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| Abstract Title:
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| Community-integrated GIS and Social Networks for Water Resources Management
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| Graduate Student Presenter:
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Joseph Holler
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| Name of the Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
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Joseph Holler
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Inadequate access to fresh water hinders development, perpetuates water-borne disease and amplifies gender and income gaps for most of the developing world. The functioning of the hydrological cycle is increasingly strained by land cover change, land degradation, population growth, climate change, pollution, and over-abstraction of water. This in turn increases pressure on international and intra-national conflicts over water access.
I posit that community-integrated geographic information systems, designed in a community-based problem-oriented way, can increase communities' capacity to manage freshwater resources in a sustainable fashion. Communities could participate in iterative processes of designing geographic information systems, populating them with data (local and scientific; qualitative and quantitative), and collaborating with administrations and neighboring communities at various scales.
Doing so, communities will gain awareness of natural resource issues affecting their livelihoods, inter-community and intra-community social capital, and power to bring scientific data and high-quality maps as evidence to policy-makers and conflict mediators. The understanding, trust and social capital built through the iterative development process might enable the community to observe disparities in access, resolve conflicts, and respond to changing conditions in the future. Social capital theory will also provide a framework for the researcher to assess and measure progress throughout the development process.
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