Sydney Togarepi | University of Zimbabwe (original) (raw)
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Papers by Sydney Togarepi
Advances in 21st century human settlements, 2024
Ethiopian Journal of Environmental Studies and Management, 2016
The most prominent problem of rapid urbanism in Harare is the development of slums and Epworth is... more The most prominent problem of rapid urbanism in Harare is the development of slums and Epworth is a notable example. The quality of planning and decision making in the participatory slum upgrading initiative can be sustainably improved by well managed processes of spatial and socioeconomic data collection. More so, existing approaches for slum upgrading are built on the basis of collaborative planning and thus community participation. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and support systems should explicitly consider the needs of professional and non-professional stakeholders in slum upgrading process. This study aimed to develop a customized "GIS based slum upgrading system" that would empower the community to participate in the planning and decision making processes involved in slum upgrading. The study involved developing tools that could be used by lay people, to achieve the same results an expert would. To achieve this, a PostgreSQL/Postgis spatial database integrating the spatial and enumeration data component was developed as the backend with a front end developed using VB.Net. A Map Control tool was imported from Map window 4.7 for displaying and interacting with spatial data. Techniques such as buffering were incorporated in the system to allow users to check for structures within a given distance of a feature. The system also provided a tool that allowed users to select an area and calculate the number of stands that can be obtained after inputting parameters like stand size and type of road. The system provided for tools that calculate statistical values e.g. determining the population as well as the number of households in a selected area. Users could also query for socioeconomic data by selecting spatial features. This provided flexibility in terms of the interaction of the users with the data. The system proved that with user oriented GIS system it is possible to develop tools that can be used by lay people especially those in slums to formalize their areas and obtain security of tenure.
Geoinformatics and Geostatistics: An Overview, 2014
Being a third world country, there is a lot of development still taking place in Zimbabwe. Severa... more Being a third world country, there is a lot of development still taking place in Zimbabwe. Several agencies both in the public and private domain collect and maintain enormous amount of spatial data for their day to day activities. However, information on the accessibility of this data is not available to common users, thereby depriving the utility of this precious information at the right place at the required time. Aiming to promote spatial data sharing, in 2010 Zimbabwe resuscitated the efforts of establishing National Spatial Data Infrastructure which had been started as early as the 1980s. These initial efforts died due to various reasons. In order not to face the same fate, this research seeks to evaluate the ongoing process in order to assess the readiness of harnessing National Spatial Data Infrastructure in the country and evaluate the best ways/methods to raise awareness in Zimbabwe and promote geographic information capacity building. CIPP and CIRO evaluation models are implemented. Two workshops were held, in 2011 and in 2012 mainly to raise awareness and to discuss the National Spatial Data Infrastructure structure respectively. A prototype geoportal was developed by a student from the University of Zimbabwe and is awaiting presentation to stakeholders at a National Spatial Data Infrastructure expo to be hosted sometime in 2014. The research concluded that Zimbabwe is ready to embrace the National Spatial Data Infrastructure which is strongly supported by the Surveyor General taking responsibility. All stakeholders are being encouraged to join relevant workgroups to operationalise the structure and make National Spatial Data Infrastructure a reality.
Ethiopian Journal of Environmental Studies and Management, 2017
The purpose of this study was to develop a spatially based application that is able to capture, q... more The purpose of this study was to develop a spatially based application that is able to capture, query, update and maintain crop production historical records for each field. Maps of the farm showing the fields were made. The fields were then numbered. These spatial data were prepared using ArcGIS 9.3. A database was created in Microsoft Access 2007. The database contained information on crops, fertilizers and past management. The information was linked to the spatial data table and maintained in the database. An application was developed using Visual Basic 6 in Map Objects allowing for the manipulation of spatial data within the visual basic environment. Results have shown that a record keeping system may link crop records to respective mapped crop fields in a GIS environment. This was then used to view crop field area, update new field data in the non spatial database and query and display field data for a specified period of interest. New data were added to their respective tables whenever available.
