The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Project

Facilitated by Schuyler Erle, Humanitarian Open Streetmap Project

Session Description

Schuyler will share stories of humanitarian applications of the OpenStreetMap project.

Session Notes

Open Street Maps w/ Schuyler, works for SimpleGEO.com

1. OSM enjoys public domain info from US Census and US Geological Survery
2. OSM allows individuals to update or create, update & edit maps.
3. Haiti project (see OSM wiki on Haiti)
4. Crowdsourcing and use for crisis management
   1. Like wikipedia for crowd data, OSM wikipedia for mapping data.
   2. Started in 2004,
   3. Most users outside of US
   4. Process of OSM: Collecting data, annotating, making it available
   5. Physical contact with world to collect information using tagging, keywords, etc.
   6. A little chaotic when tagging/keywords are personally used with regards to crowdsourcing
   7. Ability to map areas of the map that are not currently mapped, mapping incognita.
   8. Crowdsourcing ables people to fill in historic information and other particulars that wouldn't normally be included in public domain or even proprietary maps.
5. In Haiti, earthquake crisis:
   1. Not a stable form of law so infrastructure and regulations are lacking.
   2. 1/3-1/2 of buildings was destroyed.
6. With OSM, a user can manually trace out using its internal editor areas that are not mapped to offer a rendering to start with.
7. Organization began on a wiki page that provided other resources to help fill in the blanks.
8. Using OSM, a user can notate specifics that will show up on traditional GPS.
9. Ushahidi "Mission 4636" (crisis text messaging) used OSM in the backend for mapping.
   1. Swiftriver, project of Ushahidi
10. OpenLayers was used as underlying visual client for both OSM and Ushahidi
11. Gaia, iPhone app, allows offline mapping
12. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team http://hot.openstreetmap.org uses OSM works on crisis management using maps and to tell stories about the situation
13. MapKibera.org: informal in Nairobi project; builds capacity and map their communities to tell stories about what is going on in those areas.
14. Wikimapia.org, used more for points of interest
15. OSM is released under OpenCommons Share-Alike licensed
16. Clients: Java OpenStreetMap client; Android project emerging.