Re: [HOT] Anyone have some time to help set up Mapmill for Maria relief in Puerto Rico?

[Schuyler Erle]

Note: The best way to plug in would be to join #maria on HOTOSM Slack, and
connect with us there. Thanks!

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 5:20 PM, Schuyler Erle <schuyler.e...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was contacted this afternoon by someone at FEMA who is looking for
> assistance with road network damage assessment in rural Puerto Rico, using
> Civil Air Patrol imagery, just like we did with Hurricane Sandy back in
> 2012.
>
> I just dusted off our old codebase and it still builds. Unfortunately I'm
> a bit occupied at the exact moment, and could use some help getting the
> Ruby code and a PostGIS database set up somewhere so that we can import the
> imagery, and get volunteers to take a whack at it.
>
> Anyone have time to help?
>
> SDE
>
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[HOT] Anyone have some time to help set up Mapmill for Maria relief in Puerto Rico?

[Schuyler Erle]

Hi all,

I was contacted this afternoon by someone at FEMA who is looking for
assistance with road network damage assessment in rural Puerto Rico, using
Civil Air Patrol imagery, just like we did with Hurricane Sandy back in
2012.

I just dusted off our old codebase and it still builds. Unfortunately I'm a
bit occupied at the exact moment, and could use some help getting the Ruby
code and a PostGIS database set up somewhere so that we can import the
imagery, and get volunteers to take a whack at it.

Anyone have time to help?

SDE
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Re: [HOT] Launching MapSwipe

[Schuyler Erle]

Pete, this is a great tool. Is there a web-based version? My iPhone screen
is small and my eyesight's not too good...

On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 6:32 AM, Pete Masters 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Quite a few of you reported the repeating tile issue in mapSwipe. Just
> wanted to let you know that we think we've resolved this now.
>
> The project completion was also skewed by this, so you'll notice they have
> lower completion percentages now, but these should be accurate. Means we've
> mapped less area in real terms than we thought, but it also means projects
> should go much quicker now because of the more efficient distribution of
> effort.
>
> A few more fixes are included in the latest update (available now on
> android and soon on iOS). Well publish a blog post tomorrow with more
> details...
>
> Thanks for your patience!
>
> Pete
>
> On 19 Jul 2016 16:59, "Céline Jacquin"  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've tested MapSwipe, and I've been surprised: the same tile is being
>> repeated directly for the same user several times. Continuing the map work,
>> a task after an other, is resulting in repeating the same task, sometimes.
>>
>> I apologize my english.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> El 19/07/16 a las 07:00, hot-requ...@openstreetmap.org escribió:
>>
>>> Send HOT mailing list submissions to
>>> hot@openstreetmap.org
>>>
>>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>>> hot-requ...@openstreetmap.org
>>>
>>> You can reach the person managing the list at
>>> hot-ow...@openstreetmap.org
>>>
>>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>>> than "Re: Contents of HOT digest..."
>>>
>>>
>>> Today's Topics:
>>>
>>> 1. Re: Launching MapSwipe (joost schouppe)
>>> 2. Re: Launching MapSwipe (Benjamin Herfort)
>>> 3. Re: Launching MapSwipe (Rudolf Maurer)
>>> 4. Re: Launching MapSwipe (Autre Planete)
>>> 5. Re: Launching MapSwipe (antti nissinen)
>>> 6. Re: Launching MapSwipe (Pete Masters)
>>> 7. Re: Launching MapSwipe (john whelan)
>>> 8. Re: Launching MapSwipe (antti nissinen)
>>> 9. Re: Launching MapSwipe (Laura O'Grady)
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:27:03 +0200
>>> From: joost schouppe 
>>> To: Pete Masters 
>>> Cc: "hot@openstreetmap.org" 
>>> Subject: Re: [HOT] Launching MapSwipe
>>> Message-ID:
>>> 

Re: [HOT] Oklahoma US Severe Weather Emergency Incident

[Schuyler Erle]

On May 20, 2013, at 16:49 , Russell Deffner wrote:

 Damage Assessment via Mapmill may be of great benefit to the ARC as the 
 initial reports of the size of one tornado path in Moore, Oklahoma may make 
 for a lengthy and difficult on the ground assessment.  

We're already talking to CAP and FEMA about launching Mapmill for this 
incident. We'll advise the list if/when it's live.

SDE
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Re: [HOT] Announcing Heather Lesson's appointment to the Board

[Schuyler Erle]

On Mar 24, 2013, at 2:20 PM, Joseph Reeves wrote:
 
 On behalf of the HOT Board I'm pleased to announce that Heather Lesson has 
 been appointed to the position vacated by John Crowley. Heather was the only 
 nomination, so she can take the position without the need for a vote.
 
 Of course we're all looking forward to working together for yourselves and 
 the organisation.

You may recall that Heather was previously tied for runner-up in January's 
Board election, as well. I'm sure she'll bring a fresh perspective to the 
organization, and make a welcome addition to the Board of Directors.

Sorry, Heather! er... I mean... Congratulations!

SDE 
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[HOT] Digital Democracy Haiti Hackathon needs HOT support this weekend

[Schuyler Erle]

Hey team,

Can I get a volunteer or two to provide standby technical support for Digital 
Democracy's hackathon in Port-au-Prince this weekend?

  
http://digital-democracy.org/2013/01/31/first-hackathon-to-be-held-in-haiti-cross-cultural-collaboration-to-create-community-driven-solutions/

Digital Democracy, a fellow traveller in humanitarian activities, are hosting a 
hackathon in PaP to create a map of women's health clinics in Haiti to support 
victims of sexual violence. Of course they are planning to use OSM as a 
basemap, and probably Nominatim for search. Several of the hackathon organizers 
are friends of ours, including Willow Brugh, Emily Jacobi, and Sara-Jayne 
Farmer.

