Ruben Martin and I discuss the recent activities and what’s coming up for the humanitarian open mapping community.

What’s covered this week in brief?

• Response to the earthquake in Syria and Turkey
• Milestone for URBE LATAM and the Preventório favela mappers in Brazil
• Sharebacks of the Mapping for Resilience Initiative in Hoima, Uganda
• OSM Community Spotlights at Community Working Group
• Events coming up
• Mappy quote of the week

What’s happened this week?

Over the past few weeks, the OpenStreetMap community has mobilised in response to the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. More than 7,500 mappers have contributed to the response so far, and 221 validators have validated over 5,870 tasks in Turkey alone — the contribution of this relatively small number of validators has been phenomenal, trying to ensure high data quality for the relief efforts.

The data produced is being used in the field and has been utilised in various platforms, including the MSF geo portal and the humanitarian data exchange (HDX), the preeminent data platform for humanitarian responders. Despite the ongoing challenges of the response, the community’s response has been amazing, and we, at HOT, are proud to be a part of it.

The response to the earthquake will continue, with data needs changing as the response progresses. For example, Turkish mapping NGO, Yer Çizenler, has introduced tagging for buildings that have been damaged, and other datasets such as pharmacies and medical providers are being integrated.

The message… please keep mapping (go here if you want to know how) — the data is being used everyday to support the response.

Really happy to see that the URBE LATAM team spent last week with their Preventório favela mapping community colleagues and visiting other communities, discussing the results of the mapping and how the data is, and could be, used, as well as meeting with the Mayor of Niterói to discuss future solidarity, economic and public policy projects.

Staying with informal settlement mapping, also great to see the Mapping for Resilience Initiative in Uganda has been doing sharebacks of their mapping work with the residents of Hoima, Uganda, discussing how the mapping can support the assessment of facility distribution & negotiations for better services.

It’s also been fantastic over the past three weeks to have three OSM Community Spotlights (a new feature) at the community working group meetings. The workig group members have hosted OSM Malawi, Togo and Kenya, with really interesting discussions on community evolution, challenges and new initiatives. Check the working group forum for notes and discussion.

What is coming up?

There are a lot of earthquake solidarity events coming up, organised by OSM communities — the best way to find a community mapathon to join is through the OSM wiki or on the OSM calendar.

There is also an exciting webinar being organised by the Community working group tomorrow on the future of field mapping, featuring a demo of the prototype Field Mapping Tasking Manager (sessions in French and English)

Mappy quote of the week:

Mikel Maron on OpenStreetMap (in conversation on the geomob podcast):

I think it’s amazing that [OSM] works… I’m still astounded that, everyday, this is the way that the fundamental geospatial data set of the world is created. And, it works and continues to work!