boulder library exhibit explores Colorado history.

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A �� Love Story, With Maps