Critical knowledge gaps seriously hinder efforts for building disaster resilience at all levels, especially in disaster-prone least developed countries. Information deficiency is most serious at local levels, especially in terms of spatial information on risk, resources, and capacities of communities. To tackle this challenge, we develop a general methodological approach that integrates community-based participatory mapping processes, one that has been widely used by governments and non-government organizations in the fields of natural resources management, disaster risk reduction and rural development, with emerging collaborative digital mapping techniques. We demonstrate the value and potential of this integrated participatory and collaborative mapping approach by conducting a pilot study in the flood-prone lower Karnali river basin in Western Nepal. The process engaged a wide range of stakeholders and non-stakeholder citizens to co-produce locally relevant geographic information on resources, capacities, and flood risks of selected communities. The new digital community maps are richer in content, more accurate, and easier to update and share than those produced by conventional Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (VCAs), a variant of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), that is widely used by various government and non-government organizations. We discuss how this integrated mapping approach may provide an effective link between coordinating and implementing local disaster risk reduction and resilience building interventions to designing and informing regional development plans, as well as its limitations in terms of technological barrier, map ownership, and empowerment potential.

The citizen science approach has gained momentum in recent years. It can enable both experts and citizen scientists to co-create new knowledge. Better understanding of local environmental, social, and geographical contexts can help in designing appropriate plans for sustainable development. However, a lack of geospatial data, especially in the context of developing countries, often precludes context-specific development planning. This study therefore tests an innovative approach of volunteer citizen science and an open mapping platform to build resilience to natural hazards in the remote mountainous parts of western Nepal. In this study, citizen scientists and mapping experts jointly mapped two districts of Nepal (Bajhang and Bajura) using the OpenStreetMap (OSM) platform. Remote mapping based on satellite imagery, capacity building, and mobilization of citizen scientists was performed to collect the data. These data were then uploaded to OSM and later retrieved in ArcGIS to produce a usable map that could be exploited as a reference resource for evidence-based decision-making. The collected data are freely accessible to community members as well as government and humanitarian actors, and can be used for development planning and risk reduction. By piloting in two communities of western Nepal, we found that using open data platforms for collecting and analyzing location-based data has a mutual benefit for researchers and communities. Such data could be vital in understanding the local landscape, environmental risk, and distribution of resources. Furthermore, they enable both researchers and local people to transfer technical knowledge, collect location-specific data, and use them for better decision-making.

Nepal is highly vulnerable to multiple disasters due to its topography and geographic conditions. It also suffers with data deficiency in better understanding the impacts of disasters and existing capacities to cope with such disasters. This information scarcity severely hinders understanding the disasters and their associated risks in the areas. This also hampers local and regional risk reduction, preparedness and response, limiting rigorous and robust disaster risk modelling and assessment. For regions facing recurrent disaster, there is a strong need of more integrated and proactive perspective into the management of disaster risks and innovations. Recent advances on digital and spatial technologies, citizen science and open data are introducing opportunities through prompt data collection, analysis and visualization of locally relevant spatial data. These data could be used as evidence in local development planning as well as linking in different services of the areas. This will be helpful for sustained investment in disaster risk management and resilience building. In current federal structure of Nepal, there is an acute data deficiency at the local level (municipalities and wards) in terms of data about situation analysis, demographics, and statistics, disaster impacts (hazard, exposure and vulnerability) etc. This has caused hindrances to all the relevant stakeholders including government, non-government and donors in diagnosing the available resources, capacities for effective planning and managing disaster risks. In this context, we are piloting an approach to fulfil existing data gaps by mobilizing citizen science through the use of open data sources in Western Nepal. We have already tested it through trainings to the local authorities and the communities in using open data for data collection. Likewise, in one of our upcoming project on data innovations, we shall create a repository of available open data sources; develop analytical tools for risk assessment which will be able to provide climate related services. Later, upon testing the tools, these can be implemented at the local level for informed decision making.