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News — 22 April, 2016

Ecuador Earthquake: Day 7 Update

by Mhairi O'Hara, Tyler Radford

As of the 22nd of April there have been over a million and a half changes made to OpenStreetMap in response to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador on the 16th of April. There have been 500+ aftershocks and the number of fatalities has also passed 500. Support is strong with more than 1,700 contributors volunteering their time to help map priority areas through the HOT Tasking Manager.

HOT continues to remain activated at the “Moderate” event level as defined in the HOT Activation Protocol. The activation is being led by local and regional HOT volunteers with support from HOT’s global community and activators outside the region.

There are 8 dedicated projects set up in the HOT Tasking Manager to coordinate those that wish to assist with mapping affected areas. To see the full list, please see the wiki page. There are also notes on how to contribute and get started with mapping.

 

Imagery

DigitalGlobe graciously opened up their satellite imagery in support of the cause, providing both pre and post event data. Please see their post for further information. The HOT team are currently working on processing the post disaster imagery to make it available through OpenAerialMap as a TMS which will be used to map highways between populated places, and identify impassible roads and bridges through the Tasking Manager. Pre- and post-event imagery has also been made available from several government institutions of Ecuador: Instituto Geográfico Militar (IGM); SIGTIERRAS; Sistema Nacional de Información (SNI). Planet Labs has also made pre- and post-earthquake imagery available under an open license.

 

Coordination

There is an amazing team working hard to coordinate efforts between locals on the ground, aid agencies, imagery providers, the media and our amazing mappers. At the heart of the effort is HOT member Humberto Yances based in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Humberto and the team are using Telegram to coordinate the response via an online communication channel on Telegram (you can join the channel using the following link (https://telegram.me/joinchat/AIXg3AhgTX3n3oh3SVBcVA). Any help and assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

Mapathons

There are many mapping events going on across the world as everyone is showing their support for Ecuador. Please view the full list on the wiki page to see if there is one taking place near you.

 

Get Involved and Communicate

Learn to map: http://www.mapgive.state.gov/learn-to-map/

Help map: http://tasks.hotosm.org/?sort_by=priority&direction=asc&search=earthquake+in+ecuador

Find out more: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2016_Ecuador_earthquake

Twitter Account: @MappingEcuador

Official hashtag for the mapping activities: #MappingEcuador

Other relevant hashtags: #OSM_Ecuador #Ecuador #EcuadorEarthquake #TerremotoEcuador #PrayForEcuador