Is there anyone who is willing to be available on IM or Skype to answer 
questions during the daytime on Saturday and Sunday Haitian local time (UTC-5)? 
Extra bonus points for francophones.

Please let me know off-list and I'll put you in touch with the organizers. 

3,

SDE
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Re: [HOT] HOT Board of Directors election 2012/13

[Schuyler Erle]

On Jan 15, 2013, at 8:54 AM, Jaakko Helleranta.com wrote:

 Hope to read something also from candidates. .. Please all candidates 
 remember that there are new (and quite possibly older) voting members (too) 
 who might not know you very well / what drives you / would drive you in HOT 
 board work. 

Thanks for this, Jaakko.

I hope that all of you have cast your votes already, but I'm happy to briefly 
talk about my hopes for HOT for the next year.

Broadly, I remind you that we all see the role of HOT as taking three basic 
forms. One is providing surge capacity for remote mapping of humanitarian 
crises and crisis-prone parts of the world. The second is training locals in 
such places to map their own communities for disaster resilience and economic 
growth. The third is to develop technology, particularly software and web-based 
services, to support the first two goals.

Over the next year, I would like to promote the following:

1) Better engagement of HOT volunteers in organizational decision making and 
policy setting. I hear frustration that worthy volunteers did not receive 
voting privileges this year. I remind you that this was in part because not 
enough people voted in the election. I think that the Board needs to take 
responsibility for this, and for promoting decision making by the membership.

For example, what qualifies as a HOT project? Did the work that some of us did 
in crowdsourcing disaster assessment for FEMA via aerial photos after Hurricane 
Sandy qualify to be a HOT project? You should decide these questions, not the 
Board.

2) Establishing transparency of decision making. Coincident to this is the 
question Katrina raised of transparency. Transparency is a challenge for the 
Board not because we wish to deceive or obfuscate, but purely because 
communicating every decision to be made with the membership entails transaction 
costs in terms of volunteer time. This must be fixed. We need to overcome these 
costs, or simply bear them as a necessary part of working together in a 
volunteer organization.

3) Establishing staff accountability. We have begun, belatedly, to establish 
standards for reporting work done by staff on HOT projects. These standards 
need to be made firm and the reporting made visible to the membership. I look 
to this not as a lack of trust in our paid staff, but purely because we should 
be accountable to each other and to our funders for the money we spend as a 
non-profit.

4) Developing training capacity for project in the field. Right now we have a 
dearth of trainers and project managers, and the result is that our staff is 
overstretched and the Team is having to consider turning down projects because 
we lack enough competent people to execute them. We need to develop and 
implement a plan to expand our training capacity.

5) Transitioning HOT technical infrastructure to a solid foundation. Right now 
HOT's technical services are scattered across a variety of hosting platforms, 
some of which are less stable and/or more expensive than we could wish them to 
be. We need to find dedicated web hosting, donated in kind, which allows us to 
run services like the Tasking Manager, image delivery, et cetera, in a sane and 
reliable fashion.

6) Rebooting the working groups. Particularly I would like to see the 
Activation Working Group reach the goal of articulating what HOT activation 
means and when it happens and why.

7) Establishing a code of conduct. I want to see a working group to draw up a 
code of conduct for HOT participants. I think this is self evident but it needs 
to happen.

8) Securing funding. HOT needs to secure reliable sources of non-profit funding 
to ensure continued operations. I think we hoped that this would be part of the 
role of the Executive Director, but it hasn't happened, mostly because of the 
capacity issue mentioned above. We might start a working group for this; 
alternately, we might also hire a development director and/or grant writer to 
commit to the search for funding.

Anyway, it's a lot. Sometimes I despair of how much more time a HOT 
directorship takes up than I was promised it would. But this is a necessary 
part of the work we do and take pride in. Still, I don't think we'll accomplish 
a fraction of it without finding a way to involve each and every one of you 
more deeply in our efforts to map the world for the sake of people in need.

SDE
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[HOT] HOT Activation WG meeting - January 2012

[Schuyler Erle]

The next HOT Activation WG meeting will be on Thursday 17 January 2013 at 1600 
UTC. Thanks to everyone who filled out the doodle.

The meeting will be held on the #hot IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. All are 
welcome. The meeting will last at most one hour. The agenda will be to review 
the current state of the working group's activities, to define immediate next 
tasks, and parcel those tasks out to volunteers.

Please let us know if you have any questions about how to join the meeting. See 
you then!

SDE
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Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion

[Schuyler Erle]

On Jan 14, 2013, at 12:00 AM, Severin MENARD wrote:

 Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather 
 potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually 
 totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any 
 problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did 
 about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members. 

Severin, while I agree with much of what you had to say, the situations with 
Heather and with the 20 or so EUROSHA volunteers are not at all comparable. 
Prior to their nomination, the EUROSHA volunteers were completely unknown to 
me, and probably to most of the people on this mailing list. In fact, I think 
none of them have ever posted a message to this list, or otherwise introduced 
themselves or their work to our community. While I'm sure we all appreciate 
their contributions, I don't see what could possibly entitle them to a voice in 
determining the organization's policy.

