Jonathan Swart

Digital Innovation Lead

Jonathan is the Digital Innovation Lead at Urban Earth. Jonathan has a BSc Honours degree in Geography from the University of South Africa. His Honours research investigated the value of how a mobile-based GIS application could benefit tourism safety and promote sustainable people-nature interactions in the Drakensberg Mountains. Prior to his Honours, Jonathan completed a BA degree in Environmental Management as well as a six-month course in Geographical Information Systems, both at the University of South Africa.

Jonathan’s role at Urban Earth involves developing technical solutions for projects such as websites, mobile apps and bespoke tools. He also has seven years of GIS experience and is responsible for automating and optimising internal systems. A short summary of these roles include:

• Various GIS tasks such as coding Leaflet based interactive maps, static map generation for climate change related learning, as well as a GIS tool and related training for the Go!Durban Open Spaces project aimed at improving the management and maintenance of open spaces in the KwaMashu pilot area.
• The development and release of an Android and iOS appliance energy calculator app as a Department of Energy initiative. After research and self-learning, Jonathan built this app using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and released it through Google Play and iTunes.
• The design and construction of various websites, such as the UNDP Lesotho Staff Training portal as well as this Urban Earth website. In addition, Jonathan is also responsible for hosting the websites, configuring domain names, securing SSL certificates and basic SEO.

In addition to being associated with Urban Earth, Jonathan also consults as a GIS specialist for 3DroneMapping, an aerial land surveying company that specialises in using unmanned aircraft systems to supply high resolution, accurate aerial services to various professionals such as land surveyors, engineers, farmers and developers.

In his spare time Jonathan enjoys computers (building, gaming and improving his coding skills), film photography, working on cars and spending time either hiking and camping in the Drakensberg mountains or bodysurfing in the ocean.