During the first visit to the household in the baseline census round, the enumerators will need paper and pencil to draw the route or order of the households they visit each day. Drawing boundaries and marking key landmarks or features of their enumeration area will help in maintaining the order of future visits.

A preferred method for household mapping is to use the Global Positioning System (GPS).  This can be done during the baseline census round (or prior to the first round) but is better to schedule for any subsequent round.  The least expensive way to do this is to provide each enumerator with a hand-held GPS unit (approximately $100 USD each) for use during one full round to geolocate the coordinates of each house for the database.  The surplus GPS units can then be sold off, retaining only those needed for supervision and for mapping new households as they are created. A small dedicated mapping team may be useful to keep new households and structures in the GIS database.  Such digital mapping then requires adding GIS (Geographic Information System) software and skills, but will permit more precise spatial analysis.