By contrast, Heather Leson is a long-time friend and collaborator of HOT. She 
has been involved in crisis mapping for years, and has a proven record of 
dealing wisely with the sensitive issues of mapping vulnerable parts of the 
world. More to the point, in volunteering for a role of responsibility on the 
Team, she took pains to introduce herself and her intentions for doing so. She 
is no stranger to our community, and I am proud to endorse her for a seat on 
the Board of Directors.

SDE
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[HOT] Re-activating the Activation Working Group

[Schuyler Erle]

Hey gang,

It's been a while since the Activation Working Group met. Now that HOT is doing 
regular remote and on-site deployments, it seems like it's time for us to start 
up the discussion again about what activation means for HOT and for our 
partners.

Here are the notes from previous meetings:

  
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation

(It really has been a long time...)

I've started a Doodle to schedule the next meeting:

  http://doodle.com/6x2g6y9mucq8iegi

Please give your name and available times if you'd like to participate. We'll 
announce the meeting time on Monday.

SDE
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[HOT] HOT Board of Directors election 2012/13

[Schuyler Erle]

Dear HOTties,

It's time for this year's Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board of Directors 
election!

Please go RIGHT NOW and vote here:

 http://goo.gl/Mt1tA

On the election ballot, you may select up to seven (7) individuals to serve on 
the Board of Directors of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in 2013. You have 
until end of day PST, Wednesday 16 January 2013, to submit your vote.

You may find the list of nominations at:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Board_Elections_2012

You may vote for fewer than seven nominees. If you vote for more than seven, 
your ballot will be considered invalid. If you vote more than once, only the 
last ballot submitted will be considered valid.

Only ballots submitted by voting members of the Team will be accepted. If 
you're not a voting member, we love you all the same, but please don't waste 
your time and ours by submitting a ballot that legally can't be counted. You 
may review the list of voting members at:

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Members

According to our bylaws, all Board members must be elected by a simple majority 
of voting members. We will announce the election results next Friday, 17 
January 2013.

Please don't wait until the last minute to submit your vote! Once again, your 
HOT Board of Directors election ballot is at:  http://goo.gl/Mt1tA

On behalf of your Board, keep it HOT,

SDE


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Re: [HOT] HOT Board of Directors election 2012/13

[Schuyler Erle]

On Jan 10, 2013, at 11:56 AM, Schuyler Erle wrote:

 Dear HOTties,
 
 It's time for this year's Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board of Directors 
 election!
 
 Please go RIGHT NOW and vote here:
 
 http://goo.gl/Mt1tA

Sorry, due to an error on my part, the ballot didn't originally ask for your 
_name_. If you have already voted, please go back and submit another ballot. 
Apologies for the inconvenience.

SDE
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[HOT] Congratulations to our new voting members!

[Schuyler Erle]

Greetings, HOTties! and a happy new year to you all.

First, let me thank those of you who participated in the new member election in 
December. This year was the first time we were obliged to hold an actual vote 
for the new member induction, and enough of you finally submitted ballots to 
make it possible for me to welcome the following contributors to voting 
membership in our formal organization:

  * Robert Banick
  * Jaakko Helleranta
  * Heather Leson
  * Tim Waters

All four inductees have devoted significant time to the Team in the past, and 
have rendered significant service for their efforts. We are proud to announce 
their induction, and hope that they will continue to provide the excellent 
contributions for which they have been justly recognized, and which make our 
organization capable of doing the work that we do.

I would like to offer recognition to the nominees who were not elected in this 
round. In particular, there were two individuals who have also devoted 
significant time and effort to HOT's work, who missed induction by only a 
single vote. I hope that we will be able to induct them, as well as the other 
worthy nominees from last month's ballot, in a future new member election.

On that note, the Board of Directors has been discussing the possibility of 
holding new member elections more frequently, in order to give participants in 
the organization more opportunities to get involved and have an active voice in 
the direction of the org. We are hoping to undertake, with your full 
involvement, an exploration and discussion of what it means to be a member of 
HOT, and what you all would like the direction of our Team to be over the next 
year. We are looking to conduct this discussion over the next few months, with 
the hope of holding another new member election later in the spring.

The nomination period for the Board of Directors election has been extended to 
January 9, end of day PST, as mentioned previously on the mailing list. The 
Board election will commence thereafter and continue until end of day January 
16. We will send you voting instructions and other reminders about this over 
the next week.

If you have any comments or questions about this process, or thoughts you'd 
like to share on the Team and on the responsibilities of voting membership 
within the Team, I wholeheartedly invite you to reply to this message and kick 
off the discussion forthwith.

On behalf of your Board, I wish you all a happy and productive 2013!

SDE



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Re: [HOT] Congratulations to our new voting members!

[Schuyler Erle]

TL;DR: Everyone reading this is a member of HOT. Some of the people who aren't 
voting members are actually more members of HOT than those who are nominally 
entitled to vote in the organization. You are all doing work that has the 
amazing potential to make the world a better place. Thank you.

On Jan 2, 2013, at 12:17 PM, Schuyler Erle wrote:

 
 If you have any comments or questions about this process, or thoughts you'd 
 like to share on the Team and on the responsibilities of voting membership 
 within the Team, I wholeheartedly invite you to reply to this message and 
 kick off the discussion forthwith.

Actually, speaking in an unofficial capacity, I'd like to start the discussion 
myself. First, I hope you will note that in my announcement I took great pains 
to emphasize that the election that we held last month was specifically to 
induct new _voting_ members.

