HIV/AIDS is today part of life in South Africa. Because of plans and programmes to reach communities with education and treatment and of companies implementing treatment programmes for employees, the infection rates are stabilizing. However, HIV/AIDS is still seen as a problem of the Health sector and particularly of the Department of Health. To ensure that HIV/AIDS will be manageable in South Africa, great improvement from the planning and infrastructural sector has to be put in place.

Cell-Life, a research team at the University of Cape Town, has been investigating the possibilities of using cellular and database technology to collect real-time information on HIV/AIDS and spatial infrastructural requirements since 2000. Information regarding the HIV+ person, their environment and access to basic amenities is collected by fieldworkers who are equipped with cell-phones. The WIG application menu on the cell-phones allows easy data collection. The information is logged in a database system that is accessible via the Internet. Cell-Life has developed the database system in an Open Source environment to ensure cost-effectiveness, sharing of information and high integratibility with other systems.

Since the beginning of 2004, Cell-Life is developing a new GIS to help the Health and Planning sector to manage HIV/AIDS in a spatial context. The team decided to investigate the possibilities of Open Source GIS – based on the same reasoning that was used for the general database. This presentation shares some of the insights that are being gained and the possibilities that we are envisaging of building an Internet GIS using Open Source Software. Various parts of the system will interface with each other through OpenGIS standards. It should therefore be possible to replace one OpenGIS compliant building block with another one. Having accomplished this, we will draw some interesting conclusions on the extent to which software is OpenGIS compliant.

Publication: AfricaGIS 2005 Conference, presentation available online