Prativa Thapa
Prativa Thapa, a final-year Geomatics Engineering student at Kathmandu University, is the President of KU YouthMappers and the Sole Lead Mapping Week under the Geomatics Engineering Society (GES), recognized by Annapurna Express newspaper for her impactful leadership. She also serves as the Country Lead of Women Mapping Asia representing Nepal and is an active member of OSGeo Nepal. Through these roles, she stands as a powerful example of women excelling in the geospatial field, with a deep commitment to using open-source tools in her daily work to promote inclusive, community-driven innovation.
Session
This talk traces my path from an undergraduate Geomatics Engineering student to an open-mapping leader who applies OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to real engineering problems in Nepal. Since 2023, OSM has served as working engineering data across projects spanning flood hazard modelling, disaster-preparedness mapping, public health, and urban planning — including a flood susceptibility study of the Sunkoshi River Basin where OSM-derived hydrography, combined with AHP-weighted terrain, rainfall, and land-cover data, showed that community-mapped rivers can substitute for missing authoritative datasets in mountainous terrain. Alongside this technical practice, I founded KU YouthMappers to open geospatial work to students across faculties and put women into leadership, lifting female participation in flagship mapping activities to 62% and earning recognition from the Annapurna Post. This talk presents both threads together open data used for real engineering solutions, and the community that makes that work sustainable as a model for women-led open-mapping practice.