wasteskipsblantyre

The goal of wasteskipsblantyre is to provide data for research and planning of solid waste management in Blantyre, Malawi. The package contains two datasets: skips holds the locations of the publicly accessible waste skips in the city, with the number of skips, access and the fill-up times reported at each location, and poi holds the points of interest for collecting the waste from the skips. The data were updated in 2023 and replace the 2021 dataset wasteskipsblantyre of earlier versions.

Installation

You can install the development version of wasteskipsblantyre from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("openwashdata/wasteskipsblantyre")

Alternatively, you can download the individual datasets as a CSV or XLSX file from the table below.

dataset	CSV	XLSX
skips	Download CSV	Download XLSX
poi	Download CSV	Download XLSX

Project goal

Data on the location of public waste skips in Blantyre was not available. Without such data, it becomes difficult to develop a solid waste management plan and logistics. The goal of this project was to identify the locations of public waste skips in Blantyre, Malawi, and to record how they are used.

Data

The package provides access to the locations of the publicly accessible waste skips in Blantyre, Malawi, and to the points of interest for their collection.

library(wasteskipsblantyre)

skips

The skips dataset has 13 variables and 67 observations. 47 rows are named skip locations, 43 of them with coordinates. The last 20 rows have no name, no location and no other values; they carry only the constant capacity of 7000 litres per skip (see issue #11). For an overview of the variable names, see the following table.

skips

variable_name	variable_type	description
name	character	Main name of skip location.
name_other	character	Alternative names of skip location separated by commas.
supervision_area	character	Cleansing supervision area.
context	character	Type of urban environment surrounding skip location.
direct_access	character	Vehicle access path type.
fillup	double	Number of days to fill up according to person surveyed.
fillup_dry	double	Number of days to fill up in dry season according to person surveyed.
fillup_rainy	double	Number of days to fill up in rainy season according to person surveyed.
number_skips	double	Number of skips at skip location.
capacity	double	Capacity of one skip in litres.
y	double	Y (latitude) coordinate in WGS 84.
x	double	X (longitude) coordinate in WGS 84.
notes	character	Notes relating to skip location.

poi

The poi dataset has 3 variables and 5 observations: the depot, the Mzedi dump site, the compost site and two gas stations. For an overview of the variable names, see the following table.

poi

variable_name	variable_type	description
poi	character	Point of interest.
lat	double	Y (latitude) coordinate in WGS 84.
long	double	X (longitude) coordinate in WGS 84.

Example

The code below is an example which shows how you could use the data to prepare an interactive map in R. Find more examples in the prepared examples article.

library(wasteskipsblantyre)
library(dplyr)
library(sf)
library(tmap)

# read the skip locations with coordinates into a simple feature
sf_skips <- skips |>
  filter(!is.na(x), !is.na(y)) |>
  st_as_sf(coords = c("x", "y"), crs = 4326)
# set mapping mode to interactive ("view")
tmap_mode("view")
# create an interactive map
qtm(sf_skips)

License

Data are available as CC-BY.

Citation

Please cite using:

citation("wasteskipsblantyre")
#> To cite package 'wasteskipsblantyre' in publications use:
#> 
#>   Yesaya M, Msuku L, Schöbitz L, Tilley E, Loos S, Seemann-Ricard N
#>   (????). "wasteskipsblantyre: Locations of Public Waste Skips in
#>   Blantyre, Malawi." doi:10.5281/zenodo.6470364
#>   <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6470364>.
#>   <https://openwashdata.github.io/wasteskipsblantyre/>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Misc{yesaya_etall,
#>     title = {wasteskipsblantyre: Locations of Public Waste Skips in Blantyre, Malawi},
#>     author = {Mabvuto Yesaya and Limbani Msuku and Lars Schöbitz and Elizabeth Tilley and Sebastian Camilo Loos and Nicolas Seemann-Ricard},
#>     doi = {10.5281/zenodo.6470364},
#>     url = {https://openwashdata.github.io/wasteskipsblantyre/},
#>     abstract = {An R data package containing the locations of public waste skips in Blantyre, Malawi, updated in 2023, with the number of skips, vehicle access and the fill-up times reported at each location, and the points of interest for their collection (depot, dump site, compost site and gas stations).},
#>     keywords = {open data,washdata,solid waste,waste skips,waste collection,Blantyre,Malawi,data-visualization,geolocation,malawi,open-data,open-datasets,r,solid-waste,waste-management},
#>     version = {0.1.0},
#>   }