News — 18 July, 2011

Schuyler Erle's presentation at State Of The Map EU

The organisers of State Of The Map Europe have done a great job of rapidly publishing videos of the conference presentations (little camera icons on the schedule page), and so you can already watch this presentation by Schuyler Erle Deploying Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

In it he outlines the role of HOT, improving human welfare by improving OpenStreetMap, and acting as a connection point between OpenStreetMap and the existing humanitarian community. He talks about the various disasters we have responded to, the progress we have made in capacity building over the past year and half, new initiatives to work on disaster preparedness and mitigation (particularly Kate Chapman's work in Indonesia which you can read more about on this blog) He also describes the importance of aerial imagery, the limitations of availability we have encountered, and future plans around OpenAerialMap. The talk was given to the community at this OpenStreetMap conference, and ended with some suggestions for areas where OSM folks can get involved. Just knowing how to edit the map is a valuable skill which you can put to good use working with HOT.