I want everyone to note that the only reason we make any distinction at all 
between voting membership and any other form of participation in HOT is that, 
as a formally incorporated non-profit organization, our bylaws legally oblige 
us to maintain a set list of voting members who have certain duties. We do this 
because formal non-profit status makes it possible for us to obtain donations 
that vastly increase our ability to fulfill our mission.

The duties of voting members merely include electing the Board of Directors, 
altering the voting membership, and for approving changes to the bylaws 
themselves. Voting membership holds no other responsibilities, and no other 
distinction, beyond this.

In a real sense, if you are reading this message, you are truly a member of the 
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Everyone who has ever edited the OSM database, 
or written a line of code, in the service of humanitarian relief and 
preparedness is a member of our team. It's your volunteer efforts that enable 
us collectively to make the world a better place, and to support the work of 
those who ease the suffering of people in need.

Without you, there would be no Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team worthy of the 
name. I think I can speak for the Board certainly, and perhaps everyone else, 
when I say that, voting member or otherwise, we appreciate all of the work that 
you selflessly put in on behalf of the team to help us achieve our goals and 
live up to our ideals of enabling humanitarian efforts through our maps and our 
software.

That said, I would like to note that many of our voting members barely fail to 
live up to the responsibilities that are expected of them by virtue of having 
been elected to such duties by their peers. I won't name names, but the fact is 
that getting some of you to vote in elections, and even getting you to fill out 
a simple form indicating your continued interest in the organization, feels 
like pulling teeth. I feel that voting membership in HOT begin the implicit 
responsibility of setting a positive example of activism, volunteerism, and 
engagement for the rest of the team. I will tell you honestly that I think some 
of you are terrible at this. If you think I am trying to shame you into being 
more involved, you are absolutely correct.

I will also admit that I am being pretty hypocritical in leveling this 
criticism at my friends and compatriots. But I think it has to be said.

What is the reward for all this work for which we are not paid and rarely 
thanked? It is simply the ability to go to sleep at night knowing that you have 
rendered a service to your fellow human beings, that you have made some 
contribution, however large, to improving the world for everyone. The maps that 
we make, and the work that we do to make them, have an impact on the world. 
They have saved lives, and helped communities in need. They will continue to do 
so, as long as we remain committed to the the idea that geographic information, 
freely made and freely shared, can transform our world for the better.

In this brief life that we share, I can think of no greater achievement than 
this to claim for ourselves, and I say that you claim it for yourself every 
time you exert yourself through the labors of our team. I hope that you will 
all take heart in this thought, and redouble your efforts in 2013, that we may 
see the world a year hence a more hospitable and more charitable place for 
everyone.

SDE



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[HOT] ACTION REQUIRED: New member election period extended

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello HOTties, 

We are extending the new member election period through the end of 2012, since 
we did not receive the minimum number of ballots cast during the original time 
frame to elect any new members this year. We will continue to accept votes for 
new members until the very last moment of 31 Dec 2012, Pacific Standard Time 
(GMT-8).

If you are a _voting member_ of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and you 
have not voted yet, your ACTION IS REQUIRED. Please visit the nomination page 
to see who is eligible to be inducted into voting membership in HOT:

  http://goo.gl/usGW7

Then, please go and vote for the individuals whom you feel are qualified to 
help provide the Team with guidance through eligibility to vote on elections 
and other key issues.

  http://goo.gl/Tc5Se

If you are a voting member, PLEASE not put this off any further. It will only 
take you a few minutes.

According to our bylaws, we need to receive affirmative votes from AT LEAST 
2/3rds of our voting membership in order to induct anyone at all this year. 
Right now we have ballots cast by less than half of our membership.

The outcome of the vote will be announced no sooner than 2 Jan 2013. The open 
period for nominations to the Board of Directors will be extended at least 
until 6 Jan 2013.

It has come to my attention that, since the prior announcements were made on 
the voting members list, some people who are eligible to vote might not have 
received them. If you ARE a voting member, and have not received these 
announcements, please contact kristen.egerme...@hotosm.org with your updated 
email address.

HOT is depending on you. Please don't let us down.

Have a happy holiday season!

Stay HOT,

SDE

(on behalf of your Board of Directors)
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[HOT] UPDATE: Membership and board nominations 2012-13

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello, HOTties,

TL;DR: Register your continued membership before Sunday night. Nominate new 
members before Sunday night. You have an extra week to nominate new Board 
members. Don't wait.
 
I just want to remind you all that SUNDAY DECEMBER 9 2012 is an important 
deadline for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team members in two respects:

1) If you wish to continue being a member of HOT, please indicate your 
willingness to serve your teammates and your fellow human beings on this 
spreadsheet:

  
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGJzRjBVb25LRzI1OFVseC1kOWNIamc6MQ

It will take you two minutes. So far only about 25 formal members of the team 
have done this. If you ARE a formal voting team member, and you do not fill out 
this form by MIDNIGHT PST SUNDAY DECEMBER 9 2012 (3 days from now!) then your 
name will be submitted on a list to the membership to be for considered for 
removal from the team, and we will be sorry to see you go.

2) If you wish to nominate someone to become a formal voting member of HOT, 
please submit their name and the rationale here:

  
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNsWG1EdTRfWGR3aVJudWdIUnRiSFE6MQ

If you have not been nominated, and you wish to become a voting member of HOT, 
with all the responsibility that entails, please feel free to ask any current 
voting member to nominate you. The list of current voting members is here:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Members

The deadline for being nominated is MIDNIGHT PST SUNDAY DECEMBER 9 2012 (3 days 
from now). New member nominations will be published on December 10, and the 
existing membership will have until December 17 to comment or request a formal 
vote, at which point the nominations will be confirmed.

