Mapping the Rivers, InfoAmazonia Goes a Step Further

A new project by InfoAmazonia aims to map the rivers in the Amazon, a main source of livelihood for many communities in South America.

Gustavo Faleiros, InfoAmazonia’s Project Director, said the team decided to focus on rivers because there is a current lack of available data. “Open Street Map, for example, has just large water bodies mapped. So by involving locals to map their rivers in small scale we want to collect both stories and data,” said Faleiros. “This app will be designed to allow journalists and citizen journalists to send pictures and their stories but also to contribute on a bigger map and database about water in the region.”

 video about the InfoAmazonia Rivers project:

InfoAmazonia Rivers Project from Marcio Isensee e Sá on Vimeo.

InfoAmazonia

Since its launch in June 2012 at Rio+20, the map-based journalism platform InfoAmazonia has worked to document and map the massive ecological and developmental change occurring in the Amazon basin. InfoAmazonia has become a trusted journalistic source of up-to-date visualizations, compelling narrative journalism, and open data focused on the nine countries of the Amazon basin.

The Rivers Project

Rivers are the main means of transportation and the main source for livelihood of communities in the Amazon. Nevertheless the open data regarding the basic information of the rivers and most importantly the quality of water is not known by Amazon inhabitants and the general public. Partnering with other projects, such asDigital Democracy, that are already collecting data about rivers and their water quality, InfoAmazonia intends to display this information on a new application that would include a map, search features, crowdsourced stories and open data.

InfoAmazonia is a project of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and its partner O Eco.

Contribute to the Rivers Project on the crowdsourcing platform Indie Voic.es.