THE MOROCCAN EXPERIENCE IN THE CENSUS CARTOGRAPHY AND THE GIS

1
THE MOROCCAN EXPERIENCE IN THE CENSUS CARTOGRAPHY
AND THE GIS

• Introduction
• Cartography
• Objectives
• Methodology
• Urban
• Rural
• Difficulties
• GIS
• Objectives
• Setting up
• Achievements
• Difficulties
• Conclusion

2
Introduction

• The Population and Housing General Census (PHGC)
  involves extensive financial, human, material,
  and technical resources.
• It requires, among others, a previous
  cartographic work that consists mainly in
• collecting adequate cartographic mediums
  permitting to assure the exhaustiveness of the
  census
• constituting the different geographical entities
  of the census (districts, zones of control, zones
  of supervision) 
• gathering the necessary statistical information
  to plan and execute all the census phases
• setting a coding system facilitating the
  processing of the data collected through the
  census.
• For the censuses previous to 2004, this
  statistical cartography was essentially a tool to
  produce plans permitting to appropriately achieve
  the works of data collection.

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Introduction

• The last decades technological progress in
  geographical information digitalization
  revolutionized the cartography and allowed it to
  serve the works of data collection, processing,
  analysis and the dissemination of the results.
• In this presentation, we attempt to relate the
  Moroccan experience concerning
• The objectives, the methodology, and the problems
  and difficulties met during the census
  cartographic process phases.
• The setting up of the Geographical Information
  System Objectives, implementation, achievements
  and difficulties.

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Cartography

• The cartography has always been associated with
  the operations aiming at the country population
  counts. It consists indeed in providing the staff
  with necessary elements to carry out the data
  collection works.
• It is thus of fundamental importance for the
  censuses since it assures one of the latters
  universal basic principles exhaustiveness.
• In Morocco, the methodology adopted in the
  setting of the statistical cartography takes in
  consideration the differences that exist between
  the two residence surroundings.

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Cartography

• In urban area, this methodology didn't witness
  major modifications across the censuses. Based
  essentially on the actualization of the
  restitution plans of the cities, this approach
  has always been considered efficient to
  appropriately fulfill the census needs in
  reliable cartographic documentation.
• On the other hand, the natural specificities of
  the rural area, as well as the lack of recent and
  reliable cartographic materials, generally
  influenced the recommended approach for the
  statistical cartography in the rural area.

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Objectives

• Provide coverage of the national territory with
  recent, reliable and exhaustive maps for the
  cities, as well as for the farming areas.
• Conduct the partition of the entire national
  territory in geographical zones (census
  districts) permitting to ensure the
  exhaustiveness of the census.
• Endow data collection teams (supervisors,
  controllers and surveyors) with cartographic
  documents assuring easy localization of the
  different observation units at the time of census
  execution (households, constructions, lodgings,
  professional use locals, etc.).
• Collect geographical information required to put
  in place the adequate organizational device and
  to assess the human and material means in order
  to succeed all the census stages.
• Build a ground sampling basis permitting to set
  up the inter-census program of households and
  population surveys on reliable data.

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Urban area cartography

• The cartography conceived for the cities and
  urban centers kept a large constancy in the
  methodological content recommended for all
  censuses achieved since the country independence.
• It is based on the method of islets, and
  consists in achieving the main following tasks,
  prior to each census operation

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Urban area cartography

• Update the available cartographic funds of the
  urban communes for the whole territory.
• This is based on the previous census maps,
  completed by plans collected from different
  departments that are producing maps (restitution
  plans, physical planning, housing plans, etc.),
  notably for the peripheries and the extension
  zones of the cities. The scale of these
  cartographic mediums generally varies between 1
  over 2000 and 1 over 5000.

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Urban area cartography

• This activity consists in
• Noticing and reporting on these funds the shapes
  and the geographical positions of the islets and
  their components constructions, lodgings,
  professional premises, etc.
• Transcribing, on these maps, useful elements for
  addresses system to facilitate the localization
  of observation units, at the time of the census
  and the sampling surveys. This concerns the names
  of streets, avenues, facilities (schools,
  colleges, high schools, clinics, hospitals,
  hotels, etc.).

