Everybody remembers how the OSM community made the news in jan. 2010
with mapping for the Haiti Earthquake. Since then, the Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has continued collaboration with various
humanitarian NGO's and UN agencies to support humanitarian organizations for
various disasters and humanitarian relief.
The recent
military conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Syria have
created a very complex humanitarian situation. There are presently
hundred of thousand of people displaced and new people are displaced
regularly. It is also very dificult for NGO's to circulate on the
territory. The logistic to respond to these humanitarian needs
necessitates good base maps that are generally not available in these
countries. Then, the OSM community is very sollicited to collaborate to
map rapidly these areas
since the commercial mappers neglect these areas.
The HOT team
recently activated humanitarian mapping support for these three
countries at the request of the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Mali (UNOCHA) and humanitarian
organizations. With this very particular situation, we thought of asking
other OSM contributors to collaborate to mapping these countries.
You can see the articles published on the HOT Blog to describe these
activations.
-
http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2012-12-12_hot_pre_activation_south_and_north_kivu_democratic_republic_of_congo
-
http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2013-01-28_syria_activation
- http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2013-02-01_Mali_Activation
The OSM Tasking Manager facilitates the coordination of the various remote
mappers. We invite the OSM community in general to help the Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap Team respond rapidly to this situation. Below are links
to Task Manager jobs for these three countries.
- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/Congo
- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/Mali
- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/syria
Other then
base mapping of various areas, we are asked to geolocate various Basic Services
Utilities (ie.
Health facilities, Schools, Water points). This information is crucial for
humanitarian organizations and we are looking for
volunteers with local knowledge of these countries to help us on this topic.
These mapping activities are lead by HOT members described below and
coordination is generally done via the HOT distribution list
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
.
- Democratic Republic of Congo : Pierre Béland with Claire Halleux has HOT
contact in DR Congo
- Mali : Pierre Béland and Frédéric Bonifas
- Syria : Joseph Reeves
- Support to these teams by Nicolas and Kate Chapman
Please join us!
Pierre BélandHumanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
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