With Typhoon Nina (international name: Nock-Ten) wreaking havoc last December 25 and 26, it sparked my interest to map areas hit by the typhoon. While wide-scale mapping still not starting in the wake of the typhoon, I now started mapping areas for disaster response.

I started mapping areas hit by Typhoon Nina first at Catanduanaes, where the typhoon made its first landfall. at Virac, the province’s capital, I have mapped many houses there, along with roads, schools, a church, and fishponds, along with paths within them. Fortunately, those areas I mapped have traceable Bing imagery, and I traced several POI’s, like two schools, and a Mormon church, which I recognized using the aerials.

While it is still a few days after Nina wreaked havoc, I have already started mapping for disaster response, and I expect that this may be followed by Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team projects, that may involve other mappers to map typhoon struck areas, especially on areas that lack quality aerial imagery, like most of Quezon, which has most part that lacks Bing coverage, but, Mapbox Satellite has, however, on some areas, imagery is not so fine, unless MapGive will have high-resolution imagery for mapping those typhoon-struck areas.Well, it would have been better that areas that will be affected by Typhoon Nina would have been mapped before, like what is done in Samar Island before Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) struck Eastern Visayas and southern Luzon.