PRM-AID: When Community Knowledge Becomes Data, and Data Becomes Power

Long before technology arrived to map a territory, communities already knew their living environment. They understood its boundaries, knew its sources of livelihood, and recognised the areas that could be used, needed to be protected, and should be passed on to future generations.

Communities know which areas are places to live, fields for growing rice, gardens on which livelihoods depend, and forests where they gather rattan, agarwood, honey, and other forest products. They know the locations of waterfalls, ancestral graves, places considered sacred, areas that must not be cleared, and places that provide food during particular seasons.

This knowledge is not always written down. It is passed on through stories, journeys from one place to another, experience of clearing fields, hunting, gathering forest products, or simply conversations between generations. An elder may be able to point out territorial boundaries merely by naming a river, hill, large tree, or particular place known only to local people. For the community, such knowledge is real and profoundly important.

The problem arises when this knowledge encounters administrative systems that operate through numbers, coordinates, maps, documents, databases, and various forms of written evidence. Knowledge held in community memory often does not yet exist in a format that government systems can read. As a result, something that communities have known and managed for decades, or even centuries, can appear never to have existed when represented in official documents.

This is where technology comes in—not to replace community knowledge, but to document, preserve, and strengthen it, so that it can be passed on and taken into account in decision-making.

This idea gave rise to Potensi Ruang Mikro–Aplikasi Informasi Desa (PRM-AID), developed by KKI Warsi. PRM-AID grew out of Warsi’s long experience supporting Indigenous communities and local communities in various regions. Through this work, Warsi found that many natural resource governance problems stemmed from community knowledge of their living environments not being accommodated in government data and administrative systems. Communities possess extensive knowledge of their territories, but that knowledge is not always documented or connected to the information systems used for planning and policymaking. As a result, areas that communities have long inhabited, used, and managed in practice are not fully reflected in information systems.

Against this background, when an opportunity arose to strengthen village information systems, KKI Warsi saw a chance to develop a system that would do more than record village administration: it could also reflect actual conditions and community knowledge of their living environment. PRM-AID was developed by bringing together spatial data, social data, and village information and administration in one system. Its development has progressed gradually through learning and adaptation to communities’ needs on the ground.

PRM was first developed in Jambi and later expanded to West Sumatra and North Kalimantan. Over time, this experience evolved into PRM-AID, adapted to the circumstances and needs of villages, including those in remote inland areas. Development has not been limited to technology; it has continued through a learning process involving KKI Warsi’s information technology team, support facilitators, village governments, and communities.

With this approach, PRM-AID is not intended merely to give a village a website or make it ‘online’. More importantly, the system brings community knowledge of their territory into a data system that can support planning, management, and stronger village governance. Spatial data helps depict the area and its potential; social data describes the people living there; and administrative data helps villages manage information about government and development in a more orderly way.

PRM-AID is managed as a collaborative effort with the community. People participate in remapping their living environment, after which their knowledge is translated into a digital format. This process turns knowledge into data, data into information, and information into evidence that can strengthen territorial certainty and communities’ management rights.

PRM-AID is therefore not built simply by collecting data from communities. The process begins with outreach and consultation about the purpose, benefits, and methods of data collection. Communities then take part in gathering information collectively. The data collected are verified together with customary leaders, village government, and residents to ensure accuracy before being published and integrated into government information systems. Consultation also takes place at several levels, from neighbourhood units (RT) to villages, sub-districts, and districts. The principle of PADIATAPA, or Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), is an important part of this process.

This process means that communities are not merely subjects of data collection; they are participants in producing knowledge. This is especially important when what is being mapped is not simply roads and buildings, but people’s living environment.

A line on a map may look simple to someone viewing it on a computer screen. For a community, however, that line may represent the boundary between two hamlets, garden boundaries, customary territory, an area managed collectively over many years, or a boundary that holds a long history of relationships between groups. Participatory mapping should therefore not be understood merely as the technical task of taking coordinates. It is also a social process for understanding place, bringing different bodies of knowledge together, discussing differences, and reaching agreement.

