Integrated deprivation area mapping system for displacement durable solutions and socio-economic reconstruction, Sudan (IdeaMapSudan)

African great metropolises are rapidly growing due to rural-urban migration. In Khartoum, Sudan, the urban population increased from around 245,000 in 1956, to over 8 million, due to wider changes in urbanization patterns driven by climate change, civil-unrest and protracted forced displacement. With the lack of sustainable planning strategies to secure land tenure and access to services, the level of deprivation in Khartoum informal settings witnessed a swift increase in urban poverty, that requires mapping the vulnerabilities of the urban poor and providing evidence-based data to support displacement ‘durable solutions’. In response, IDeaMapSudan was launched in 2020, as a joint collaboration between Sudan Urban Development Think-Tank, Ministries of Social Development, Physical Planning, Infrastructure and Transport, and the Faculty Geo-Information and Earth Observation Science (ITC) at Twente University, to achieve three key objectives: 1) Provide capacitybuilding on using Earth Observation (EO) and spatial data innovation to fill the gaps in existing administrative GIS maps, 2) Develop a community-led geo-spatial database for mapping deprived areas (e.g. informal settlements) using socio-economic indicators for deprived areas in Khartoum, 3) Establish an ‘Integrated Deprivation Area Mapping System’ for data sharing and communication, that can guide the city planning decision -making process. Using Expert discussions and local field data collection, IDeaMapSudan revealed that local data on deprivation do not exist or are scattered within different local authorities, and the need to overcome the challenges of urban governance and technical congruence between EO data and community-driven vulnerability assessments is essential, by having a spatial distinction between slums, informal settlements, precarious areas, and other deprived areas, beyond the limited understanding of physical deprivation and humanitarian led vulnerability assessments.