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Figure 8-7. Lake Victoria Water Quality AssessmentVisualization ToolSource: Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development(RCMRD), www.rcmrd.orgNational and regional initiatives are also expanding the useof geospatial data. The Regional Centre for Mapping ofResources for Development (RCMRD) in Kenya is not new –it was established in 1975 – but the work it develops ingenerating and applying geospatial information to naturalresource and environmental management problems is atthe forefront of geospatial innovations in the Africancontinent. 854 By providing services on demand to 20countries in South and East Africa, it ensures a demanddrivenapproach. By centralizing resources to address theneeds of 20 countries, it optimizes resources and facilitatesknowledge sharing across countries. Developedapplications include geographical assessments of soilerosion, lake Victoria water quality assessment (Figure 8-7),flood forecasting, GHG inventories and urban mapping.RCMRD has also developed a smartphone application whichtakes as inputs land and soils characteristics and provides inreturn a graph illustrating production potential and erosionsusceptibility for the site.Box 8-8. Geospatial technology for improved health andemergency planning in EgyptEgypt’s Health Sector Reform Program, in the Ministry ofHealth and Population, improved emergency responseusing geospatial technology and location-based analysis.The Ministry collected geospatial information withinEgypt’s standard administration regions (Governorates)identifying all ambulance station locations and resources;road and highway networks; and then linked them togeographic population density data to identify areas ofambulance service. Spatial and statistical analysis thenquickly enabled the Ministry to identify those areas ofpopulation which were better served by ambulances, andalso determine those areas which lacked the appropriateservices. This same use of geospatial information alsoallowed decision makers to determine ambulance responsetimes, based on road and traffic situations, and todetermine new ambulance station locations based on thepopulation growth and demands.Figure 8-8. Location of ambulance units (triangles) andareas with population size greater than 100,000inhabitants and more than 10km away from the nearestambulance unit (brown areas)Countries in Africa are increasingly using geospatialinformation to inform policy, for instance for betterallocating health care resources (e.g.Box 8-8), forvulnerability assessments for climate change and disastermitigation, 855 for mapping risk of soil loss, among others. 856Several official data collection processes are alreadyrecording geographical information using GIS (see section8.1). For instance, the Ghana Statistical Service digitised thegeospatial information using GIS in the 2010 Populationand Housing Census and Living Standard Survey. The abilityto build the collected statistical information on a geospatialplatform allowed Ghana to produce products such aspopulation density and poverty incidence maps at subnationalscales.160Source: Adapted from Central Agency for Public Mobilization andStatistics (CAPMAS), ww.capmas.gov.egA few African countries, like Kenya and Rwanda, havedeveloped their own National Spatial Data Infrastructure(NSDI), which defines the technologies, policies andinstitutional arrangements facilitating the availability of andaccess to spatial data for all levels of government, thecommercial sector, the non-profit sector, academia andcitizens in general.