The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

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The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project can be thought of as the "Wikipedia of maps," Kate Chapman said in her linux.conf.au keynote talk. It has the goal of mapping almost anything observable worldwide; it's a task that is never fully complete. OpenStreetMap has found a wide range of uses, but Kate was there to talk about one of the most interesting: providing free maps to support humanitarian and disaster response efforts. As the executive director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) , Kate has taken a leading role in this use of OSM data.

The idea behind HOT is to make use of both open source software and open data to prepare for and respond to disasters anywhere in the world. Supporting economic development is also an important goal behind HOT's work. HOT was first discussed in 2005, and first activated in 2009 to support relief efforts in Gaza which had been hampered by a lack of good maps. In that case, HOT was able to purchase satellite imagery that was then used to produce the mapping data needed by workers on the ground.

An "activation" in HOT terminology is a response from the team due to some sort of crisis or disaster. Consider, for example, the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti; that event drew what Kate described as a "very organic" response from the OSM project. A contributor in Japan traced current street information for Port Au Prince from satellite imagery provided by Yahoo for this purpose. Within two weeks, the rough map had acquired a high level of detail and was in widespread use throughout the city. For many of the responders working in Haiti, the OSM data became the preferred source of mapping information.

Response in Haiti had been complicated by the fact that the country's geographic data had been lost in the earthquake, as had many of the people who knew where the backups were. OSM was able to fill in by providing maps quickly — maps that reflected the post-earthquake state of the city. But a project like HOT is not going to be able to continue to maintain those maps indefinitely; such an effort is more suited to locals than to a worldwide project. So the next step was clearly to help the Haitians learn to keep the maps current themselves. So, in March of 2010, HOT members started traveling to Haiti and running training sessions on how to create and update OSM maps of the area. Five trips were made in total, and HOT was formalized as a non-profit organization in August of that year.

Getting ahead of the game

Post-disaster mapping can be useful, but it would be even more useful to have detailed maps in place before something goes wrong. Realizing this, the HOT project decided in 2011 to get a project going in Indonesia, a country that is exposed to a variety of natural disasters. HOT joined up with the InaSAFE project, which is developing free disaster-management utilities, and ran a series of workshops in the country.

One of the early workshops was on the island of West Nusa Tenggara. Residents there had been working on various mapping efforts, but the results took the form of pictures created in tools like Corel Draw. HOT members went and mapped a couple of villages properly; that generated a great deal of excitement in the province, which decided to support the effort. Before too long, West Nusa Tenggara became the best-mapped province in the country.

Work then moved to Jakarta, a city of 10 million people (in a region with twice that many) made up of 267 separate urban villages. Jakarta is highly prone to flooding and would benefit from proper mapping. HOT invited each urban village head to participate in the project; a number of university students also took part. Then, in January of 2013, a terrible series of floods hit Jakarta. The OSM data was in place by then; it was used to quickly create detailed maps of the flooded areas and coordinate the response. This was the first time, Kate said, that mapping data created ahead of time had been used in a response effort.

HOT is now working on training people to maintain maps in the area. Mappers in Jakarta are making great use of Field Papers, a utility that can print out OSM data with QR codes indicating its location. Workers can walk through the area and write their notes on the printed map; the QR code then makes it easy to scan the result back into the map database. In other words, people can update the maps without needing to have a GPS receiver. The resulting maps can then be used to identify the areas that are most prone to disastrous flooding. Disaster-response plans can then be made before those floods happen.

Other projects

Indonesia is currently the largest effort being run by HOT, but it is far from the only one. The EUROSHA project is supported by the European Union; it funds volunteers on six-month deployments in Africa to do training and increase preparedness. The Open Cities Project, run in cooperation with the World Bank, is working toward the production of open maps for 100 cities in Asia that are prone to disaster. This work is being done in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka initially, and is mostly focused on training. There is a project in Senegal, supported by France and the World Bank, to create an active OSM community. HOT is also working with groups doing mapping in the tsunami-struck areas of Japan.

In the United States, the Civil Air Patrol operates a fleet of small aircraft to take aerial photographs of the country, with a focus on disaster areas. The result is a massive pile of imagery, so big that it often goes unused because there is no easy way to find the useful information. Here, working with a modified version of MapMill, HOT members put together a system allowing volunteers to sort through the imagery and identify pictures of disaster-struck areas. It was a quick effort, tossed onto GitHub and forgotten about — until Hurricane Sandy hit New York. 6000 people then used the software to help sort out the images and create a map of where the worst damage was.

There is a project with the American Red Cross to digitize satellite imagery and create maps of areas where disasters might strike. One result was a map of urban areas in Uganda containing lots of thatched-roof huts. Such areas are prone to wildfires and can benefit from advance planning and mitigation efforts.

When Typhoon Haiyan was seen to be heading toward the Philippines, HOT volunteers started doing detailed mapping a couple of days ahead of landfall on November 7. They were able to map 10,000 buildings in Tacloban, which was in the path of the storm, and tag 25% of them with their function — useful data for assessing damage and coordinating the response. What has proved harder is getting post-storm photos and data. Some satellite imagery was released by the US Department of State, but more would be useful.

Response to Haiyan was helped by the OSM task manager system, which coordinates the work that needs to be done. Volunteers can get information about the areas needing mapping work and pick up tasks to complete. In this case, 1679 people contributed to the response to the disaster, making nearly 5 million map changes. It was, Kate said, an incredible volunteer effort.

Getting involved

Those who want to help can find the current task list at tasks.hotosm.org. HOT's software work is all freely licensed and can be found on GitHub; needless to say, patches are welcome. Those wanting to get more involved can join into the technical working group calls, held every other Monday at 5PM UTC. There are also positions — some paid — for those who want to get involved on the ground. There is a wide variety of tasks to be performed; HOT is, for example, trying to set up a series of Python classes in Jakarta. There are lots of ways to become a part of this effort, Kate said in conclusion; see this page for information on how to do that.

[Your editor would like to thank linux.conf.au for funding his travel to Perth].

