Considerations for collecting census data

[spwoodcock]

This should probably become a milestone with issues at some point.

We got asked the question: how to use FMTM at a country level, for census data collection?

Custom server

• It makes sense to split this kind of user requirement away from the public FMTM instance.
• A custom instance should be set up for a country, likely using Kubernetes autoscaling + load balancing for high load.
• An specific instance would be used to map a region or country for census data collection.

Splitting a country into areas

• Currently we have an algorithm for splitting things on a city scale.
• FMTM will not work if attempting to create a country scale project 😆
• First we need a nice way to subdivide down the country into smaller areas.
• Luckily we aren't the first people with this problem!
• We could use the lowest level of subdivision possible from GADM
  • GADM uses three levels to divide a country (with 0 being the country itself)
  • The data is provided as geojson.
  • Each level 3 area would be a separate project.
  • The project naming should probably be consistent: {level_1_name} | {level_2_name} | {level_3_name}
• We should also provide the possibility to upload custom area boundaries.

Orchestrating this

Option 1: manual

• We provide an endpoint to download the level 3 GADM data as individual geojson files.
• The user creates a project for each boundary.

Option 2: automatic

• We automatically download the level 3 GADM geojson.
• This is parsed and a project is made programmatically in FMTM (using a task queue most likely).
• The user would probably need a way to orchestrate this, like a census data creation page, where they provide basic info that is replicated across all FMTM projects.

[spwoodcock]

Managing Projects Via Organisations

We had a productive discussion on a similar topic today - not census data, but a large municipality mapping project, which will be divided into ward areas.

@ivangayton had the excellent idea of reusing the concept of 'organisations' for this:

• Organisations at the highest level are the project 'host' - they can either refer to an actual organisation, or a large scale mapping project (e.g. Tokha Municipal Mapping Survey)

• Within an organisation each project can be a subdivision of the area.

The advantages is that we don't need much extra code & we can reuse the same user role levels too.

Organisation Project Management Page

• We haven't fully implemented the 'organisation' management pages yet, as of 24.10.2024.
• However, in the future we could also consider an 'organisation projects' management page.
• On this page we could provide configuration for potentially spawning multiple projects for a single mapping campaign / organisation.
• We could provide off the shelf subdivision using GADM as described above, but also provide functionality for users to custom split the area into whatever size chunks they want.