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Urban area cartography

1. Partition the territory of cities and urban
   centers into census districts, on the updated map
   funds. A district is a well delimited
   geographical zone including a number of
   households to be counted by a census taker during
   legally fixed census data collection time. The
   sectors of control and the zones of supervision
   are then defined from the districts, as basic
   geographical units.

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Rural area cartography

• Approaches proposed for the farming areas
  underwent important innovations aiming to improve
  the quality of the cartographic documents.
• For the earlier censuses (after the independence
  1960, 1971 and 1982), the approach combined the
  topographic maps, permitting to materialize and
  to set up the communes boundaries, and the lists
  of the farming localities douars (villages) and
  sub-douars.
• The census districts are constituted in this case
  by a set of douars according to size criteria, in
  terms of households and especially of minimum
  distances to browse.

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Rural area cartography

• For the census of 1994, a great effort has been
  carried out by conducting the area partition of
  all the national farming territory, in the same
  way as in the cities and urban centers.
• The farming districts are defined thus as being
  the parts of the communes, having clear
  boundaries and an average number of households
  likely to be counted by one census taker during
  the census execution time.

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Rural area cartography

• The methodology recommended for the cartographic
  partition in farming area takes notably into
  account the specificities relating to relief
  difficulties and the typology of the douars.
• The latter are characterized either by their
  explosion or by the scattering of their
  lodgings through generally large and uneasily
  accessible territories.
• The douars constituted in grouped agglomerations
  represent only the third of the total douars at
  the national level.

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Rural area cartography

• For each commune, the partition in census
  districts is made on the basis of topographic
  maps on the scale of 1 over 50.000. These mediums
  give a detailed and accurate representation of
  the reported natural elements of the territory
  (roads, buildings, railroad tracks,
  transportation and electric energy lines, lakes,
  rivers, relief, etc.).
• However, we do not have thorough cartographic
  mediums for the farming localities (douars). In
  these cases, the cartographers are called on to
  prepare maps giving roughly the structures of
  habitat, construction and road network for the
  high seized douars.

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Main difficulties met

• Insufficient cartographic coverage
• On the occasion of each passage of the
  cartographers (before every census operation),
  the cartographic teams seek cartographic funds
  permitting to appropriately update the
  statistical cartography.
• To this end, the main departments and organisms
  from which we seek maps are the Land-registry
  National Agency Agence Nationale du Cadastre, de
  la Cartographie et de la Conservation Foncière,
  the Urban Agencies, the Provinces and Prefectures
  technical services, the Urbanism and Regional
  Development Department.

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Main difficulties met

• The outcome is not always conclusive, either
  because the collected maps were old or because of
  lack of coverage, notably in the cities
  peripheries. In these cases, the cartographic
  staff is constrained to set up maps by using the
  steps method.
• Frequent changes in the borders of the communes
• The limits between the communes are among the
  difficulties that hinder the cartographic work
  good progress. These are not defined by any
  cadastral plan and are subject to frequent
  changes because of new administrative partitions.

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Main difficulties met

• Incomplete system of addresses
• Inexistent in farming areas, the system of
  addresses adopted in the cities and urban centers
  show important gaps, especially in the peripheral
  districts. To make up for this difficulty, we try
  to gather, during the cartographic work, a
  maximum of information to help better localizing
  the observation units (names of households heads,
  names of the basis facilities, etc.). In farming
  areas, the contribution of local authority
  representatives provide important support to
  surveys interviewers and census takers at the
  data collection time.

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Main difficulties met

• The programming of the censuses
• The programming of the field cartographic works
  is set up according to the date planned for the
  population census execution. Any postpone of this
  date is likely to influence the quality of the
  maps prepared for the census. Updating tasks,
  caused by such rescheduling, often require
  important time and means mobilization.
• incompatibility of the douars villages with
  land partitioning
• The douar is more an ethnic than a geographical
  concept. It is not always compatible with the
  principles of the adopted partition approach.

