QCRI Geotagger puts initiative on the map

Qatar Computing Research Institute’s (QCRI’s) Data Analytic team has developed a system named  Geotagger  for the World Bank. The system automates the geocoding of all the WB-financed projects. It  enables more efficient and effective labelling of the Bank’s project portfolios and  places them on a map for analysis, monitoring and evaluation. The system supports the World Bank’s ‘Mapping for Results’ initiative, a partnership with AidData, which manually geocoded all active WB-financed projects in 144 countries. ‘Mapping for Results ‘is part of the bank’s Open Data initiative, which allows more transparency of its activities and access to information that promises to produce new analysis, tools and solutions to development challenges. Patrick Meier, director of Social Innovation at QCRI, said  that it was a reflection of the organisation’s commitment to its social mission. “The Geotagger enables the World Bank and partners to turn Open Data into useable data, which will bring more transparency and accountability to the international development space. QCRI’s Data Analytics team is well placed to support the World Bank’s effort in making sense of this development data thanks to our advanced expertise in applied analytics research,” he said. Commenting on the collaboration with QCRI, Aleem Walji, director at World Bank Innovation Labs, said: “Our vision is to innovate by bringing technology into World Bank projects and we hope to collaborate on other exciting projects in the future.” Stephen Davenport, co-executive director of AidData and senior director for innovation at the Development Gateway, said: “QCRI’s Geotagger tool will be a huge help to AidData and the Open Aid Partnership in geocoding other donors’ project portfolios.” Brad Parks, AidData’s co-executive director at the College of William & Mary in the US, noted: “The Geotagger tool will support AidData’s efforts  through a new partnership with USAID and its Higher Education Solutions Network  to generate geospatial aid information and decision support tools that help development finance institutions make smarter policy and programming decisions.” Making use of its expertise, the Data Analytical team has developed a system to access the World Bank’s datasets, retrieve documents, extract and report relevant information on the Bank’s projects. The system identifies locations and place names in documents from the World Bank Projects Data API using the Stanford Name Entity Recogniser and Alchemy, a text-mining platform. The place names are then geocoded using Google Geocoder, Yahoo! Placefinder and Geonames, and are visualised on a map.   The system also accesses and geocodes information from the World Bank’s procurement notices in order to compare project documents with procurement data. The developed system combines the locations with financial data to provide a holistic view on project expenses. The automation and effectiveness provided by QCRI’s Geotagger also enables the geocoding and mapping of historic projects, allowing researchers to look at the evolving World Bank portfolio from a distinct angle. Since the launch of ‘Mapping for Results’, three generations of interns read many thousands of pages of World Bank project documentation, safeguard documents, and results reports to identify and geocode exact project locations.