Waste Management has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing Harare, the capital city of... more Waste Management has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. The volume of waste being generated continues to increase at a faster rate than the ability of the city authorities to improve on the financial and technical resources needed to parallel this growth. Although waste removal is one of the most pressing problems in Harare, it is not a new problem. It was established that the seeds of the apparent chaos in the governance of waste in Harare were laid during the colonial period. Despite many ordinances the colonialists put in place to strengthen urban administration, they regarded native suburbs as areas for a cheap and easily controlled labour force, and therefore, made no serious efforts to resolve the emerging problems, particularly those of waste management. The current authority is struggling to manage the waste under tight budgets; highly inadequate and malfunctioning equipment; inefficient collection practices with variable l...
Floods are natural hazards that have always created an unexpected threat to human life and proper... more Floods are natural hazards that have always created an unexpected threat to human life and property. When severe floods occur in areas occupied by humans, they can create natural disasters that involve the loss of human life, loss of property and may result in serious disruption to the ongoing activities of urban and rural communities. The unanticipated and incessant heavy rains in 2014 that pounded theTokwe-Mukosidam catchment from late January and March led to flooding of the dam basin affecting villagers in the area. The affected villages were mainly those that had not headed to the call by government to relocate to identified land. This created an emergency situation due to increase in volume of water in the dam reservoir. The increase in volume contributed to flooding of the dam basin, marooning the houses and fields in the upstream and destroying infrastructure. Earth observation techniques and GIS can contribute towards more accurate flood hazard mapping that can be used to a...
Proceedings of the EAI International Conference for Research, Innovation and Development for Africa, 2018
The Global warming effect has had negative impacts on water resources in Zimbabwe due to erratic ... more The Global warming effect has had negative impacts on water resources in Zimbabwe due to erratic rainfall patterns. The overall effect leads to reduction in power generation on hydropower stations as a result of low water levels. Water level monitoring at hydro power generation reservoirs is thus of utmost importance. Currently employed in situ based water level monitoring techniques are less efficient and do not provide the synoptic coverage of the lake. We present the relationship between factors (natural and anthropogenic) affecting water levels and the measured water levels. The factors were derived from remote sensed data. To ascertain the most significant factors contributing to water level and electricity generation fluctuations, correlation and regression were used. The regression models generated were used to design an application. The application automated the processing satellite imagery. From the automated extraction of rainfall data and land use/cover classification water level monitoring was achieved.
Proceedings of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences
Zimbabwe's water resources are under pressure from both point and non-point sources of pollution ... more Zimbabwe's water resources are under pressure from both point and non-point sources of pollution hence the need for regular and synoptic assessment. In-situ and laboratory based methods of water quality monitoring are point based and do not provide a synoptic coverage of the lakes. This paper presents novel methods for retrieving water quality parameters in Chivero and Manyame lakes, Zimbabwe, from remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed derived water quality parameters are further validated using in-situ data. It also presents an application for automated retrieval of those parameters developed in VB6, as well as a web portal for disseminating the water quality information to relevant stakeholders. The web portal is developed, using Geoserver, open layers and HTML. Results show the spatial variation of water quality and an automated remote sensing and GIS system with a web front end to disseminate water quality information.
Floods are natural hazards that have always created unexpected threat to human life and property.... more Floods are natural hazards that have always created unexpected threat to human life and property. When severe floods occur in areas occupied by humans, they can create disasters such as loss of human life, loss of property and may result in serious disruption to ongoing socio-economic activities of urban and rural communities. Earth observation techniques and GIS can contribute towards more accurate flood hazard mapping, the assessment of damage to residential properties, infrastructure and agricultural crops as well as providing information for emergency relief work. The objective of this study was to use Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems to determine the spatial variation of flood hazard in the Tokwe-Mukorsi Dam area during and after the 2014 flooding. This was achieved through the use of the (recently launched 2013) 30m* 30m Landsat 8 OLI based images acquired from GloVis. A segment map digitizing technique in ILWIS was used to separate the water and non-water are...