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Main difficulties met

• Appeal to insufficiently skilled staff for the
  cartography
• The important mass of activities, generally
  required by the statistical cartography, and the
  buffer delays to respect for a guaranteed quality
  of the cartographic documents, require the
  mobilization of human means exceeding the
  potential of the department in charge of the
  census.
• This makes it necessary to resort to less than
  suitably skilled staff (in cartography training
  and qualifications).

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The Geographical Information System

• The geographical information occupies a growing
  place in the national statistical information
  systems. It includes two main components
• The map  conventional space  representation
• The territory indexed statistical data.
• The technological progress permitted to bind
  these two components through the setting up of
  geographical information systems (GIS).
• GIS include software and computer procedures
  conceived to enter, process, analyze and present
  data with spatial reference in link with their
  geographical localization.
• They allow enriching the analysis and diffusion
  of statistical data and the publication of
  thematic maps.

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The Geographical Information System

• Aware of its contribution, and having all
  necessary elements for its development (maps,
  statistical databases), the Moroccan Statistics
  Directory undertook, since 1997, the process of
  setting up the geographical information system.

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Objectives

• The objectives of the GIS of the Statistics
  Directory are mainly
• to produce, for the censuses and the surveys, the
  maps and up-to-date geographical data, of good
  quality in terms of reliability and precision,
  and with savings in terms of costs and delays
• to integrate the spatialized data of the
  different statistical databases, facilitating the
  follow-up of the demographic, socioeconomic and
  environmental evolution of the different
  territorial entities

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Objectives

• to provide a modern analysis tool for the
  presentation and dissemination of the statistical
  information, illustrating the phenomena that it
  describes on the corresponding  cartographic
  medium
• to provide new solutions for the development and
  management of the sampling bases and the drawing
  of the samples for the surveys purpose
• to present a conceptual framework of management,
  organization and follow-up of the fieldworks of
  different statistical operations.

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Setting up

• Throughout its activities (censuses, surveys,
  collection of administrative statistics), the
  Statistics Directory generates some databases
  relating to several themes demography, economy,
  social, environment, etc.
• These data can be processed and analyzed on
  cartographic mediums allowing the visualization
  of the information for each geographical entity
  (region, province, circle, township, district,
  etc.).
• The digitalization of the cartographic mediums
  was the first work undertook in the process of
  setting up the GIS, and consisted in recording
  the maps of the different division levels as
  digital cartographic files including the real
  geographical coordinates.

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Setting up

• Plotting of the coordinates
• The cartographic medium used to constitute the
  GIS digital cartographic basis, which is the one
  of the 1994 census, does not include any
  geographical coordinates hence causing
  georeferencing difficulties. That is why the
  first task to achieve was to endow this medium
  with geographical coordinates.
• In urban areas, the superposition of the 1994
  census cartographic mediums, and the plans of
  restitution or cities plans, permitted to put the
  geographical coordinates (X,Y) of at least three
  distinct points, by board, and that correspond to
  real reference marks.
• In farming areas, this operation consisted in
  reporting the limits of the different
  geographical entities on topographic papers.

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Setting up

• The geographical data entry The geographical
  data entry was realized by the following
  processes
• Scanning transforming the analogical
  cartographic mediums in raster files, using AO
  format scanners.
• Digitalization transforming the analogical
  cartographic mediums in vector files, using
  digitizing tables.
• Keyboard Data entry, notably with regard to the
  toponymy and the symbols of the geographical
  reference marks.
• Georeferencing of the raster data
• It consists in transforming raster data, entered
  notably by scanner into data of vector type in
  the Lambert cartographic projection system.

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Setting up

• Conception of the geographical database
• The previous stages have been achieved in an
  environment that includes a software of automated
  drawing engineering (Computer Aided Design)
  combined with a computer application that assures
  the link with the databases.
• For the ambitions of the Statistics Directory in
  spatial analysis, it has been judged appropriate
  to conceive a system that includes, in a same
  basis, the geometry as well as inherent data. The
  conception of such a geographical basis is
  structured as layers of information (points,
  lines or polygons).

