Article of the Month - November 2022

Mapping and suitability analysis of existing electoral polling units in Katsina local government area of Katsina State, Nigeria

Adamu BALA (Nigeria), Saied PIRASTEH (China, PR), Yahaya Abbas ALIYU, AbdulAzeez ALIYU, Swafiyudeen BAWA and Ibrahim ABDULWAHAB (Nigeria)

This article was awarded the Survey Review Prize and was presented during the FIG Congress 2022 in Warsaw.

FIG and Survey Review have decided to award a paper presented at a FIG Congress/Working Week. The Survey Review prize will be awarded every two years to the author and presenter of a selected paper at a FIG Congress/Working Week and will be limited to submissions from authors who fulfil the FIG definition of a Young Surveyor.

Survey Review is an international journal which has been published since 1931, and in recent years under the auspices of the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE). It has been published continuously as a quarterly journal, bringing together a wide range of papers on research, theory, practice and management in land and engineering surveying.

The paper selected for the prize passes through an initial reviewing and revision stage overseen by FIG, before being judged by members of the Editorial Board of Survey Review.

This year’s winner, “Mapping and suitability analysis of existing electoral polling units in Katsina local government area of Katsina State, Nigeria” by Adamu Bala, Saied Pirasteh, Yahaya Abbas Aliyu, Abdul Azeez Onotu Aliyu, Swafiyudeen Bawa & Ibrahim Abdulwahab.  Adamu Bala

FIG Vice-President Diane Dumashie handing out the Surrvey Review Award to Adamu Bala at the General Assembly held in Warsaw on 15 September 2022, together with FIG President, Rudolf Staiger.

SUMMARY

This research examined the mapping and analyses of existing polling units in the study area to provide scientific criteria for citing new polling units. The attribute data of the polling units were collected from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Katsina State, and spatial data was acquired through field observation, for geodatabase creation and query generation. For the suitability mapping, seven parameters criteria were adopted. The generated thematic maps of these criteria were standardised using the fuzzy logic approach. The geodatabase of the existing polling units created showed 281 polling units with their attributes. Also, the suitability map showed regions of suitability and unsuitability. The overlay map showed that 10 polling units were in the region of highly not suitable, 16 not suitable, 26 fairly suitable, then the rest were either highly suitable or suitable. It is recommended that INEC should adopt a scientific method in citing subsequent polling units.

The full paper is available to read here.