News
Faces of HOT: Meet Dewi, Indonesian OSM Trainer
Since August 2012, the HOT team has included eight Indonesian trainers who teach beginning and, soon, intermediate and advanced OSM workshops all over Indonesia. Six of these OSM instructors were hired in August, while two (Emir and Va) have been working with Kate since June 2011. This week, we will meet Dewi Sulistioningrum (say that ten times fast...).
Digital Humanitarian Network Simulation at ICCM Washington DC
Thanks to OCHA, I had the opportunity to participate in the whole ICCM (International Conference for Crisis Mappers) in Washington, DC, October 11-14. Organized...
Two weeks of field work within the EUROSHA Chad Project
Last night of hard work in the meeting room of the UNHCR in Gore (Southern Chad) debriefing the two weeks of field work. Tomorrow we head North to Ndjamena. I feel that this is the right time to share with you impressions and facts from those last intense and beautiful days. I'd like to start first with the vitality, the energy the EUROSHA project created. Especially that of the Team who had been engaged in the 4 days October training in Plaisians (France) at the premises of the Group URD. There is something simple, strong and beautiful in the way those 26 young individuals decided to volunteer 6 months of their lives. Their energy was communicative and worked as a fuel keeping us up to speed. It has an even a stronger effect when experienced during a deployment.
Beginning Workshop Debrief
Last week we finished our Beginning OSM workshops for BPBD staff, local non-government organizations, and university in six provinces that are high risk for disasters. AIFDR and BPBD are mapping in these six provinces (East Java, West Java, South Sulawesi, West Papua, South Sumatra and NTT) to see if OpenStreetMap can become the platform for gathering valuable information in Indonesia. Here is what our team had to say about the beginning workshops
HOT and Wikimedia Indonesia join forces
We met at the National Library of Indonesia-- partly for its space and partly for its reference materials. Unlike the English wikipedia, Wedimedia Indonesia requires two or more sources per page. Full articles require sources every sentence. The community of wiki users in Indonesia is small and so they do not have the manpower to be constantly editing and administrating all the articles. Our team met up with some administrators of Wikimedia to help them create and edit pages on the major roads in Jakarta. Who: John Vandenberg, the President at Wikimedia Australia, Wikimedia Indonesia teams and HOT: Indo. What: Learning how to edit wiki road pages, upload pictures on wiki commons and link these pages to OSM, and other maps.
Update from the Red Cross on Gulu and Lira
An update and thank you from Robert Banick at the American Red Cross on Gulu and Lira mapping
The first stage of the Red Cross's on-the-ground mapping exercises are wrapping up and I wanted to provide an update to all the incredible volunteers who got us this far.
[inline:2012-09-06 12.57.56 HDR.jpg]Your contributions to OSM were huge to us in Gulu, where we led a training on GIS basics for 12 Uganda Red Cross Society members. OSM in Gulu was used throughout to ground the course in real data: our GPS exercises were about collecting data for OSM and our mapping sessions made heavy use of the Gulu data. Uganda Red Cross staff were pretty delighted to see their contributions go right into the map. [inline:Gulu Fire Risk.png]
Become a tutor of the Eurosha volunteers!
Nicolas and I have been training the 25 Eurosha volunteers who will be split in 4 four teams for being deployed 6 months in Chad, Central African Republic, Burundi and Kenya over the next 6 months, starting within the next 5-10 days. Marion, Gloria, Alexandra, Anna, Iolanda, Adelina, Désiré, Filip, Lenka, Federica, Jorieke, Morgane, Assania, Serge, Aude, Katerina, Claudia, Orsolya, Pascal, Nanhas, Barbara, Lenka (yes, there are 2 Lenka), Janja, Marine and Hannington are enthusiastic volunteers with social sciences, development, humanitarian or geography backgrounds for most of them, coming from Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Chad, Bulgaria, Burundi, France, Hungary, Kenya, Belgium, Slovenia and Central African Republic.[inline:P1200042 1024x768.JPG]
HOT at PICNIC
I presented the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team at PICNIC festival in Amsterdam. See the video here: Thanks to the European Journalism Centre for inviting HOT...
From Remote Tracing to Field Mapping in Padang
Padang, West Sumatra, has been identified as one of Indonesia's most vulnerable cities; in 2009 an earthquake claimed over 1,100 lives and destroyed or...
The OSM Project Senegal: joining Tech Camp Dakar 30-31 August 2012
I am starting a second short trip (28-August – 2-September) to Dakar where HOT has been invited to be part of the TechCamp organized these 30 and 31 August by the US Embassy to facilitate sessions around OpenStreetMap and mapping. We'd like here to thank the organizers for choosing HOT, our friends and partners from JokkoLabs – a co-working space in Dakar - who recommended HOT to the be part of the Camp, and finally, the Fondation de France and the Association OpenStreetMap France (OSM-FR) for their continued support. All made this second trip to Senegal possible.
Tropical Storm Isaac getting to Haiti
Came accross this serious hurricane warning today from NOAA, informing that the tropical storm Isaac may hit Haiti severely from the next 24-36 hours. We think it is worthy to take Isaac seriously and so we are starting a local preparation coordinated by Jaakko Helleranta and Brian Wolford who have been living in Haiti for almost two years and have carried out many OSM activities and participated to HOT programs there.
Preventative Mapping in Uganda with the Red Cross
HOT has teamed up with the American and Ugandan Red Cross to virtually map the cities of Gulu and Lira. These two cities have expanded rapidly in the last twenty years and currently do not have up-to-date maps. This becomes an issue for the Red Cross because maps are necessary for better community disaster response. In Northern Uganda, mapping resources are unreliable for finding locations when emergency response, such as for a house fire or traffic accident, is required. Updating these city maps is important for many reasons, especially so that response vehicles can identify the quickest routes for fires or accidents.
Setting up the OSM ecosystem in Senegal 6: Building the humanitarian component
It’s finally time to mention the mapping party HOT and OCHA-ROWCA co-organized at the OCHA Office in Dakar the 30-May where we brought together UN IM/GIS from OCHA, World Food Program, UNICEF and ICRC, Karim Sy and Herman Koassy from JokkoLabs and HOT.
Setting up the OSM ecosystem in Senegal 5: Building a local OSM groups in Louga
To continue giving a more complete picture of our activity on the Senegalese ground and our interaction with all types of actors, it’s worth...