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Setting up

• Each of these layers corresponds to an
  administrative entity (region, province, and
  township) or statistical (districts, sectors of
  control, segments, douars, etc).
• This operation requires the transfer of data from
  the CAD files and their structuring according to
  the layers composing the geographical database.
• Data transfer
• Data transfer process, started after the
  realization of the 2004 census, adopts a
  methodological approach which respects the
  geographical database structure and retrace a
  priority order in the migration of information
  layers.

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Setting up

• Some layers are already transferred, controlled
  and cleaned
• Layer of the regions representing the
  administrative limits of the 16 regions 
• Layer of the provinces 62 provinces and
  Prefectures
• Layer of the communes 1.532 urban and rural
  communes 
• Layer of the urban centers 157 centers
• Layer of the census districts 37.000 districts 
  
• Layer of the sectors of control geographical
  zones composed from 3 to 4 census districts

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Setting up

• Other data layers are now under transfer and
  integration in the database
• Layer of the segments which are parts of farming
  districts (infra district)
• Layer of the douars represented as points
  illustrating the positioning of the farming
  localities.

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Achievements

• Since its setting up, the GIS has enabled the
  Statistics Directory to
• Elaborate the requested digital maps to realize
  the Economic Census of 2001 and its cartography
• Produce and disseminate the population main
  features in the shape of a socio-demographic
  Atlas for the censuses of 1994 and 2004
• Produce the maps of the districts, sectors and
  supervision zones, required for the realization
  of the Population and Housing General Census of
  2004 
• Constitute the ground sampling units for the
  purpose of the Master Sample 
• Contribute to update the poverty maps 2004.

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Difficulties

• Lack of recent and reliable geo-referenced maps,
  sometimes causing the recourse to incompatible
  cartographic mediums. This affects data quality,
  especially the precision of the geographical
  coordinates and the positioning of the limits of
  administrative and statistical entities
• Difficult access to the digital cartographic
  files belonging to the specialized departments in
  cartography and geographical information
• Lack of coordination between the different
  departments that are producing the geographical
  information
• Shortage in skilled human resources for
  geographical information processing.

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Conclusions

• Despite the difficulties, and what GIS
  implementation costs, our Department has
  benefited from the new maps.
• They provide an essential control device that
  guarantees consistency and accuracy of the
  census.
• They support data collection and help monitor
  census execution. Census takers and surveyors can
  more easily identify their assigned set of
  households.

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An example of urban district map
35
An example of rural district map
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An example of control sector map
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Conclusions

• Maps make it easier to present, analyze and
  disseminate census results. The Statistics
  Directory has published
• Census results, and Socio-demographic atlas,
• Poverty maps (regional, provincial, communal,)

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Thematic map Socio-demographic atlas
2004Population density by province
39
Thematic map Infant mortality by province 2004
40
Poverty maps
A poverty rate for each commune (urban and
rural) An estimated Human Development Index for
each commune An estimated Social Development
Index for each commune. These Communal Poverty
Rates have been used to select the most needy
Communes for the National Human Development
Initiative initiated in May 2005.
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Perspectives

• Decentralization through the GIS at the level of
  the 16 Regional Directories of the HCP. This
  activity, placed in the forthcoming census
  preparation, includes
• Providing of hardware and software material
• Transfer of regional files and databases to
  Regional Directories (RD)
• Training of the staff of the RD
• Technical assistance for the staff of the RD.

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Perspectives

• Data conversion for the new environment Up to
  now, some layers are transferred regions,
  provinces, communes, districts and douars. Other
  layers transfer is ongoing.
• Reinforcement of technical and professional
  capability of the GIS staff through continuous
  technical knowledge update.
• Realization of a website permitting to provide
  users with GIS geographical information online.

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• Thank you very much
• M. Mohamed BENKASSMI
• High Commission of Planning, Morocco.