Finally, partly due to low turnout on nominations to the Board of Directors, 
and partly because we did it this way last year, the Board has opted to extend 
the nomination deadline for the Board of Directors for a week past the new 
member nomination deadline to MIDNIGHT PST SUNDAY DECEMBER 17 2012. Please 
nominate the HOTties you think will lead the organization to success next year 
here:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Board_Elections_2012

New members will be eligible to be nominated and to cast votes for the board. 
Please be sure that nominees wish to serve in this capacity before nominating 
them -- and please be aware that, although the time commitment for a board 
member is supposed to be only 5 hours per month, the organization at this point 
appears to realistically need around 20 hours per month of a board member's 
time. 

This coming year promises to be a transformative year for HOT, so please get 
your nominations in early. 

We will send instructions on how to cast your vote by email on or before 
December 17, and we’ll have the election the following week, with completion by 
December 23. We will announce your collective selections for the team's 2013 
Board of Directors on December 24, which we hope will be a fine holiday gift 
for everyone on the team.

Thank you as always for being awesome!

On behalf of your Board of Directors, salutations,

SDE
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[HOT] Membership nominations and board elections for 2012-13

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello HOTties!

The end of the year means it's time for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team's 
annual membership nominations and board elections!

So, please, read through this email carefully, and please act where requested. 
Any questions or concerns, fire away. Thanks!

* Membership

All current members of the team need to confirm continued interest. Do you 
still want to be a member of HOT? Some individuals have been more active than 
others, and we understand if you don’t have the time.

The current membership list is posted to 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Members

To confirm your membership, please fill out this brief form.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGJzRjBVb25LRzI1OFVseC1kOWNIamc6MQ

Please confirm your membership by end of day PST, December 9, 2012. The form 
will literally take you two minutes to complete, and you have nearly two weeks. 
Please don't put it off.

* Member Nominations

HOT membership works similarly to Apache. New members are invited by  current 
members. The nominations are published, and if there are no objections, the new 
members are accepted.

Nominated members before have come from all sorts of places, those who have 
worked with us in the field, remote volunteers that have really made a 
difference in responses and partners that have really helped. 

Nominations can be made in the form below. Please be sure that your nominee 
would be like to become a member of HOT. :) If you’d like to be nominated, 
don’t hesitate to contact HOT members individually to discuss.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNsWG1EdTRfWGR3aVJudWdIUnRiSFE6MQ

Please make nominations by end of day PST, December 9, 2012. Nominations will 
be published on December 10, and new members will be formally announced, 
barring objections, on December 17.

* Elections

All seven seats on the team's Board of Directors are up for election to a 
one-year term. Having a Board with a diversity of skills will help further the 
organization. Board members are expected to spend a minimum of five hours per 
month on strategic issues related to the team, over and above the usual member 
volunteer commitment.

Nominations can be made on this wiki page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Board_Elections_2012

Nominations will be open until end of day, December 9, 2012.  We will send 
instructions on how to cast your vote by email on or before December 9, and 
we’ll have the election the following week, with completion by December 17. We 
will announce your collective selections for the team's 2013 Board of Directors 
on December 18.

To reiterate: If you neither fill out the survey above *nor* cast a vote in the 
Board election, we will assume that you wish to resign your membership in HOT 
(and we will be sad to see you go).

* That’s it

Thanks for reading through all of this. We greatly appreciate your continued 
support and contributions to HOT.

With best wishes from your Board,

Kate Chapman
Nicolas Chavent
John Crowley
Schuyler Erle
Mikel Maron
Dane Springmeyer
Harry Wood
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Re: [HOT] HOT Sandy response in US News OpEd

[Schuyler Erle]

On Nov 27, 2012, at 6:31 AM, Tim Waters wrote:

 This is an interesting article, it gives two main examples, the
 MapMill deployment for Sandy, and Haiti earthquake OSM tracing and
 it's use in Ushahdi.
 
 In both examples, the author asks the questions but does it help?
 was it used? etc. Which are valid questions, but it didn't appear
 that much effort was taken to ask organisations if it helped and if it
 was used.

Well, FEMA has given us anecdotal feedback, in the form of short videos from 
two FEMA administrators expressing appreciation to volunteers for their efforts.

  http://www.fema.gov/medialibrary/media_records/10369

  http://www.fema.gov/medialibrary/media_records/10370

FEMA also added the data to their GIS portal, so I presume that it was used by 
the GIS people there.

We'll be writing an after-action report including interviews and quantitative 
data from relevant professionals at FEMA and CAP, plus quality analysis and 
strategy for future events.

Let me take this opportunity to thank all the HOTties who stepped up and rated 
photos. Please do let me know on or off-list if you have questions or comments 
about the project.

SDE
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Re: [HOT] [OSM-talk] Event in Vienna/AT: Int'l UN Crowdsourced Mapping

[Schuyler Erle]

On Oct 19, 2012, at 9:45 AM, Alex Barth wrote:

 On Oct 19, 2012, at 12:39 PM, Mikel Maron mikel_ma...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
 Nicolas and Schuyler attended last year for HOT. I'm not sure if we've 
 identified someone to represent HOT there yet.
 
