[HOT] Getting current satellite data after an emergency

[Edwin Wisse]

Hello,

In the past i have participated in some missing maps and hotosm tasks. 
However, i have often found it difficult to distinguish between terrain 
types in areas i do not know. For example, along a river in Central 
Africa vegetation marks the low water river banks, the area behind it 
can flood during high water. In a missing maps task the task was to map 
these areas to identify sleeping sickness vulnerable areas. This cannot 
be done well using a single dataset for a single date of aerial images. 
The instructions in the task descriptions are very helpful but sometimes 
not enough. One needs more information than aerial photos provide.

Presently there is an increasing number of satellites providing more and 
more information. The european Sentinel series provides both radar and 
visual imagery and various dataproducts derived from that imagery. These 
information products are used in emergency situations. The humanitarian 
openstreetmap tasks benefit from a simple mapping client like the 
in-browser iD editor. id gives the user a choice in background layers, 
by default a user can choose between bing, mapbox and mapquest.

Do you think it would be beneficial if satellite data products like 
Sentinel derived information were available in an in-browser 
openstreetmap editor like iD? I think information products like 
vegetation maps, soil moisture, etc would provide useful background 
information and could be described well enough in the task instructions.

Best regards,
Edwin Wisse

-- 
Edwin Wisse
N 52 48'02.69"   E 6 3'16.33"
http://www.kandedifang.com/