[HOT] Central African Republic: Bangui taken over today by the rebels

Ben Abelshausen ben.abelshausen at gmail.com
Tue Mar 26 16:09:34 UTC 2013


Hi Pierre,

The EUROSHA volounteers here are available if you want to contact them at
eurosha.cameroun at gmail.com or i'm on IRC too (xivk) if you want to contact
the EUROSHA people that way.

Coordinating this is indeed very important but i guess everybody here is
just eager to do some work sitting on all this data! :-)

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Best regards,

Ben Abelshausen
ben.abelshausen at gmail.com
http://twitter.com/xivk

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Pierre Béland <pierzenh at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> Ben
>
> For the current Activation in DR Congo, I coordinate this with Claire
> Halleux.  Claire coordinates in Kinshasa with the humanitarians and UN OCHA
> representatives.  She had discussions before about this data. We want to
> look at the data for DR Congo and see how we can integrate this with the
> existant data.
>
> I understand that you are enthousiast and wants to improve the OSM map. So
> far, we did not have much exchanges with EUROSHA volunteers and we have to
> find ways to do work in a coordinate manner and be very careful in doing
> imports when there is already an important network of roads. For
> Activations like in DR Congo, HOT organizes a coordination structure for
> both the remote mappers and humanitarians on the ground. We exchange both
> on this list and on the irc irc://irc.oftc.net/hot. You are welcome to
> come on the irc and discuss more about this. But you have to understand
> that there is already a coordination structure in place. I think that we
> should avoid to create a second one in parallel.
>
> We have to compare information from the various sources and trace or
> revise the roads already in the OSM database taking into account info from
> the various sources. The Bing high res imagery is very useful but it is
> hard to trace roads in wooded areas. The Landsat imagery is less detailed
> but can complete the info from Bing. And the gps traces can be very helpful
> to complete the other sources.
>
>
> Pierre
>
>   ------------------------------
> *De :* Ben Abelshausen <ben.abelshausen at gmail.com>
> *À :* Pascal Douard <PDouard at wri.org>
> *Cc :* Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com>; Jorieke Vyncke <
> jorieke.vyncke at gmail.com>; Pierre Béland <pierzenh at yahoo.fr>; "
> hot at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org>
> *Envoyé le :* Mardi 26 mars 2013 10h53
>
> *Objet :* Re: [HOT] Central African Republic: Bangui taken over today by
> the rebels
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm here in Cameroon with some of the EUROSHA people helping out a little
> (with Jorieke Vyncke) and I have some pratical questions.
>
> We have been working for the past couple of days to convert the existing
> shapefiles to OSM format (converting to the correct tags etc...). Before we
> mentioned our plan was to serve the data with the tasking manager and allow
> the verification (when possible) and mapping of the data into OSM.
>
> One of the files of the converted data containing localities is available
> already for DRC:
>
> http://www.osmsharp.com:815/data/144/129/8/WRI_RDC_localities_2009.osm(the localities)
>
> This data would be served in a task at zoom level 8 at location 144 - 129.
>
> My questions is now: Do we continue with this work or do you guys think
> this 'conversion->taskingmanager->mapping' way of working is not the way to
> go for this data? The eurosha group here thinks this is the best solution
> because, similar to what Mikel was saying, this way we are involving the
> OSM community in general and the data is veryfied before 'importing'.
>
> AND: Thanks again to pascal and WRI!!
>
> Met vriendelijke groeten,
> Best regards,
>
> Ben Abelshausen
> ben.abelshausen at gmail.com <ben.abelshausen at gmail.be>
> http://twitter.com/xivk <http://twitter.com/xivk>
>
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Pascal Douard <PDouard at wri.org> wrote:
>
>  Hey Mikel,****
> Just may be to give an info, the road had been collected through Landsat
> images observation and completed with GPS field observation.****
> Some of the logging roads had been provided by the timber companies,
> sometimes one track for a network of roads.****
> As I mentioned yesterday to the Eurosha-team, I will be providing the
> latest road network we have for CAR and DRC, from late 2012. It won’t be
> helping at a town scale but more at the national scale.****
> I also would be interested to participate to a mapping party if this can
> help.****
> Best regards,****
> Pascal****
> ** **
>  *Pascal Douard*****
> *GIS Research Associate, People and Ecosystems*****
> *World Resources Institute*****
> 10 G Street, NE, Suite 800****
> Washington, DC 20002 USA****
> www.WRI.org <http://www.wri.org/>****
>  ****
> Direct: +1 202-729-7652 ****
> pdouard at wri.org | Skype:pascalfromauvergne | Twitter: @worldresources****
> ** **
> *WRI focuses on the intersection of the environment and socio-economic
> development. We go beyond research to put ideas into action, working
> globally with governments, business, and civil society to build
> transformative solutions that protect the earth and improve people’s lives.
> *****
>  ** **
>  *From:* Mikel Maron [mailto:mikel_maron at yahoo.com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 26, 2013 9:42 AM
> *To:* Jorieke Vyncke; Pierre Béland; Pascal Douard
> *Cc:* hot at openstreetmap.org
>
> *Subject:* Re: [HOT] Central African Republic: Bangui taken over today by
> the rebels****
>  ** **
>  Hi****
>  ** **
>  Great news on the data release. I've been working with this data as well
> in another context, and we have noticed good accuracy in many places,
> varying accuracy in others. So data import should be constructed as not
> only conflation with existing OSM data, but also comparison to other data
> sources (bing imagery, as it is ... though can be hard to judge with the
> canopy). ****
>  ** **
>  And even better would be involvement of the community of folks who are
