Education Using GPS equipment and ArcGIS, the teams spent a total of 15 days in May 2008 and 2009 in the field mapping and classifying water access points such as wells, lakes, and cisterns. With help from local village leaders and guides and personnel from Rwanda National University and MVP, the students built a database of water sources by collecting GPS points in the field and classifying each site as a shallow well, open pit, lake, deep borehole, water tap, or cistern. The team also collected survey data by talking with individuals who arrived at the sites to fill their water cans. The survey provided information on water use, household location and size, distance to the water source, and the seasonal availability of water. The survey's purpose was to help MVP participants prioritize areas in most need of improving the quality and quantity of water sources. "One goal of MVP is to have water within one kilometer of every household. This is very ambitious and will take a while," said Molly Moore, a U of R student who participated in the project. The data is being held by Didace Kayiranga, MVP science coordinator in Mayange. "It gives us tools for planning and to evaluate our indicators such as distance from a household to a clean water source," said Kayiranga. "This indicator cannot be easily measured without overlaying the different household and water point layers." The GIS fieldwork gave students hands-on experience to learn how GIS technology can support projects that study the relationship between humans and the environment. "And for a few days in May," said Noble-Goodman, "students had the opportunity to help improve the community's access to clean, safe drinking water." "Working in an extremely rural, undeveloped area also provided new lessons" said Baber. "Students learned about the nature of uncertainty in collecting GIS data, such as mapping a community that does not have an address system and issues that can cause deterioration of the accuracy of GPS readings." U of R faculty and students continue to edit and revise the project data in graduate GIS classroom studies as a way to explore the spatial dimensions of public health issues. They are running analyses and creating spatial models to predict relative likelihood of productivity for new borehole well site locations. In the most commonly employed model, inputs are derived from household density (as analog for population density so that proximity to population concentrations is incorporated in the model) and relative terrain situation (valley or ridge, for relative proximity to groundwater). For this project, U of R collaborated with Loma Linda University School of Public Health (www.llu.edu/llu/sph/), National University of Hardware Used • Garmin 60CSx • Dell Precision M4300 portable workstation Software Used • ArcGIS Basemap Data Sources • SRTM 90 m digital elevation data • QuickBird images • Millennium Villages Project • National University of Rwanda GIS and Remote Sensing Centre • Rwanda government (administrative boundaries) Rwanda Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing Centre (www.cgisnur. org), and the Millennium Villages Project (www.millenniumvillages.org). Grant money was provided by the Southern California Metropolitan Water District through a program that challenges students to develop water-conserving technology in impoverished nations. To learn more about the students' mapping project, contact Max Baber at max_ baber@spatial.redlands.edu. Start with data you can believe in. Mandalay, Myanmar Latitude 21° 57‘ North, Longitude 96° 9‘ East DeLorme World Base Map provides seamless, horizontally-accurate base maps upon which to build an effective, compelling and affordable GIS. See how DeLorme's unique experience in data creation, software, and GPS can help your business. www.delorme.com/DigitalMapData DELORME Data • GIS • GPS www.esri.com ArcUser Winter 2010 63