Barbados: Mapping the Coast and the Water Crisis
Barbados, West Indies
By Angelica Jackson
barbados, infrastructure, privatization, water, access
The goal of this mapping project was to show the privatization and exclusivity of the coast and to show the water crisis in Barbados.
Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean and it totals 66 sq m. which is just about the size of Brooklyn and Queens put together. The small and beautiful island is currently dominated by its tourism industry which has significantly shaped the island in the last few decades.
Mapping the Coast
The two maps I took time to work on were created to show the privatization and exclusivity of the coast due to the influence of the tourism industry. Hotels, Villas and vacation rentals line the west and south coasts, limiting the level of access for many Barbadian residents to beach pockets along the coast.
The first map was the one I was most determined to complete. It is a map of Airbnb and Vacation Rental Locations along the west and south coast. If you go onto Airbnb, Vrob, Hotel.com or any sites where you can book a room or home to stay, you’ll notice that the majority of available residence is along the coast. My map is only a sample (of 136 available properties) of what is available since I did it location by location but I was sure to include the “Per-Night” pricing to also show the scales of affordability. I decided to use the approximate radii provided by the airbnb and vacation rental sites since I wanted to show the locations in relation to the coast more so than it’s exact spot (which I would not be able to get anyway).
I created the hotel map to show the amount of space and land the hotels, as a whole occupy along the South (and West) coast of Barbados. I did not do a buffer in the way that I did with the vacation rentals because (1) I know where the hotels are approximately located from personal experience and (2) I wanted to present the claim in detail, so people are able to see the individual hotel parcels that line the beach area. From this distance there is a significant gap in the middle but it is a combination of very small hotels and unmarked vacation rentals, and commercial properties that occupy the space, all of which, if combined, would better illustrate the issue.
Mapping the Water Crisis
As I continued to develop my thesis I was interested in figuring out what people were deeply concerned about in their everyday lives. People on the island were very vocal about the failing and poorly maintained infrastructures around the island. On various platforms on the internet, Barbadian people shared their displeasure about the inconsistent services they were getting. I decided to narrow down my focus to water access and infrastructure issues, in order to focus on one topic in a comprehensive way.
I wanted to begin by mapping the current infrastructures along the island. It was very difficult to find most of the information needed to map the infrastructure. Until now, i am still unable to locate the water pipelines that run throughout the island (possibly for good reason) but I was able to find the map of the water protected zones and the information of the official Barbados Water Authority water sources across the island, listed by name, location and type. Due to lack of time, I was unable to create a shapefile for the protected zones but I did reproduce the water source information into an editable map.
The Disruption Map
The Water Disruption map was created because there is a very serious water infrastructure and maintenance problem across the island. Too often, there are main breaks, water outages, leaks and other types of disruptions that directly impact people’s quality of life. Hundreds to thousands of people suffer from water outages, low water pressure, brown water and other water issues. For the sake of people’s lives and because Barbados is already a very water scarce nation, the inconsistency with how the water sources and pipelines are being managed and maintained is something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
The Disruption Map was my second most labor intensive deliverable but it is also the one that was most important for the work I am doing. The Disruption Map shows the location of multiple water service disruptions across the island, each categorized by disruption type and the date of report. Using this information, I created a static map that categorized the incidents by type and included a buffer zone of affected areas, and I created a dynamic map, which shows the reported incidents over a course of time. The information I used was based on gathering personal accounts from social media, newspapers, new sites comments, editorials etc. Each location was individually mapped and given adequate information in order for me to be able to make the map as dynamic and rich in visual information as possible.
The map was not only a map made to visualize the problems over time, but it is meant to highlight the voices that are not usually amplified beyond the platforms they are expressing themselves on.