In 2019 we applied for the Wellcome Open Research Fund grants and was delighted to learn in October that our application was successful.
- The project is lead by Dr Andy South from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. The team includes:
- Haruko Nakao (Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, UK)
- Dr Julie-Anne Tangena (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK)
- Dr Margareth Gfrerer (Education Strategy Centre, Ethiopia)
- Dr Paula Moraga (Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, UK)
- Dr Robin Lovelace (Leeds ,Institute for Transport Studies, UK)
The afrimapr project will create R building blocks and learning resources to facilitate the use of open geospatial health data in Africa. The R building blocks will make it easier to perform spatial data management tasks that should be straightforward, but seldom are, including: summarising data by administrative regions of different levels; joining and displaying data referenced by administrative region names; access to environmental, socio-economic and health data and displaying data in static maps and interactive web applications.
Components will be designed for ease of use to target new users of R.
The initial funding (spanning January to December 2020) will allow us to run workshops in Liverpool, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa trialing and promoting resources (COVID-19 permitting).
Talarify will play a role in various aspects of the project, including support with requirements analysis, software testing, development of learning materials, and community building in Africa.