Promoting participatory community building in refugee camps with mapping technology

Abstract

Mapping technology has the potential to be a helpful tool in community building. This paper explores its promise for this purpose in refugee camps. We posit such tools when used for participatory planning can be useful for building more sustainable living environments. This is especially true when a camp is transitioning from a site of crisis response into a stable location of recovery. In this note, we first discuss the current state of refugee camps and then examine the benefits and constraints of mapping technology in participatory planning and community building. This preliminary analysis identifies critical stakeholders and infrastructure constraints, and additionally makes recommendations for appropriate technologies. In particular, we propose the use of Public Participatory GIS and take the novel approach of applying the sociological framing of a Boundary Object. Drawing on data gathered while planning a field study of Za'atari Syrian refugee camp, we assess the feasibility of this framing for future analyses in the camp.

Community Building with Co-located Social Media

“…In general, the current research with refugees on community building is in its exploratory phase [60]. To our knowledge, there are few studies on the e ects of digital artifacts in refugee community building, especially with quanti able measurements.…”

“…With the refugee crises extending in duration across the globe, organizations in the host countries of refugees increasingly take on bo om-up community approaches in the development of refugees' livelihoods [1,60]. Humanitarian service providers are seeking sustainable approaches to engage the a ected population in building new lives.…”

Syrian Refugees and Digital Health in Lebanon

“…Although Baranoff et al. [5] found that newly settled refugees in the United States (in 2014) mostly used feature phones, by contrast, Ying et al showed that over a similar period Syrian refugees, settled in Jordanian camps, are using smartphones both to communicate with each other and to access Facebook for camp updates [38]. Several platforms aim to increase engagement of refugees and their access to information, with the majority of these targeting specifically younger refugees.…”

“…Furthermore, the potential wide range of technology literacy should also be considered [26]. However, despite a small number of isolated case studies [4,38], refugees' existing technology capacities, health experiences and knowledge have been largely under-explored, and antenatal health of refugees in particular presents a new area of research in HCI and digital health research communities. Some inspiration can be drawn for designs for refugee health from other resource constrained settings, such as work done in developing countries with marginalized communities.…”

“…It aims to contextualize the use of technology with the health beliefs, health experiences, and social and health networks of refugees in need of ANC. While most technologies for refugee health are designed for use by healthcare providers [11,32] , previous research also identified a high use of smartphones and communication applications such as Whatsapp among refugees [38], which affords an opportunity to empower refugees in their antenatal health through digital interventions. To this end, we investigated opportunities and factors that can meaningfully inform technology design for antenatal health in the context of this marginalized community.…”