 Main topic of discussion (for HOT at least) is greater sharing of imagery in 
 responses; as well as use of OSM among UN partners.
 
 And a nice touch, UN Spider has switched to OSM.
 http://www.un-spider.org/un-spider-world
 
 Ha, that's awesome.
 
 I just signed up, not sure I can go though. Today is the last day for 
 registrations.

Thanks for flagging this up, Alex, I've applied as well. I think it would be 
good for HOT to have multiple representatives at an event like this if possible.

SDE
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[HOT] Activation WG meeting: Tomorrow, 1500 UTC

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello everyone, just want to invite you all to join us on IRC for another 
Activation Working Group meeting tomorrow at 1500 UTC. Our agenda is pretty 
much to continue working from the last meeting. Your help in systematizing our 
understanding of HOT's capacities will be greatly appreciated!

Please note the change in time - I'm taking a liberty because I'm on the West 
Coast and 0700 local time is just too damn early for me to be useful for 
anything this week. If this is a problem for anyone, please let me know on or 
off list and we'll adjust accordingly.

Hope to see you all on irc.oftc.net #hot tomorrow at 1500 UTC! Cheers.

SDE
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Re: [HOT] 3rd Activation Working Group meeting - Thu 12 Apr 1400 GMT

[Schuyler Erle]

On Apr 14, 2012, at 2:49 PM, Kate Chapman wrote:

 Do you have an update from the meeting?  Meaning is there something
 those that did not attend but want to help could do?
 
 You mentioned editing the wiki.  Is that this page here or are there
 others? http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/HOT_activation

Kate, thanks for following up. The meeting log, thanks to Séverin, is here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation/meeting_2012-04-12

We spent the meeting discussing how to formally describe different kinds of HOT 
responses to crisis situations, including the distinction between response 
(any volunteer doing something in response to a crisis) and activation (a 
formal set of responses by the organization, initiated by specific and defined 
triggers).

We are still filling out the response descriptions at the bottom of this page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation/Template

This process is going very slowly; more volunteers would really be a boon right 
now.

Alternately, if someone wants to propose a more efficient way of laying out 
HOT's capacities in a methodical fashion, I am all ears. Thanks!

SDE
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[HOT] Activation WG next steps

[Schuyler Erle]

TL;DR: The Activation working group needs your help enumerating and describing 
the different ways that HOT can respond to a crisis.

Hello, Team,

Harry was kind enough to publish the logs from last week's meeting:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation/meeting_2012-03-22

Unfortunately, this week's meeting didn't happen as planned, but we have a task 
which we need volunteers to help with, which is to fill out this wiki page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation/Template

Basically, what I'm hoping we can do is enumerate each of the *possible* 
responses that HOT can make to a crisis or a request by a partner organization, 
and then address each of the following ten questions with respect to that 
response:

• What is the possible HOT response or activation, in 20 words or less?
• What are the triggers for this response?
• What are the intended outcomes of the response or activation?
• Within HOT, who decides to initiate the response, and when?
• What are the volunteer resources needed by HOT to provide this 
response?
• What are the material resources, including funds, needed by HOT to 
provide this response?
• What, if any, coordination is needed with other organizations?
• How long will the response last? At what point is the response 
declared complete?
• How many times per month or per year can HOT sustainably provide this 
response?
• Describe a historical precedent for this response *or* a hypothetical 
future response of this kind.

If you have the time and interest, please consider linking one of the possible 
responses in the Activation Catalog section of the wiki page above to a new 
page, and answering the relevant questions there.

Also, if you can think of useful responses that HOT can offer in times of 
crisis, please add them to the catalog.

The objective here is to try to systematize our understanding of the different 
ways in which HOT can activate, so that we can think about how to prioritize 
those activities and make them sustainable. As always, your participation in 
this process will help ensure that it actually happens.

I'll be in the Lacandon jungle in Mexico for the next week, so I won't be able 
to make the meeting we might otherwise have then, and FOSS4G is the following 
week. Do we want to have our next working group meeting on April 19th, or do 
you guys want to go ahead and meet without me? Please feel free to decide while 
I'm gone; I look forward to reading the meeting minutes when I get back -- 
otherwise I hope to see you all on IRC on April 19th at 1400 UTC. ;-)

SDE
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[HOT] Activation working group

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello, Team,

We'll be having an initial meeting of the HOT Activation Working Group today at 
14:00 UTC on the #hot IRC channel.

The purpose of the working group will be to develop recommendations for 
protocols and guidelines to determine which resources HOT brings to bear, and 
when, in response to humanitarian crisis.

The agenda of this meeting will be to outline the specific starting 
deliverables of the working group, and to solicit volunteers to begin work on 
immediate next tasks. A report of the meeting will be posted to the mailing 
list.

Please join the working group  help us figure out how best to apply the 
amazing capacitities and resources that the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has 
at its disposal in the service of our community and our fellow human beings in 
times of crisis! Cheers :)

SDE
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[HOT] 1st Activation Working Group meeting report

[Schuyler Erle]

Hello Team,

Today we had the first meeting of the HOT Activation Working Group on the IRC 
channel.  The meeting lasted an hour. Pierre Beland, Fran Boon, Andrew Buck, 
Robert Banick, Harry Wood, and I participated.

The stated objective of the working group is to develop a strategy and tactics 
for optimally allocating HOT's resources in response to humanitarian crisis. We 
noted that humanitarian crises range quite widely in severity and in level of 
international response, and that HOT's response should be commensurate with the 
degree to which our services will be used by responders on the ground.

