Hi Pete, I was thinking that maybe Alicia from the London Missing Mappers could give some interesting insights from her history/ethnography perspective, or that she might have some good ideas about people from her RGS network. Cheers, Jorieke

Thanks a lot Kevin!

Hi Kevin, Really a pity to hear! Any chance you know if the imagery will be back online soon? We do have currently some tasks on the HOT Tasking Manager to support our MSF teams on the ground where Maxar Imagery is the only imagery that is of a reasonable date for the support that our teams need. If it will take a while, we might search for other solutions. Thanks! Jorieke

Hi Martin, great analysis again! And heads up to our validators, keep on going! I was wondering what the effect is of combining the different types of feedback in a message to the mapper. I can imagine that a combined message of negative performance feedback and verbal rewards will have higher effect, than only the negative feedback… or not?

Just discovered your post and discussion, interesting! Maybe the blogpost I wrote a few months ago is also interesting for you… http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jorieke%20V/diary

Get in touch with http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/aHaSaN or http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/tasauf1980 Or search for the OSM Bangladesh facebook page and post a message overthere! A lot of stuff going on in Bangladesh for the moment :-)

Hey guys,

I’m very sorry I did not answer before, but thanks a lot for your valuable reactions!

Indeed I think people sometimes should not be put on the map openly. A professor of architecture in Bangladesh told me a few years ago: ‘Putting slums on the map is exactly the same as shouting: “Evict them!”’. And not only in the case of slums we have to be careful, also mapping in contexts of complex political emergencies might be very sensitive. What do we for example do with informal refugee camps? I think we should always have in our heart the so called ‘do no harm’ principle as highest value.

But does ‘do no harm’ mean by definition that we do not have to intervene? In some cases yes, but in other cases you can adapt the methods you are using. In the case of mapping I believe we could indeed keep the data private like you say Pete. It might sound contradictory to say this as OpenStreetMapper, but I believe that we with HOT cannot afford ourselves to act solely as cartographers or open data advocates. Even not, if we get millions of funding or huge media attention. We should have our principles, and we should act as humanitarian mappers.

Further I very much like the column ‘Local OSM community in collaboration with a global, remote community’ you would like to add into my table! I definitely agree with you in here. The feeling of being part of a worldwide network of mappers is in my experience incredibly important to keep people mapping. Also, I especially like it when there is a real exchange: not only from north to south which is most likely to happen at this moment, but an exchange from south to south, north to north and south to north. This means for example Senegalese mappers mapping for their ebola affected neighbour, Bangladeshi mappers mapping for Nepal, or a Burkinabé answering your questions on the HOT mailing list. So mappers everywhere in the world, don’t be afraid to show what you are doing, ask questions if you need help and offer help if you can help somebody out!

And to Warin, I think you must be an excellent (humanitarian) mapper! You reflect on what and how you are mapping, and this is the most important we need. So I also have no ready-made answer for you on your question if we better leave things off the map if we are uncertain… I suppose in some cases yes, and in others not.

Hey Joost, really cool! And for sure interested in one for Lubumbashi to show to MSF. A great tool to show to humanitarian (and of course other) actors how fast it can go! Have a good time in south america! Groetjes, Jorieke