News
Mapping for Preparedness in Nepal
Today I bring you a guest post about a great project in Nepal. It comes courtesy of Nama Budhathoki, who is working to help ensure there is better data for disaster planning using OSM in Nepal.Nepal is a beautiful country with eight out of ten highest mountains in the world including Mt Everest. Its capital city has eight UNESCO-listed heritage sites. Nepal is a popular destination for tourists. Recently, several reports have warned that this spectacular nation is at high risks from earthquakes. According to Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium Secretariat, a mega-earthquake—which could occur at any time—is estimated to kill more than 100,000 in the Kathmandu Valley alone, injuring another 300,000 and displacing up to 1 million.
Syria Activation Update: Our progress so far
After a week and a half of work on the current Syria activation, we have made pleasing progress and have seen some fantastic results. Volunteers have begun mapping highlighted areas from the available Bing aerial imagery, the first three of which have been completed:
A massive thanks to everyone who contributed to these. Also please be aware that we're grateful to anyone that traces areas of Syria not covered by a task. Having said that, I've just added the next three jobs to the Tasking Manager:Activation pour le Mali
Cette activation fait suite aux discussions entre HOT et le Bureau des Nations Unies pour la coordination des affaires humanitaires pour le Mali (UNOCHA-Mali). Les efforts en cours au Mali sont très utiles pour les organisations humanitaires. Pour soutenir le système des clusters et la communauté humanitaire, on nous demande de poursuivre la cartographie de base en cours et de contribuer à la géolocalisation des données existantes pour les services de base.Le 16 janvier 2013, UNOCHA-Mali et ses partenaires humanitaires ont souligné la situation d'urgence complexe au Mali.
- 228.920 de personnes sont déplacées à l'intérieur du Mali.
Mali Activation
This Activation follows discussions between HOT and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Mali (UNOCHA-Mali). The ungoing efforts to map Mali are very helpfull to humanitarian organizations. To support the Clusters coordination system and the humanitarian community, we are asked to continue the ungoing base mapping and to contribute to the geolocation of existing datasets for basic services. On Jan 16 2013, the UNOCHA-Mali and his humanitarian partners have highlighted the complex emergency situation in Mali.
- An estimated 228,920 people are displaced inside Mali.
- There are an estimated 144,446 Malian refugees in neighbouring countries.
OpenIR meets with the Indonesian Team
On Monday, the HOT Indonesian team met with Juhee and Arlene from OpenIR. This group of MIT affiliates have started a pilot study in...
A return to Chad three months after the set up of the EUROSHA mapping team
I just landed in Ndjamena (Chad) for HOT. I am joining again the team of mappers of the EUROSHA Chad project that I helped setting up their activities in N’Djamena and Goré last fall (October/ November – see blog post) in close coordination with ACRA and France Volontaires, HOT’s partners on this project. This is an interesting time for the EUROSHA project
The Openstreetmap_Senegal (OSM_SN) community is expanding to the region of Casamance in Senegal
Suite aux derniers évènements articulants les communautés OSM naissantes à Dakar, Thies, Saint-Louis et Rufisque, la semaine passée fut l’occasion d’un évènement majeur pour...
Syria Activation
Following a request from UN OCHA and SNAP, HOT is activating a remote mapping project in Syria to support humanitarian groups working within the current crisis. This post is intended to introduce the project and to appeal for help from volunteers. HOT has limited experience in working within the Arabic speaking world and we are hopeful that this activation will allow us to broaden our skills base in this area.
Return on writing the manual on OpenStreetMap kreyol ayitien
Début décembre, j'annonçais le début d'un libérathon qui visait à traduit le manuel OpenStreetMap en kreyol haïtien. Cette traduction en créole devrait permettre à une plus grande partie de la population haitienne de s'approprier le logiciel de cartographie collaborative si utilisé depuis le tremblement de terre de janvier 2010, et de participer à la mise à jour de la carte la plus détaillée du pays.Voici donc un petit retour sur le déroulement du sprint.
Faces of HOT: Two New Board Members, Pierre Beland and Joseph Reeves
Pierre Béland and Joseph Reeves were voted onto the HOT board last week. Their nominations put the board to a total of seven for this year (with continuing five other members being Nicolas Chavent, Schuyler Erle, Mikel Maron, John Crowley and Harry Wood). They join the board after multiple years of active volunteering and coordinating of HOT projects.
[inline:pierre-beland.png]Pierre Beland comes from Monteal, Canada. An economist/programmer in his previous life, He has set up many remote projects, most currently in the DRC with Claire Halleux. You can read about that active project here.
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OpenStreetMap Usage in Jakarta Flood Response
Days of rain in Jakarta and surrounding areas have caused massive flooding in the region. Today (Friday) the flooding has eased somewhat but thousands of people remain displaced and 11 people have died. A state of emergency has been called until January 27th for Indonesia's capital city.
Completion of Intermediate Workshops
The six pilot workshops to the BNPB on intermediate OSM skills were completed earlier this week. Our team of eight HOT trainers finished their last workshop to members of the Kupang government with an interesting ending. The day we ended our workshop we flew home to a flooded Jakarta. The BNPB had sent us the maps, which used the OSM data we gathered last year as a base map, that showed the affected areas. (Though we knew what to expect when heading home, it still was a shock to see so many roads flooded and people surrendering their beds and belongings to higher ground. Read more about the Jakarta Floods here.)
Animating the OSM Senegal Community
In Dakar, back from Saint-Louis where I have been mostly working animating the OSM SN community in this town harnessing on our partnerships with BantaLabs and University Gaston Berger and reaching out to new partners from NGOs and Governements. Prior getting into details about those intense and rich days for the OSM Project Senegal and its community, I'd like to take a look back at the past weeks since the end of the HOT set up mission of this program by Mid December.
At BarCamp Thies
I spent a week in Dakar preparing with some active mappers of the OSM SN community the attendance of the Thies BarCamp organized by the Senegalese OpenSource movement.
Back to Senegal, Further Creating a Mapping Community
Augustin and I conducted HOT’s third deployment HOT to Senegal 24 November to 15 December, 2012. The main objective: set-up Augustin Doury for five months of volunteering to grow the OSM SN community and to improve the maps of the area. This initiative has been possible with the funding of Fondation de France (FDF) and our partnership with OpenStreetMap France.
Mapping Selayar Island with Help from MapBox and GeoEye
We first meet the ACCESS partners from Selayar Island at a workshop in Bali in December 2011. After this workshop ACCESS organized their own...
Public/Private Partnership to Map West Nusa Tenggara
In December an exciting partnership agreement was signed in Indonesia which will continue the creation of freely available OpenStreetMap data in the West Nusa...