Advances in 21st century human settlements, 2024
Ethiopian Journal of Environmental Studies and Management, 2016
The most prominent problem of rapid urbanism in Harare is the development of slums and Epworth is... more The most prominent problem of rapid urbanism in Harare is the development of slums and Epworth is a notable example. The quality of planning and decision making in the participatory slum upgrading initiative can be sustainably improved by well managed processes of spatial and socioeconomic data collection. More so, existing approaches for slum upgrading are built on the basis of collaborative planning and thus community participation. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and support systems should explicitly consider the needs of professional and non-professional stakeholders in slum upgrading process. This study aimed to develop a customized "GIS based slum upgrading system" that would empower the community to participate in the planning and decision making processes involved in slum upgrading. The study involved developing tools that could be used by lay people, to achieve the same results an expert would. To achieve this, a PostgreSQL/Postgis spatial database integrating the spatial and enumeration data component was developed as the backend with a front end developed using VB.Net. A Map Control tool was imported from Map window 4.7 for displaying and interacting with spatial data. Techniques such as buffering were incorporated in the system to allow users to check for structures within a given distance of a feature. The system also provided a tool that allowed users to select an area and calculate the number of stands that can be obtained after inputting parameters like stand size and type of road. The system provided for tools that calculate statistical values e.g. determining the population as well as the number of households in a selected area. Users could also query for socioeconomic data by selecting spatial features. This provided flexibility in terms of the interaction of the users with the data. The system proved that with user oriented GIS system it is possible to develop tools that can be used by lay people especially those in slums to formalize their areas and obtain security of tenure.
Geoinformatics and Geostatistics: An Overview, 2014
Being a third world country, there is a lot of development still taking place in Zimbabwe. Severa... more Being a third world country, there is a lot of development still taking place in Zimbabwe. Several agencies both in the public and private domain collect and maintain enormous amount of spatial data for their day to day activities. However, information on the accessibility of this data is not available to common users, thereby depriving the utility of this precious information at the right place at the required time. Aiming to promote spatial data sharing, in 2010 Zimbabwe resuscitated the efforts of establishing National Spatial Data Infrastructure which had been started as early as the 1980s. These initial efforts died due to various reasons. In order not to face the same fate, this research seeks to evaluate the ongoing process in order to assess the readiness of harnessing National Spatial Data Infrastructure in the country and evaluate the best ways/methods to raise awareness in Zimbabwe and promote geographic information capacity building. CIPP and CIRO evaluation models are implemented. Two workshops were held, in 2011 and in 2012 mainly to raise awareness and to discuss the National Spatial Data Infrastructure structure respectively. A prototype geoportal was developed by a student from the University of Zimbabwe and is awaiting presentation to stakeholders at a National Spatial Data Infrastructure expo to be hosted sometime in 2014. The research concluded that Zimbabwe is ready to embrace the National Spatial Data Infrastructure which is strongly supported by the Surveyor General taking responsibility. All stakeholders are being encouraged to join relevant workgroups to operationalise the structure and make National Spatial Data Infrastructure a reality.
Ethiopian Journal of Environmental Studies and Management, 2017
The purpose of this study was to develop a spatially based application that is able to capture, q... more The purpose of this study was to develop a spatially based application that is able to capture, query, update and maintain crop production historical records for each field. Maps of the farm showing the fields were made. The fields were then numbered. These spatial data were prepared using ArcGIS 9.3. A database was created in Microsoft Access 2007. The database contained information on crops, fertilizers and past management. The information was linked to the spatial data table and maintained in the database. An application was developed using Visual Basic 6 in Map Objects allowing for the manipulation of spatial data within the visual basic environment. Results have shown that a record keeping system may link crop records to respective mapped crop fields in a GIS environment. This was then used to view crop field area, update new field data in the non spatial database and query and display field data for a specified period of interest. New data were added to their respective tables whenever available.