> working with this data in Central Africa, and here in DC. If we can develop
> a community around this import, and the ongoing improvement and use of the
> data, going to be a strong initiative. There are several organizations
> here, and WRI is hq'd here. I don't know as much about WRI's operation in
> Central Africa, and how the data was originally collected, but what I'm
> thinking about is something like a series of multi-city, time focused,
> mapping party activities. ****
>  ** **
>  Best****
>  -Mikel****
>   ****
>  * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron****
>    ------------------------------
>  *From:* Jorieke Vyncke <jorieke.vyncke at gmail.com>
> *To:* Pierre Béland <pierzenh at yahoo.fr>; pdouard at wri.org
> *Cc:* "hot at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org>
> *Sent:* Monday, March 25, 2013 3:38 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [HOT] Central African Republic: Bangui taken over today by
> the rebels****
>  ** **
>  Hi Pierre,
>
> Thanks for your mail! ****
>   ****
>  About the license: the data of the World Resource Institute is
> compatible with the license: ODbL. We got the signed permission from Pascal
> Douard from the World Resource Institute. You can find the authorization in
> the attachment. At this moment we are also working on a wiki page with more
> information about the data (
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Central_Africa_Import).****
>   ****
>  After our first analysis of the data, we considered the data of very
> high quality. For Cameroon it is even the best data we have in comparing
> with all the other data we could collect. You can find their data on the
> website of the WRI, but the specific links to the data of which we have the
> permission; you can find it on the authorization in the attachment. Pascal
> also promised us to give us, as soon as possible (after their
> verification), the latest version of the data of the road network of the
> CAR and the DRC.****
>   ****
>  Best regards,****
>   ****
>  Jorieke
>
>
> Okay... the attachment is not working... but you will find the
> authorisations soon on the wiki!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ****
>  2013/3/25 Pierre Béland <pierzenh at yahoo.fr>****
>
> Hi Jorieke****
>  ** **
>  This is very interesting to have the possibility to collaborate with
> people on the ground and use eventually imports to have a better map. In
> the context of humanitarian activations, it is important to work in a
> coordinate manner and discuss before such imports are done.****
>  ** **
>  First, we have to be careful and before importing any data into OSM, we
> have to follow a strict procedure to assure that the data is published with
> a license compatible with ODbL. We have to know the original producer of
> the data, how it was collected, and evaluate how good is the
> georeferencing. We also have to validate if the license is compatible.  Do
> you have any information about that?****
>  ** **
>  I coordinate the current activation in DR Congo with Claire Halleux. I
> would like to look at the data that is contained in these files and see how
> it can help us for the DRC Activation before anything is setup with these
> files. ****
>
> Could you please send me a copy of this data?****
>   ****
>   *Pierre *****
>    ------------------------------
>  *De :* Jorieke Vyncke <jorieke.vyncke at gmail.com>
> *À :* hot at openstreetmap.org; pdouard at wri.org ****
>  *Envoyé le :* Lundi 25 mars 2013 12h53
> *Objet :* Re: [HOT] Central African Republic: Bangui taken over today by
> the rebels****
>  ** **
>  Hi everybody,****
>  ** **
>  Here a message from (a part) of the Eurosha-team who was working till
> the end of December in the Central-African Republic, and had to move
> because of the security situation. We are really glad to see your activity
> on the current crisis in the Central-African Republic. ****
>  ** **
>  At this moment we are working in Cameroon, for Cameroon, but of course
> also for the CAR! Last week we obtained the permission to use the data of
> the World Recourse Institute (WRI) for the CAR and the DRC. This data
> (localities, road network, etc) can be very useful for the humanitarian
> actors on the field at this moment. For this reason we are now busy with
> setting up as soon as possible the importation process. And it is in this
> we need some help of you guys. ****
>  ** **
>  Because we don’t really like the massive data importations as this would
> conflict with the existing data and could get very messy, we propose a
> crowd-sourced way to verify and import the data using the tasking manager.
> We have converted the existing shapefiles to OSM-XML format already and
> have setup a service that can serve the data into JOSM as follows:****
>  ** **
>  http://www.osmsharp.com:815/data/16748/10966/15/matrix.osm ****
>  ** **
>  The data served is just a test area; the real converted data will be
> there soon. A request like this will return only data inside the requested
> tile. Any existing OSM file can very quickly be served on the site this way.
> ****
>  We think it would be a very efficient and nice way to process and
> convert the data into OSM using the tasking manager if we could add a field
> or link to it that could load the data from the above url straight into
> JOSM or provide it as a download link in the task itself.****
>  ** **
>  Using this method all the humanitarian-relevant data can be converted
> and imported very quickly. But this means we need help from somebody to
> modify the tasking manager just a little bit to make this possible.****
>  ** **
>  Thanks,****
>  ** **
>  The EUROSHA TEAM****
>  ** **
>  ** **
>
> _______________________________________________
> HOT mailing list
> HOT at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot****
>  ** **
>
> _______________________________________________
> HOT mailing list
> HOT at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>
> ****
>
> _______________________________________________
> HOT mailing list
> HOT at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/attachments/20130326/f8dad0ac/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the HOT mailing list