The experience of Tanjung Nanga and Metut in Malinau Regency provides a clear example. Previously, the boundaries between the two villages were explained mainly through each village’s own narrative. During a joint tracing process, natural boundaries and boundaries described in community stories were examined spatially and their coordinates recorded. The results were discussed between the villages until an agreement was reached. Boundaries that had previously existed only in stories became spatial boundaries shown on a map. On 9 September 2022, the two villages signed an agreement on their territorial boundaries at sub-district level.

This shows how a map can be a tool for building agreement. A map is not merely the final product. In many cases, it is the process of making the map that brings together parties who previously understood a place differently. When community members sit together and trace rivers, hills, roads, or familiar points, they have an opportunity to compare their knowledge. Differences can be discussed, checked again, and resolved by agreement.

Participatory mapping through PRM-AID therefore offers more than a depiction of a territory. It helps establish greater certainty about space. This is increasingly important because a village is not only a place to live; it is also an administrative area that provides the basis for development planning. Without clear boundaries, planning faces many questions: whose territory will a road serve, which community will public facilities be intended for, within whose administrative area are resources located, and who is responsible for managing them?

In Malinau, PRM-AID subsequently became part of a broader process. It was used as an instrument for resolving village boundary disputes through participatory mapping and inter-village deliberation. The mapping data were then shared and used in collaboration between KKI Warsi, the Malinau Community and Village Empowerment Office (DPMD), and the Geospatial Information Agency (BIG) to accelerate the formal demarcation of village boundaries. On 24 November 2024, 12 Regent Regulations were issued on the determination and demarcation of village boundaries in 12 sub-districts.

The journey from community stories to coordinates, from coordinates to maps, from maps to agreements, and from agreements to government documents shows how local knowledge can enter administrative systems without losing its origins.

This is where territorial certainty begins to intersect with legal recognition and management rights. Legal recognition is not simply a matter of possessing a document. It requires a basis that explains which territory is involved, who manages it, the history of its control, what it contains, and how the community relates to it. Documented spatial and non-spatial data can form part of the evidence base that strengthens this process.

Within PRM-AID, spatial data can show the location and boundaries of a territory. Social data can describe the people who live there, their social conditions, livelihoods, institutions, and the village’s various potentials and needs. Read together, these two types of information provide a more complete picture of an area.

This makes PRM-AID relevant to strengthening management rights. For communities living in forest areas, such rights require certainty about the territory being managed, who manages it, what is being managed, and how that management takes place. In facilitating Social Forestry, for example, PRM-AID data can show community land-use patterns, the potential of proposed Social Forestry areas, settlement locations, accessibility, and the use of non-timber forest products. These data can help develop proposals grounded more firmly in actual conditions on the ground.

PRM-AID can therefore serve as a bridge from territorial certainty to stronger management rights. Communities no longer need only to state that they have managed an area for generations. They can show where it is, its boundaries, what it contains, how the space is used, and how the community organises its management. Such data do not automatically constitute legal proof or resolve every rights issue, but they provide a stronger information base for recognition, negotiation, advocacy, and planning.

Yet territory is never only about maps. Every area contains people with complex social lives: families, community groups, village institutions, livelihoods, basic needs, vulnerable groups, and a range of development challenges. For this reason, PRM-AID also integrates social data and village administration.

Well-organised administrative data help villages understand population composition, household conditions, occupations, needs, and other social information. When combined with spatial data, this information enables villages to understand development not merely through aggregate figures, but in terms of actual conditions distributed across the territory.

When a village plans to build a bridge, for example, spatial information can show the location and access routes, while social data help identify who most needs that access. When a village designs a nutrition programme, social data can help identify target groups. When assistance is provided for older people, organised data can help ensure that intended beneficiaries are reached.

Data thus become more than something the government asks villages to report; they become information that villages can use to manage their own affairs. Administration takes on a broader purpose: helping village governments understand community conditions, identify needs, set priorities, monitor change, and plan on the basis of evidence.

