-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 See responses below...
> Can any of you help me with the following questions: > > 1. In pre-crisis taskprojects; Do you think it is important to have > a person or organisation publishing announcements and "attracting" > volunteers to a task? The more people hear about the need to have mapping work done the more people will respond to it and contribute. Even more important though is that the request for help come directly from them. Most people have never heard of OSM or HOT so it is difficult for us to convey to people that the data really will be used to help people. However when people hear directly from the Red Cross that the data is going to be used, that sees to be the kind of thing that really gets volunteers to contribute. More importantly, is a somewhat detailed explanation of how the data will be used. Something like, "we are responding to flooding that occurred along the ... river, we would like you to map the buildings in the area so we can then use low resolution (but current) satellite imagery to determine the exact number and location of flooded houses in the area". This explanation of the need for the data not only shows them you do have a concrete plan and as soon as this is done you will do "some thing" and then use that for some purpose in your overall mission. This is such a strong motivator for volunteers (which are the driving force behind HOT) that one of the key criteria for whether or not to begin an official activation is whether we have gotten a "specific request" for data from a recognized aid organization such as the Red Cross. Without such a request, the only people who will end up working on the project is the small group of people who map between more major disasters and this group is then split up over the numerous small things or previous events that are in the task manager at any given time. So in answer to your question, the importance of the map data is what determines this. Having someone actively working on writing blog posts, talking to journalists, talking to the OSM/HOT community and so forth about what the data will be used for will greatly increase the number of volunteers who participate. Not only this, but it helps the HOT project in an ongoing manner, because it increases people's confidence in the work that we are doing. > 2. Is there a way to get (a rough estimate) on time volunteers > spend on a task? This could be generated from the task manager. When someone locks a tile they either unlock it, mark it complete, or after 2 hours it automatically unlocks. For the fraction that are manually unlocked by the user it would be easy to generate the time the tile was locked for; not a perfect number for time spent, but ok for a rough estimate. Also, since we know the users OSM username and the time they started mapping, we can look into the history of the OSM database and see what objects were added/modified by them around this time so we can see not only how long they worked but what they did in that time. The OSM history stats would be more difficult to generate, but it is possible. > 3. Is there a (rough estimate) on the number of objects (nodes, > ways, relations) an average volunteer produces during a task? Answered in the previous question. > 4. Do you think it would be possible, given the size of a > geographic "area of interest" to estimate how many volunteers > and/or mapping days would be required to succesfully complete a > taskproject? This turns out to be very difficult to do. Not only is the number of volunteers who contribute highly variable over time, there is also the confounding effect of what other projects/activations are occurring at the same time (and this is of course always changing). This means that even looking at how long it took to map other projects in the past doesn't give a complete picture because not only might effort be being diverted to other projects than the one you are examining, but also that the public's general awareness of the HOT project itself waxes and wanes over time. When lots of people show up to help map the recent Earthquake they not only do that but some of them see other projects that interest them and jump in to work on them. So large, news making disasters not only soak up a lot of effort, they also bring in people and re-activate dormant mappers in a very unpredictable fashion. This is not to say that it is impossible to put time estimates on project completion times, but that the error bars on these estimates will sometimes be large enough to render the estimate meaningless. We can provide rough estimates, but that is about it. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJVcOz8AAoJEK7RwIfxHSXbgVAP/0v+diwQ3WaR3E63XtgAobb+ AvXpqdP9f2hTquZYK11JMRmo71UV5Zq09dL2YDI44Ynj2MUJNA0kZ/fPNcb8c53M Zq/NCPy0hK8UFn1iETwlA6VhO3FiozUYzpCXEq8o1xAn1MqKUUJ4cBB+id1tm/QS leh1gxnAwqw/4T38yNpM2kUrQSUKX9iipSs14Zr3WrnYdJr7BeUXlXqya/Kp4Mb7 bi21Y1XAh+270XfGwE72zz7nWb+pCbkuZncltFv3+bT80KKRA5LNxLNmBYH0bBcj wEHk3Z6ywXVsnaeDBitZZrh+QBIYbcC3A6Tq/etwxA1GPuN6dxvwKbLY1wCh8E+y 6QU9HW9kP5np0MwMe/EFhbfmVN/eOoZ6+6S6iBtVLLDTXp9hgdv2Vh1V3fBHmBU3 7HQp9UrmSzF9Gcu3UuQMO8TEpSxiK6YpWFDnZTEe2lCoqG+I0ArIeqk+CoywnkIr TkSUagOIbmR6FJzsEahOwAh1AjnY5hml1b0sgXLQ50oUtIVX+fDGwUiRTHzKE2cq AmRyqb6dBOxHmbeHtyfj0NTTa8YaeMI3SG6fuwa5ZPTyXCqlo/tEdbnq0F/UJ3cQ gbOG9gJcv7KDgzh6txRDJZfKUaLosoHHpuxGxVuR8ZZ1Z+WDnSPHOZKVn4gHvlpe VNR+r1Zdojh7Ae2lRoHm =oQJ8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
