On January 12, 2010, a huge Earthquake hit the heart of Haiti, causing tens of thousands of casualties. The OSM community activated for the first time and created within a few days the most detailed map of Port-Au-Prince and its outskirts that has been used by the humanitarian organizations deployed in the country. This is a well-known story among whoever involved in OpenStreetMap. A bit less known is that a few people went to the field to promote OSM, train on its techniques not only among the humanitarian organizations but also went to the most affected communities like the one of Cité Soleil and started creating local capacities.
I know this story well : I was at that time one of the 600+ OSM volunteers mapping over Port-au-Prince and struggling with editing conflicts and offset imagery issues due to unconsolidated georeferencing. In February, I was working as a GIS Information Management consultant for OCHA and did my best to facilitate the deployment of Nicolas Chavent and Robert Soden from what was then the informal HOT group. A few months later HOT US Inc was created and was involved in disaster field mapping for the cholera response and disaster shelter preparedness mapping in Haiti. HOT’s first baseline data mapping focused project for development context was in 2012 in Saint-Marc. The first use of drone for OSM mapping happened in 2013 with the Cap-Haitian project in northern Haiti. In between, HOT’s activities in Haiti raised attention and allowed eg the project in Indonesia to start. In short, everything has started in Haiti for HOT US Inc. In 2016, the country is severely hit again. Regarding the drones, it is sad to see that HOT US Inc is neither interested in supporting an OSM focused drone initiative even when it directly asks for support, even verbal, nor does anything to promote the mapping on its outcomes once the imagery is eventually available, despite HOT US Inc has been strongly involved in drone imagery for its funded project in Tanzania. Just because it basically does not come from its inner circle. Regarding the remote mapping, while imagery georeferencing have improved a lot and that conflicting edits have hugely decreased with the Tasking Manager, it is a pity to see the bad quality of the produced data due to a media effective but quality killer approach of encouraging newcomers without almost any OSM experience to map on the affected areas. And also to see HOT US Inc worrying less on mitigating this than seeing an other mapping group doing complementary mapping, informing it on OSM list but not using both its proprietary-fancy-hype-likely-to-be-purchased-and-vanish-in-a-close-future Slack tool and the “official” (no joking?) HOT Tasking Manager whose activity for Hurricane Matthew seems to be led by one single requesting organization – The Red Cross. Regarding involving local mappers, it is quite a shame to see that there is nothing done from HOT US Inc, like if nothing had never happened in the past, if there was no mapping capacities within the country. In 2010, people from HOT were inventive in going to the field. It was in the core DNA of the HOT Project. Now HOT US Inc has decided to stay remote, becoming just an online Virtual Technical Community like many others, and goes in the field only when large funds are available. So be it. Consequently, as I dedicated a lot with Nicolas to build local OSM capacities in Haiti, as we also do now in Western Africa, I decided to deploy in Haiti on my voluntary time during three weeks starting yesterday, in order to update the local skills, connect the mappers and responders and start mapping with them in the field where it is requested. I will try to inform regularly about it on this list, as it is the one dedicated to all the humanitarian purposes related to OSM, not an corporate list for HOT US Inc. Sincerely, Severin
_______________________________________________ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