PRM-AID data are not confined to village offices. They have also been used in the preparation of forest management plans and RPHJP (Long-Term Forest Management Plans), and have become part of the information available for villages bordering Kayan Mentarang National Park. The data include community land-use patterns, Social Forestry potential, accessibility, settlement locations, use of non-timber forest products, biodiversity, and ecotourism potential.

The development of PRM-AID shows that technology shaped by community needs does not always begin in the technology sector. Its development has taken place through discussions between KKI Warsi’s information technology team, facilitators, and communities, allowing the system to be continually adapted to the actual circumstances of remote villages.

In some villages, internet access is not always available and electricity is not always reliable. Not everyone is accustomed to using computers or GPS, and digital skills vary. Initially, some community members were even unwilling to provide data because they feared their personal information might be misused.

The experience in Apau Ping Village shows that building a village information system is not merely a technological challenge. Facilitators must first build community trust. Rather than applying pressure, they do this through presence and social relationships: taking part in community activities, attending village meetings, working together, helping with gardening and harvesting, and sharing in residents’ everyday lives. Once relationships and trust have developed, people who were previously reluctant begin to agree to provide data.

This demonstrates that data cannot be separated from social relationships. Good data are not simply complete data; they are built on trust, understood by the people they concern, verified, and used for a clear purpose.

Developing PRM-AID also requires people to work behind the system. Social-work, spatial, and data-entry teams are established and trained to collect social data, use GPS, understand mapping, and operate the website. These local cadres are essential because facilitators cannot remain in a village forever. Technology changes, applications are updated, and people involved in village government may change. What needs to be passed on, therefore, is not only the application, but also the ability to manage data.

Lessons from PRM-AID show that digital literacy varies considerably among residents and that operators change over time. Staged training and repeated support are therefore important. Systems designed to work offline-first are another important lesson for areas with limited connectivity. Ultimately, the system’s sustainability depends on village data cadres, information updates, operational support, and the ability to integrate the system with government systems.

In other words, PRM-AID’s greatest investment is not its software, but the people who can manage knowledge and data.

The development of PRM-AID also shows that it has not evolved as a finished technology product that is simply handed over to a village. It continues to develop in response to real needs on the ground. The need to understand territory led to mapping; mapping created a need to clarify boundaries; spatial and social data provided a stronger basis for planning; documentation of control and management of territory created an evidence base for strengthening management rights; and the collection of village data generated a need for wider connectivity.

More than 80 villages now have the PRM-AID application. This development shows that a system initially built around the needs of individual villages is beginning to grow into a network. In some areas, PRM-AID is starting to connect with information systems at sub-district level. The next step is to strengthen these connections so that data developed and managed at village level can become part of district-level data systems.

This direction matters because district-level data should ultimately be built not only from the top down, but also grow from data collected and managed on the ground. In this way, information about territories, communities, potential, development needs, and managed areas can remain visible as data move from villages to sub-districts and then to districts.

Building a data network is, of course, not straightforward. It requires maintaining data quality and updating information, building human resource capacity, ensuring the system’s sustainability, and balancing open information with the protection of personal data. Another challenge is aligning data standards with diverse local needs and contexts.

These challenges also show that PRM-AID has developed from a village information application into a broader approach to data governance. What is being built is not merely a digital system, but a knowledge ecosystem connecting communities, village governments, sub-districts, and, in the future, districts.

Perhaps this is ultimately the significance of PRM-AID’s journey. Technology does not come to teach communities about their living environment. They already possess that knowledge. Technology helps ensure that the knowledge is not lost, can be documented and passed on, and can be present in decision-making.

Communities already know their territory. PRM-AID helps map it. Communities have a history of managing their territory. PRM-AID helps document it. Villages have social lives and administrative systems. PRM-AID helps organise them within a data system.

This is the journey from knowledge to data, from data to information, and from information to evidence. Ultimately, that evidence can strengthen communities’ position as they seek territorial certainty, management rights, development planning, and better natural resource management.

PRM-AID is therefore about more than making villages digital. It is an effort to ensure that villages have the capacity to document themselves, understand their own territory, and help determine how it is managed and developed.