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Approved Scaling: $455M Mindanao Transport Connectivity Improvement Project

In 2019, I led my largest implementation and field testing of my local data economy model. Research, investment, policy and program development studies are typically conducted in a siloed and uncoordinated fashion that requires a lot of time, effort and expense for local communities. The Philippines is ranked as the most at risk for disasters and climate change, averaging 22 typhoons (hurricanes or cyclones) a year. This places a tremendous burden on local communities who are typically required to travel long, difficult journeys to attend numerous events and workshops that are often located far away near airports or luxury hotels for the convenience of donors and funders.

In 2019, with World Bank, IFC and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade funding, I was able to conduct five simultaneous studies, including World Bank’s first gender gap mapping study, across six provinces in the conflict region of Mindanao in the Philippines as Technical Assistance for the Mindanao Transport Connectivity Improvement Project:

1. 600 Gender Gap Mapping Household Surveys
2. 7000 Agriculture Commodity Flow and Origin-Destination Surveys
3. Six Province AI Studies on Industrial Logistics Congestion and Challenges
4. 3 Regional Open Workshops for 180 Cross-Sector Participants (including micro enterprise through to conglomerates)
5. Road, Agriculture, Micro to Medium Enterprise (MSME) to Industrial, Indigenous, Tourism and Creative Industries and Disaster Infrastructure Field and Remote Mapping

These studies required 200 field staff, all of whom were Filipino, and 180 were located in close proximity to the survey sites. For the community-based mapping workshops, I undertook a careful validation process of ensuring the community was represented by progressive cross-sector leaders across government, business, non-profit, schools and university staff and students, and local community leaders. Rather than requiring a technical background, an interest to learn and teach others was the primary criteria, because the best knowledge often comes from people with strong community ties and diverse experiences. Our simplified mapping techniques ensure that anyone can learn to map, and we’ve trained people from age 6-60+ years.

Through our exclusive use of free and open source software and frugal sciencem methods, and hiring local staff and data collectors and processors, we not only strengthen local community engagement, but we are able to increase and improve the standard of data and outputs, at a much lower costs and environmental footprint. This enabled on average, and increase of 2-5 times higher staff and data wages. With every expense designed to directly benefit the local community sites, we create opportunities for research, investment, policy and program development studies, across public and private sectors to be transformed into accelerated impact models.

We were fortunate to compelete the program and report approvals in March 2020. This project enabled and challenged me to further develop inclusive innovations, frugal science, and safer methods that achieve representative data samples at scale, while supporting our highest wages to date, which is US$100 per hour for fully remote recruitment and data collection during the pandemic.

Following the approved expansion of the program in November 2025, the World Bank announced a $455 million fund to support the expansion of the Mindanao Transport Connectivity Improvement Project.

Local Data Economies: Gender, Jobs, Food and Climate Equity

OpenForum Europe (OFE) recently invited me Boston to present my local data economy in partnership with Harvard’s new Digital Data Design Institute. OFE is a European open source software think tank that advises European policymakers and legislators on the merits of openness in computing and provides technical analysis and explanation. OFE promotes open source software, as well as openness more generally, as part of a vision to facilitate open, competitive choice for technology users.

FOSS local data economies are self-sustaining and more equitable economic, social and environmental models that meet the pace and urgency of accelerating global risks. Faster, more accurate, verifiable and representative data enable better public and private sector prioritization, coordination and monitoring across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs largely lack geospatial indicators that capture mobility, safety, proximity, infrastructure and service assessments, which accurately reflect the intersecting risks and opportunities communities experience in real-life. 78% of the 231 SDG indicators lack gender data, and despite women’s majority contributions to household and economic tasks, they have the least access to essential household and business infrastructure.

OECD reports that less than 10% of funding is received by local organizations, with 80% of climate research awarded to Western organizations over the last 30 years. Of the $137 billion invested a decade after Super Typhoon Haiyan and the Sendai Framework, only 4 percent was invested in mitigation in Asia Pacific, and the lack of coordination and tangle of overlapping multilateral efforts continues to create further chaos to already traumatized communities. 

Rather than a siloed and political approach reliant on glacial grant and funding processes, local governments and cross-sector communities co-develop their own continuous and interoperable SDG map with geospatial indicators to better fast track public and private sector investments and interventions, receive the majority of budgets, and address long neglected infrastructure and the unique needs of marginalized communities.

With the exclusive use of free and open source mapping tools including unique digital twin techniques for infrastructure and disaster modelling, non-technical and technical local communities produce faster, more accurate, representative and verifiable data, at 50% lower cost and environmental footprints, while increasing local daily wages 100-900 percent, starting at 3 months. The highest wage to date is remotely trained World Bank road safety surveys at $100 per hour of work.

This an immediately viable transition to a local data economy, where local communities continuously lead data and knowledge on their community, industry and geography, to depoliticize investments, with greater governance and accountability, especially in technology, engineering and construction, which are among the most corrupt industries.

This bridges the gaps between effective policy, program development, local capacity, data and research gaps.

Download the paper here.

International Women’s Day 2020

This year, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap invited me and my colleagues, Nathalie Sidibe of OpenStreetMap Mali and Jinal Foflia of Grab Asia to discuss the importance of mapping and open data to women during a webinar for International Women’s Day.

I’m excited to connect with more female leaders and mapping groups and to learn about exciting projects to strengthen our communities. Follow female mapping news with the #WhenWomenMap hashtag.

2019 HOT Board Candidate Statement

Hello, my name is Celina Agaton. I’ve been based in the Philippines for the last five years, moving back to Manila after Super Typhoon Haiyan. I grew up in Manila, Jakarta and Toronto, and my experiences in food security, open data, civic technology and development have shaped my life’s work. I enjoy helping improve bringing together people to improve civic and community engagement.

I first learned about OpenStreetMap when I helped provide Ushahidi with their first grant as a Netsquared global advisor and co-organizer for Netsquared Toronto, and then the Toronto CrisisCamps following the Haiti Earthquake. My work for the last 11 years has been centered on helping connect people to the things they care about their communities. When I was based in Toronto, I worked with 7,000 non-profits, 200 corporations and the volunteer community to shift funding to a more real-time model by working closely with NGOs to understand their short and long term needs. I used this data to influence government, boards and donors to base their decisions on the critical needs of NGOs, versus political or dated mandates. I also created friendly and accessible spaces online and offline, and events were regularly attended by 300 people. I’ve taken this learning, and work experiences in North and South America, Asia and Africa, to shape the methodology we’ve been sharing for the last five years.

My work in the Philippines has shaped a model based on OpenStreetMap and OSM apps that I hope to share with other countries. All my work includes government, business, NGO, academe and community leaders learning OSM, working together with free and open source tools and open data to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. I currently lead projects for the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada to coordinate their efforts and to layer their data on OSM to better shape programs based on impact. We’ve just completed the first gender gap mapping for World Bank Philippines and hope to develop this as standard practice for other countries.

I hope my experiences and passion for OSM can help the HOT Board move forward in the following ways:

• Stabilize funding for HOT local, regional and global initiatives through strategic funding and partnerships
• Understand internal and external priorities to develop a global strategy moving forward
• Develop more programs to welcome, engage and sustain new and existing members
• Strengthen communities and funding opportunities by sharing knowledge and experiences across OSM
• Identify critical areas for emergencies by region and country to build local capacity for OSM and shape a defined process for emergency response.

My bio and projects are at http://celinaagaton.com/about/

Thank you for reading my candidates statement and for all your efforts to support the community!

Celina

Celina Agaton Bio