“Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive”. - Dalai Lama

Hello, voting members! I am Ahasan, I belong to the coastal district Khulna of Bangladesh. I truly believe in humanity and continuously strive and work towards humanity because my motto in life is ‘if you want to leave a mark in the world, work for the humanity’. This ideology motivated me to expand OpenStreetMap in Bangladesh to make open geospatial data for all and to create OpenStreetMap Bangladesh (OSMBD) community and then work for Humanitarian Open Street Map (HOTOSM). I am truly honored to be nominated by Pete Masters in the global arena of HOTOSM. I express my heartfelt gratitude towards him for believing in me.

Who am I?

• I am a Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System graduate from Asian University of Technology (AIT), Thailand.
• I am also a graduate in Environmental Science from Khulna University, Bangladesh.
• Diploma in Climate Change Vulnerability and Humanitarian Responses at Jointly University of Hawaii-USA, United Nations University, Keio & Okayama University-Japan, National university of Samoa and Asian Institute of Technology-Thailand.

Currently, I am working as a Geospatial data consultant in Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) unit which is a global partnership that helps developing countries better understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. GIS and Remote sensing is my passion and working with it nationally and internationally for past 12 years. During my Master’s degree in Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) Thailand, I got involved with Open Source GIS. After coming back to my motherland – Bangladesh; GFDRR’s collaborative open city project gave me the chance to work actively with OpenStreetMap. From then on I fell in love with OSM and HOTOSM and till date, I am working passionately for both the communities. Bangladesh didn’t have much knowledge of OSM before 2013. As a GIS specialist and supporter of free and open source projects, I realized the huge potential of OSM in developing Bangladesh, with regular disaster threat and top listed country for climate impacts. I got introduced with Humanitarian Open Street Map Team (HOT) through Jeff Hack and Robert Soden. Later I have worked with Ryan Somerville, Jorieke vyncke, Pete Masters, Dale Kunce, Daniel Joseph, Taichi Furuhashi, Chad Belevins, Patricia Solis and the SOTMUS 2015 gave me the chance to meet most of the legends of OSM/HOTOSM. If anyone asks me why I love OSM/HOT then my response will be, the location data should be open for any emergency, research and for the local community what I felt always during emergency response and in my academic life. I found, to be involved with HOT is a noble work what will serve the community for a long time with a very minimum effort. Therefore I started to disseminate this knowledge among people, building a strong OSM community involving academia, government and non government organizations, youth communities, youth entrepreneurs and the local level low tech community. I voluntarily facilitated more than 35 OSM training and coordinated many more mapping parties in Bangladesh. People hire me for conventional GIS mapping, I introduce OpenStreetMapping that’s how OSM is spreading among the agencies here. I write regularly about opendata and OSM in my personal blog(www.ahasanulhoque.com/category/blog/)

Currently, along with like minded people of our community took decision to create OSM foundation officially to launch more events through agencies and academia. Simultaneously I am campaigning to create more use cases for the OSM data uploaded so far since “Data have no meaning if there is no use”. We shouldn’t wait for disaster to use this data only; therefore we need to use the OSM data in research and innovation.

My vision for HOTOSM:

• I believe, HOTOSM is not only a non-profit organization but also a global family with open mind members who always works for the only purpose - serving the affected global community.
• If I get elected as a board member, I will try my level best to provide logical, critical and right judgmental decisions for HOTOSM and its sustainable growth in future.
• Ensure that HOT is a transparent organization for its members who can attend all meetings (Board included) and access all meeting notes, communications and all the Organization documents (specifically finance, admin, projects) ; within of course the respect of privacy.
• HOTOSM will give me the official identity what will make my stand bold in future venture regarding OSM movement and HOT activation among communities around the world.
• I ensure that HOTOSM fosters its support to the growth of autonomous local OSM communities (made of individuals, groups, chapters and economic operators) and develop their ability to sustain relations amongst themselves (global-local, South-South, North-South) and with technical communities (OSM, free software and open data) as well as the humanitarian and development actors.
• My intention is to provide feedback from my knowledge and experiences in many contexts and type of projects, including e.g. budget optimization to systematically encompass support for local emergent OSM communities.
• As a board member, I will be striving for better future for all HOTOSM communities around the world which meets hopes and resolves concerns.
• I will be enhancing the networking and collaboration with other HOT members globally and participated in fundraising activates through my all channels.
• I will be using the many branches that my experience provided me with: strategy, project engineering (design/implementation), reporting, admin/business processes, outreach, networking, advising, grants writing/fundraising and the field-specific technical and organizational skills.
• Create HOT as an inclusive organization in terms of decision making; specifically in project design tied to subventions, grants, or core funds.
• Redefine relations and roles between the Board of Directors and Operational staffs (ED and Project Managers).
• Ensure a shift towards a more active role for the Directors in strategy/planning/design/implementation/monitoring of operations and projects with the ED in charge of running the day to day business. *More importantly, working as HOT Board member will provide me the chance to learn global scale non-profit organizational management.

Thank you very much for nominating me as a Board member of HOT. Vote for the humanity, vote for the deserving candidate. I wish continuous growth of HOT in near future.

Ahasanul Hoque (Candidate for HOTOSM Board Member)

HOT Voting Memeber LinkdIn Twitter OSM Skype: ahasan4u