[HOT] Report on the first week of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team work Haiti (warning: long)

[Robert Soden]

I apologize in advance for the length of this, but it's important to us that
we keep everyone informed about the work we are doing here to represent the
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and I've yet to process all that's we've
been doing into something more digestible.

In short, things are going very well, primarily because of the effort of the
community over the past two months in support of the response.

It's hard to believe we've been here for only a week. We arrived last Sunday
night and were pulled into planning meetings with IOM and KPK
(Ushahidi-Haiti) within a few hours of landing in Port au Prince. The rest
of the week has followed a similar course. We're camping on logbase – where
there's essentially nothing to do but work – so we've been doing 14-16 hours
on most days since arriving - busy with the presentations, meetings, phone
calls, emails, and training preparations.

In many ways, our outreach efforts been far easier than we anticipated. The
GIS teams here have all heard of OSM, and most of them are using the data
already in some fashion. Many of the people we've talked to over the last
week have expressed sincere gratitude to the community for all of its hard
work and been more than willing to take time out of their days to talk to
us, connect us to the right people, and participate in our training
sessions. It's not because they're kind people (though they are). The GIS
and Information Officers on logbase have a real incentive to work with us
because OSM has become such a key dataset here. So they want to learn how to
use the data more effectively, give us feedback on how we can improve the
tools available to them, and strategize with us about to best fit OSM into
their workflows.

Backing up a bit, it's worth restating the goals of the mission so I can
talk about how we're doing on each front. We're here, funded my ECHO and
facilitated by MapAction, to help make sure OSM continues to stay a relevant
datasource and tool in the ongoing response to the Haiti quake and as the
process moves into the recovery and development phases. We're attempting to
do this in three ways:

* Establishing connections with and training representatives from the UN
Cluster system (which includes international NGOs), the Haitian government,
and Haitian civil society on the use of OSM data and strategies for data
collection using the OSM toolset.
* Making sure the OSM data for Haiti continues to be the best available of
its kind. This includes identifying key datasets for import and establishing
mechanisms whereby relevant data collected by organizations working here can
flow into the OSM database.
* Better identifying needs of this community and assessing ways in which OSM
tools can be improved to meet the particular demands of this context.

So far, most of our efforts have concentrated on the first point. We've
spent a lot of time this first week just getting to know the GIS teams from
OCHA, IOM, WFP, MINUSTAH, WHO, and UNICEF. We're also working closely with
CNIGS (the Haitian government's geo-spatial agency). After all of these
meetings and presentations, I feel we have a workable understanding of a
complicated and rapidly-changing landscape.

We conducted our first training yesterday afternoon staff from OCHA, WASH
cluster, UNICEF, MapAction, and USAID. The training lasted a few hours and
we worked on basic use of GPS, Walking Papers, and JOSM for field-surveying.
There were a few hiccups caused by a faulty USB cable, unpredictable
internet, and about twice as many participants as we anticipated. But in
general, it was great to give these folks, some of whom are active consumers
of OSM data, a better understanding of how to contribute to the dataset and
more insight into how it all works.
We'll follow up this training with several more like it on Tuesday and
Wednesday mornings for staff of CNIGS, WFP, IOM, UNICEF, and MINUSTAH.
Wednesday afternoon we'll be working primarily with CNIGS and IOM on
preparing a surveying trip to Jacmel, an earthquake hit and flood-prone city
outside of Port au Prince. The trip will last two days – Thursday and Friday
- and will aim to gather updated information on IDP camps, road names and
conditions, and locations of schools and medical clinics. We'll be using OSM
as a repo for the data collected and our hope is that after a few training
sessions this week, CNIGS will be able to lead the surveying efforts, with
Nicolas and I there primarily to observe and support as necessary, and we'll
likely have support from WFP and OCHA.

Camping on logbase, though not exactly cushy, has given us solid access to
the various UN groups and we've had success so far collaborating with CNIGS.
But we've been somewhat restricted in our movements outside the camp and
haven't had great success interfacing with local NGOs. We have been lucky to
connect with Sabina and Jaro of KPK. With their assistance and the support
of their colleagues at INURED (http://inured.org/), we'll get a chance to
meet up with community leaders and young people in Cite Soleil and do some
OSM mapping work with them tomorrow. We've also been in touch with the local
staff of Trees for the Future (who helped us do a test-run of our training
last Friday), and a few other groups. Broadening our network of friends and
allies within civil society here will be a critical part of the remaining
time we have here.

On the data side, we're looking at an predictably complex situation. There's
two general things we're aiming to accomplish. The first is to come up with
a list of the most accurate set of baseline datasets we can, in order to
import these as necessary to ensure OSM has the best data available. At the
moment, no actor here has such a list. We're working with OCHA and CNIGS to
facilitate its creation and hope to have input from in the next few days.
Talbot Brooks and some partners from Delta State University have begun the
work of building a 1:25k atlas of Haiti using these data sources once we can
provide a complete list.

We also want to find ways in which data that is being collected by the
various clusters can be imported or updated in OSM over time. UNICEF sent
out ~100 surveyors on motorcycles last week to collect school locations,
information on medical facilities is constantly being updated, and there are
at least 3 different groups collecting data on IDP camps. Kate Chapman, Karl
Guggisberg, and others have been working to keep medical facility points
current through periodic imports so we're hoping to be able to establish
similar mechanisms for schools and camps. Part of the issue is divergent
data models between surveys and surveying groups so we've needed to
facilitate meetings between organizations here on how to come up with some
basic standards. We did this with OCHA and IOM last week on camps and were
able to quickly decide upon some baseline attributes that both held in
common and are now in good position to move forward with imports of these,
using Nicolas's efforts around the Humanitarian Data Model as a guide. I'm
hoping we can have similar success with schools, water kiosks, and health
facilities soon.

As far as better targeting OSM tools to these audiences, we have a ways to
go before we're ready to provide many concrete ideas. I think the trainings
we'll conduct this week and the surveying mission to Jacmel will provide a
lot of insight. But I can highlight one initiative that's already underway
in order to provide an example of the kinds of things we're thinking about.
WFP Logistics is interested in using OSM road network data and contributing
to it as possible. They use a particular data model, the UNSDIT (authored
primarily by Nicolas), which describes key information that they need to
know about streets and other transport features in order to do their work.
What we need then is a bridge between the OSM data and the UNSDIT data
model. We've already gotten help from Michael Weismen, Andrew Turner, and
Jason Pickering setting up an instance of FME server and Karen Payne and
Kate Chapman have started building an ETL service that will convert OSM data
into something consumable by UNSDIT. There's also some interest in a similar
service for CNIGS. There's a lot more we need to learn here, but this is one
example of the ways in which we can better target OSM to provide service in
this context.

This coming week we'll be doing either training or data collection exercises
every day. If all goes as planned, we'll be in Cite Soleil on Monday, doing
trainings for cluster and CNIGS staff on logbase Tuesday and Wednesday, and
then to Jacmel for Friday and Saturday for surveying. In addition to
exposing a lot of people to the OSM tools, we'll also learn a lot about how
we as a community can better target the needs here.

Apologies again for the length of this, we'll send another update as we can.

Best,
Robert and Nicolas
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