The substance of the discussion today revolved around identifying HOT's 
possible responses to crisis (including documenting data sources, acquiring 
imagery, setting up volunteer tasking services, and mobilizing volunteers), and 
working backwards to identify the triggers for those activities.

We also discussed at length the distinction between activation, and simply 
responding to requests made by partner organizations. We agreed (I believe) 
that prompt and reliable response to partner inquiries should be a priority for 
HOT and should be taken up as a subject for discussion and recommendation by 
the working group.

I think that the working group members agreed to start documenting some of 
these ideas on the OSM wiki for further discussion. We also agreed after 
talking for an hour to pick up the discussion again one week from today, at 
14:00 UTC on Thu 22 Mar 2012.

The IRC log for today's meeting is here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OpenStreetMap_Team/Activation_Working_Group_22_Mar_2012

Hope to see those of you who are interested in the subject on #hot next 
Thursday! I'll send out a reminder a couple days ahead of time. Cheers!

SDE




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Re: [HOT] Simulation in Samoa

[Schuyler Erle]

I'll try to have a look at this tonight or tomorrow...

SDE

-- 
Sent from my mobile. Please excuse my brevity.

Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com wrote:

What I meant was creating a relation using existing ways. For example
those
which define the coastline.
For now I cannot check out why your relation isn't loaded. If I
remember
well it doesn't support multi polygons currently.

And I won't be able to check till Tuesday. Too bad I have something
scheduled for the whole week-end.

Best.
Pierre

Sent from my iPhone

On 1 déc. 2011, at 15:39, Pierre Béland infosbelas-...@yahoo.fr
wrote:

  Pierre

See the relation http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/1872673

I created this relation prior to creating the task yesterday. But the
Task
manager was not able to use this relation. To be able to create the
job, I
have defined a rectangle with the mouse.  As I see, it is not possible
to
revise the area once the task is created.

This morning I started a new job. An the same problem arises. I cannot
click on the *Create the Job *button (no hyperlink).

Pierre

 --
New Job
Title  xxx

Area of interest
 Area
OSM relation 1872673   *Note:* You already know an OSM which
delimits
the area.
 Bounding box  *Note:* You can draw a box on the map or
enter it manually to define the area. Hold down shift to draw a
bounding
box across the map.
Zoom level  10

 Imagery URL
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-13.823lon=-172.152zoom=9layers=M

 --
 Pierre GIRAUD wrote on 2011-12-01  09:05:05

Just a quick note. To create jobs for the tasking manager more
efficiently,
it would probably be better to configure the jobs with a relation. I
had a
quick look this morning to check if there were already one for the
Samoa
Island. Unfortunately, there's none apparently. Though, it shouldn't be
that difficult to create one.
 The main goal is to avoid the ocean only tiles.
Does it make sense?

And once again, please write down any feedback. I definitely want the
tasking manager to be as powerful and easy to use as possible.

Pierre
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[HOT] Call for volunteers: Somalia roads import

[Schuyler Erle]

Hey, folks. After finding some issues with the MadMappers Somalia roads 
dataset, which were hard to fix automatically, like occasional doubled roads, I 
finally concluded that the best thing for us to do is to merge the roads data 
into the OSM database manually:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Somalia/Roads

The dataset covers all of Somalia, and is pretty detailed. Each of the 128 
files comprises a rectangular geographic region of varying sizes, with ~1,050 
ways in each file. I cleaned up the data to minimize topological errors, and 
converted it to OSM format, with a basic tagging scheme. However, the data does 
still contain issues in some places, such as the occasional set of 
doubled/overlapping roads. Also, these files still need to be merged in with 
the data that's already in OSM.

We need volunteers who have experience with JOSM! Please help out by visiting 
the link above and spending some time merging and uploading the new Somalia 
roads data.

It's going to be a bit of work, but if we spread it around, it won't be too 
bad, I hope -- and it will be totally worth it. The roads data here is 
incredibly detailed, and will undoubtedly be very useful for humanitarian aid.

SDE
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[HOT] Update: Call for volunteers: Somalia roads import

[Schuyler Erle]

On Aug 22, 2011, at 3:49 AM, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
 
 I also noticed that the ways that overlap the boundaries of each box are 
 duplicated at each side.

I have generated a new set of OSM XML files that address this issue, as well as 
the too many ways issue reported by Harry.

These files replace the ones that were in the same locations, which doesn't 
help the folks who have already done some of them... but hopefully this will 
make ongoing work easier.

Thanks very much to Harry for his documentation, to Iván for leading the 
charge, and to everyone else who's put in so much work already. You guys and 
your enthusiasm are a lot of what make OSM and HOT amazing.

 Which means: if you can, please work in a file that is not adjacent to any 
 other file in progress. That'll simplify the process.

Yeah -- the string of six characters in the filename is a geohash. The more 
distant they are lexically, the farther apart they are likely to be in space. 
Pick files at random from the list? :-D

SDE
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[HOT] Status of Somalia roads import

[Schuyler Erle]

TL;DR: I spent too much time today trying to make the MapMappers road data 
clean enough to import into OSM and I haven't succeeded yet. I am afraid that I 
am running out of time to spend on this project. #osm rules.

I spent about 12 hours on this today. No luck yet, although I did learn an 
awful lot about cleaning up geometries so that JOSM won't complain about them.