Waste Management has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing Harare, the capital city of... more Waste Management has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. The volume of waste being generated continues to increase at a faster rate than the ability of the city authorities to improve on the financial and technical resources needed to parallel this growth. Although waste removal is one of the most pressing problems in Harare, it is not a new problem. It was established that the seeds of the apparent chaos in the governance of waste in Harare were laid during the colonial period. Despite many ordinances the colonialists put in place to strengthen urban administration, they regarded native suburbs as areas for a cheap and easily controlled labour force, and therefore, made no serious efforts to resolve the emerging problems, particularly those of waste management. The current authority is struggling to manage the waste under tight budgets; highly inadequate and malfunctioning equipment; inefficient collection practices with variable l...
Floods are natural hazards that have always created an unexpected threat to human life and proper... more Floods are natural hazards that have always created an unexpected threat to human life and property. When severe floods occur in areas occupied by humans, they can create natural disasters that involve the loss of human life, loss of property and may result in serious disruption to the ongoing activities of urban and rural communities. The unanticipated and incessant heavy rains in 2014 that pounded theTokwe-Mukosidam catchment from late January and March led to flooding of the dam basin affecting villagers in the area. The affected villages were mainly those that had not headed to the call by government to relocate to identified land. This created an emergency situation due to increase in volume of water in the dam reservoir. The increase in volume contributed to flooding of the dam basin, marooning the houses and fields in the upstream and destroying infrastructure. Earth observation techniques and GIS can contribute towards more accurate flood hazard mapping that can be used to a...
Proceedings of the EAI International Conference for Research, Innovation and Development for Africa, 2018
The Global warming effect has had negative impacts on water resources in Zimbabwe due to erratic ... more The Global warming effect has had negative impacts on water resources in Zimbabwe due to erratic rainfall patterns. The overall effect leads to reduction in power generation on hydropower stations as a result of low water levels. Water level monitoring at hydro power generation reservoirs is thus of utmost importance. Currently employed in situ based water level monitoring techniques are less efficient and do not provide the synoptic coverage of the lake. We present the relationship between factors (natural and anthropogenic) affecting water levels and the measured water levels. The factors were derived from remote sensed data. To ascertain the most significant factors contributing to water level and electricity generation fluctuations, correlation and regression were used. The regression models generated were used to design an application. The application automated the processing satellite imagery. From the automated extraction of rainfall data and land use/cover classification water level monitoring was achieved.
Proceedings of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences
Zimbabwe's water resources are under pressure from both point and non-point sources of pollution ... more Zimbabwe's water resources are under pressure from both point and non-point sources of pollution hence the need for regular and synoptic assessment. In-situ and laboratory based methods of water quality monitoring are point based and do not provide a synoptic coverage of the lakes. This paper presents novel methods for retrieving water quality parameters in Chivero and Manyame lakes, Zimbabwe, from remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed derived water quality parameters are further validated using in-situ data. It also presents an application for automated retrieval of those parameters developed in VB6, as well as a web portal for disseminating the water quality information to relevant stakeholders. The web portal is developed, using Geoserver, open layers and HTML. Results show the spatial variation of water quality and an automated remote sensing and GIS system with a web front end to disseminate water quality information.
Floods are natural hazards that have always created unexpected threat to human life and property.... more Floods are natural hazards that have always created unexpected threat to human life and property. When severe floods occur in areas occupied by humans, they can create disasters such as loss of human life, loss of property and may result in serious disruption to ongoing socio-economic activities of urban and rural communities. Earth observation techniques and GIS can contribute towards more accurate flood hazard mapping, the assessment of damage to residential properties, infrastructure and agricultural crops as well as providing information for emergency relief work. The objective of this study was to use Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems to determine the spatial variation of flood hazard in the Tokwe-Mukorsi Dam area during and after the 2014 flooding. This was achieved through the use of the (recently launched 2013) 30m* 30m Landsat 8 OLI based images acquired from GloVis. A segment map digitizing technique in ILWIS was used to separate the water and non-water are...