e-PRA: Participatory rural appraisal using satellite imagery on a flexi sheet [Online]

Efficiency of rural infrastructure projects in developing countries is suboptimal. This can be improved through participation of rural communities at every stage of the program i.e. planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Though participation is required at every stage, it is most important at the planning stage. To ensure this, a participatory method known as participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is most often used. A key step is to map and plan resources utilization using as medium either ground, paper, or GIS. However, most often, it only follows the ‘inform’ step in the participatory ladder. In the present paper, an innovative PRA process, ‘e-PRA’, involving use of satellite imagery is proposed to improve community participation and bring it to ‘co-production’ step in the participatory ladder. The e-PRA process is as follows: 1) Print satellite imagery of the village on a flexi sheet and take it to the community, 2) They mark village resource ownership, usage, etc on the flexi sheet, which is then photographed and imported into the GIS by a technical team, 3) The community proposed various interventions which are visited in the field, mapped using freely available Geo Open Data Kit (GeoODK) and imported into the GIS, 4) The proposed GIS plan is printed again on a flexi-sheet, discussed, refined and finalized in a village meeting. As the farm boundaries are clearly visible on the satellite image, it makes it possible for each farmer to identify his/her farm; it also makes sure no farmer is skipped in the process. It also saves time in the planning process. It was tested in about 100 villages and the impact was measured using parameters such as coverage of farmers from each strata in the planning process. A statistically significant improvement was noticed by comparing e-PRA villages with normal PRA villages.