1) You can fix the topology of a shapefile by importing it into GRASS and using 
v.clean. Unfortunately, there is a stupid bug in GRASS and v.out.ogr takes way 
way longer than it should.

2) You can de-dupe overlapping ways in PostGIS with variations on select 
distinct geometry_field from roads and then adding back the attributes later. 
You lose some data this way, but if you had overlapping roads in your source 
data to begin with... Who cares. Also, this doesn't seem to handle geometries 
that are reversed.

3) It's actually really tricky to identify line segments that are the same but 
reversed. I wound up hacking ogr2osm.py to detect and throw away the subsequent 
instances. There are probably better ways to do this.

4) I still don't have a good solution for this double roads problem:

  http://iconocla.st/hot/so/kill-me-now.png

Basically, the MadMappers roads data, on closer inspection, are a *bunch* of 
different road layers smooshed together into a single file. Someone has to sit 
down and figure out which values of the layer attribute actually mean 
anything. I'm wiped out and running out of available time to work on this -- if 
anyone else here has the time and energy to take over, let me know offlist; 
I'll be up in six hours or so. Otherwise I'll do the best I can to get it done 
when free time permits.

I will say this though: The denizens of the #osm IRC channel are awesome. Thank 
you to everyone on IRC who helped out with advice or code today.

SDE
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[HOT] Update: Somalia places imported; roads up next

[Schuyler Erle]

TL;DR: I imported almost 9,500 populated place names into OSM from a 2010 UN 
dataset, after removing duplicates with existing OSM data and with the UN 
dataset itself. I would like to import the admin1 and admin-2 boundaries from 
the UN as well, and I would appreciate suggestions on how to proceed. HOT has 
also been donated a decent looking highway dataset for Somalia, and I have a 
plan for importing that, following a brainstorming session on #osm. Sorry for 
the crosspost.

As I mentioned in my previous email, HOT received permission from the UN Office 
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to import data from its Common 
Operational Dataset for Somalia (including Puntland and Somaliland), following 
the announcement of the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa.

 http://cod.humanitarianresponse.info/country-region/somalia

As of yesterday, there were 227 named places in Somalia in OpenStreetMap. There 
are 9,638 named places in the OCHA dataset. I flagged all the places across the 
two datasets within 15km of each other with a trigram similarity on any name 
greater than 1/3, or within 1.5km with a normalized Levenshtein edit distance 
less than 1/3, and then manually reviewed the result. I did the same within the 
OCHA dataset to remove obvious duplicate entries. I imported the remaining 
9,489 places into OSM this evening, as the following change set:

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/9062081

Please see my previous email to the list for how the data was structured:

 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2011-August/001047.html

I would like to import the region and district boundaries from the OCHA COD 
next. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to go about this? If I just import 
the polygons as is, we'll wind up with a lot of redundant nodes and ways, I'm 
guessing. I would really appreciate feedback.

Next, HOT has been been donated a decent looking highway dataset by MadMappers 
as described on the data sources page on the wiki.

I have reviewed this dataset on the HOT list:

 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2011-August/000897.html
 http://iconocla.st/hot/so/madmappers1.png
 http://iconocla.st/hot/so/madmappers2.png

There are 753 roads currently in the OSM database in Somalia. There are 37,427 
roads in the MadMappers dataset. The good folks on the #osm channel on IRC were 
kind enough to brainstorm with me for a bit on how to proceed. My current plan 
is to split the MapMappers road dataset into two pieces: One which contains all 
the roads that are no closer than 500m to an existing road in OSM. These I will 
import as-is, retaining information on provenance and road surface wherever 
possible.

All of the MadMappers road features within 500m of an existing road in OSM will 
be split up geographically, and the chunks will be converted into OSM files and 
posted on the wiki. I will put out a call for volunteers on the HOT list to 
check out these files, and integrate them manually using JOSM, taking care to 
attach the nodes at the edges. I would like to have all of this work completed 
by Monday, provided that I can find the volunteers. I will document everything 
on the wiki.

Does anyone have any comments, suggestions or feedback? Thanks in advance.

SDE
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[HOT] UN SPIDER Crowdsource Mapping for Preparedness and Emergency Response 5/6 Jul 2011

[Schuyler Erle]

UN SPIDER's hosting a Crowdsource Mapping for Preparedness and Emergency 
Response meeting on 5-6 Jul 2011 in Vienna, about a week before SotM EU. 

In recent years, advancements in technologies have made it possible for 
virtual communities such as OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana, CrisisMappers, 
Virtual Disaster Viewer, Google MapMaker and INSTEDD to provide increasing 
support to disaster preparedness and emergency response efforts. Important 
cornerstones of this virtual effort are the possibility to access and take 
advantage of post-disaster satellite imagery as well as the use of other 
space-based technologies such as telecommunications satellites and global 
navigation satellite systems. Taking note of the need to connect these 
pioneering communities with the space industry as well as the disaster 
management community, the UN-SPIDER Programme is carrying out a one-year 
project (“Space-based information for Crowdsource Mapping”) aiming at 
identifying specific actions that could ensure a closer cooperation among the 
three communities. The first activity of this project will be an Expert Meeting 
to be held in Vienna to discuss strategies that will contribute to supporting 
civil protection and emergency management agencies to make use of products 
generated by such groups in areas of preparedness and emergency response and 
provide a better understanding to these groups on the specific needs of the 
disaster management community. 

http://www.un-spider.org/crowdsource-mapping

Is anyone from HOT planning to go? I am toying with the idea.

SDE
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