Introduction

In the third week of October 2022, unfortunately, there was a big flooding event in Jembrana District Bali that caused several damages and casualties.

The Support

Right after the flood happened, Bali Disasater Management Agency (BPBD) contacted Open Mapping Hub Asia-Pacific (OMH AP) team to give some mapping support in some of the affected areas. Before OMH AP launched the tasking manager mapping to respond to the request, we conducted rapid data gap assessment through disaster ninja to see whether we still need remote mapping support or we can directly support them in the data utilization to create a flood impact map on that area. After we found that there were OSM data gaps on the affected areas, OMH AP created the Tasking Manager Project to support that event.

In the same time, Bali BPBD also coordinated with Sky Volunteer organization to map the inundated area using drones. The data later on was overlaid with OSM data on the area to create an impact map of flood to support Bali BPBD get better information about the flood impact.

The Result

After conducting the disaster response mapping with OSM Mapper and validator for almost 1 month, The Tasking Manager Project was finally 100% mapped and validated which indicated relatively high quality data to be used for the further analysis. On the other hand, Sky Volunteer also finalized their data for the inundated area. These data later overlaid on the QGIS and InaSAFE to create an impact map of the flood on the area and presented in the Indonesia-Pacific Forum for Development event 2022 in December 2022.

The Key Takeaways

• Collaboration with other organizations is essential to complement OSM data to create high-quality analysis of disaster impact.
• Local ownership of the tasking manager for BPBD Bali is needed to ensure the sustainability of the future support.
• Partnership and collaboration with government and other stakeholders is important to make sure the use of the data from HOT activations
• Training of Trainer (ToT) and disaster activation curriculum training are needed to make sure all the HOT activations are more efficient in terms of sustainability and communication.

I read the document titled A Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behaviour in the OSM Community and it gave me a flashback to several conversations with our colleagues and team members about the situation in the OSM community, especially the OSMF Board member. I remember asking why no board member from Asia while we know Asia is one of the active regions on OSM and there are a lot of OSM contributions from there both from individuals and organizations. It has been 13 years since the first OSMF board was established yet there is still no representative from Asia.

For me this is the problem that has been laid for a long time and we are all aware about it but so far there are little efforts to solve it. Personally, I don’t really know why this problem still exists while there are many ideas or promotions from OSMF and the community about the diversity and inclusive community. Moreover, the OSMF board that has been dominated by a certain group of people, for me, indirectly gives intimidation to others to give their opinions into the community through mailing lists or even the OSM user diary or even nominate themselves to become OSMF Board. I think because we are afraid to receive offensive feedback/comments. We afraid to receive opinion such as:

• ‘she is not capable to run OSMF Board’
• ‘he is from Asia, his English is not good, his communication to the community would not be effective’
• ‘she is working on company/organization that use OSM, absolutely she only wants to bring her company/organization agenda to the board and OSM community and not really care about OSM as an individual’
• ‘he doesn’t have master/phd degree and his academic background seems low, I am not sure * he will bring any value to the board’ etc

I am afraid this kind of message is going to ruin all the efforts that have been done by other OSMF board members to make OSMF in particular and the OSM community in general a safe place to bring our opinion and really open for diversity and inclusivity. I believe we always can share and deliver our opinion and message strongly without leading them to hatred and disdain, or contempt of other particular people and groups in the OSM Community.

Those examples above now are strengthened by one of the opinions that said on this mailing list thread . But to make it objective, the person also had released a statement and apologized for any inconvenience caused here

Moreover, I also want to emphasize that we should focus on how to make the system better instead of blaming certain individuals because I think we all make mistakes and harassing people would not solve the systemic problem and would create other similar problems instead. Let’s make the system better and it would create a better community where we always can give appreciation to wonderful accomplishments, constructive criticism, and support in any ways that we could to our fellow mappers.

As a conclusion, every cloud has a silver lining therefore I believe this situation will take us to a better place and starting with this document there will be many supports and actions from OSM communities all around the globe.

Peace

Harry Mahardhika M

Hi Everyone

Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Harry Mahardhika. I am living in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am OSM user and working with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Indonesia as a Project Coordinator. Currently, I coordinate a collaboration project between HOT and Disaster National Management Agency in Indonesia. In general, our project to map certain cities in Indonesia to complete its critical infrastructures such as education, health, public facilities. We also update its administration boundary. We have been doing this project since 2016 until now. There are 3 cities that have been mapped in this project: Surabaya, DKI Jakarta and Semarang.

Until now, we still monitoring about our mapping project area. Unfortunately, last week we found that there were some changes in DKI Jakarta’s data that makes many of those data become error and broken. In general, main cause of those problem because some OSM Accounts shift / move existing data DKI Jakarta. We analyze and we found that because they trying to match those data with Digital Globe Satellite.

From explanation above, there are some suggestion that I would like to tell you:

1. When map DKI Jakarta, our team use satellite imagery from Geo Center USA because it was clearer and update. So please, DO NOT shift/move existing data in DKI Jakarta based on Digital Globe Satellite. They have ruined our effort and data in DKI Jakarta.
2. Why do they keep doing this? Is it individual work? Or do they work on certain project also in DKI Jakarta? If so, which organisation they work for? I need this explanation because more than one person doing this.
3. For you that read this diary and feel responsible about this problem, please fix the data that have you ruined. Please shift/move according to existing OSM data in DKI Jakarta.

List of OSM Accounts that made Crossing Ways and Buildings at OSM DATA in Jakarta as below:

1. kawle
2. stella9
3. Neethu5
4. naik4
5. surya8
6. marupally
7. motkar
8. vaidha1
9. neela1
10. udaykiran3
11. akhil2
12. renuka1
13. Malka7
14. Alekhya5
15. Pabbas
16. Tejan7
17. Harishpuppala
18. zakriya1
19. Kolla6
20. parveen5
21. ardhavara
22. saisokam
23. anushalanka
24. srivastav5
25. Rakesh9
26. Sajjad1
27. poornima1
28. damaraju
29. apurva2

Just for the record, most of those accounts just joined OSM in January – March 2018. So basically, there are 2 possibilities here. First, they are new users so they do not know about how to add or edit data in OSM properly. Secondly, they make another OSM account from specific project in Jakarta / Indonesia.

see an example: warnings

I hope this problem can be solved as soon as possible. If any of you that read this diary know about one of the OSM account that I have mentioned above please let them know. Even better if you know about why they did this and what project that their involved in please let me know.

PS: at least, if you want to make some changes in OSM Data especially in another country, please leave some specific comment about your changes and project that you working on so other users can see and know about your work. This is really important for OSM user to be more responsible for public data especially on OSM Data.

Thank You so much

Best Regards,

Harry Mahardhika M