<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Win32)"><style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All-</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Back to base (Brittany, France) at the
end of the third week of this OSM/HOT mission in Haiti of which
you'll find the main facts further below.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In addition to the wealth of resources
created by the OSM Wiki Project Haiti, the efforts Robert and I spent
in our first two weeks of mission meeting and outreaching to all
actors (UN and NGOs, Haitian National/Local Authorities, Development
projects and Haitian Civil Society), designing a field OSM surveying
and editing kit, delivering training and running field surveys
continue to pay in this last week.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">First layer of activities was training
and surveying. More than 30 persons were trained from UNICEF, UNOCHA,
MINUSTAH, FAO, WFP, IOM, Shelter Box, iMMAP, MapAction, INTERSOS, DAI
project, WINNER project and their partners in Port Au Prince
Municipalities, SASH, CNIGS, CNSA, INURED and Representative from the
Forum of Communities of Cite Soleil.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This was made possible by the growing
and full engagement of freshly trained mappers from both CNIGS
(Centre National de l'Information Geo-Spatiale/ Haitian National
Mapping Agency) and WFP-VAM (UN World Food Programme –
Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping unit) in facilitating training
and carrying out surveying work combined with the logistics support
furnished by IOM, the human support of CNIGS making its sound
personals available and the positive receptiveness of all actors of
the Haitian geomatic scene. A training training and surveying force
has been constituted at the course of those past weeks and has now
the means to keep at its own pace.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Those 3 weeks allowed us to find the
right <i>modus operandi</i> in running those capacity building
exercises both in Port Au Prince and in country (Jacmel &
Leogane). We all proved to be able to accommodate for comprehensive
formal half a day sessions (LogBase, WINNER Project, Cite Soleil) as
well as multiple and diverse <i>ad hoc</i> sessions delivered to all
(drivers, secretaries, social, project workers to hard core GIS
practitioners) at all times (day time, lunch breaks, Eastern
holidays, or night sessions...).
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last Tuesday 6-April featured the
scenario to run future in-country trainings and surveys. We were 8 (5
CNIGS, 1 WFP-VAM, a driver and myself) to take the road to Leogane
where a humanitarian base had been set up. Upstream Frederic Moine
coordinated and raise awareness about this trip. Up to 15 persons
from different organizations were trained and some took part in
parallel surveying works carried out in the city. We grew our base of
trainees by running <i>agit prop</i> techniques throughout the camp,
definitively a very enabling environment: receptive persons joining
in and propagating the call for training and surveying within the
network of partners from DPC (Haitian Disaster Management Agency). It
would have been easy, staying in longer to reach out to many and to
plug our growing surveying forces into on-going activities.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Small agile autonomous teams of 4,
furnished with an OSM surveying kit (a pelican case storing laptop,
GPS units/Data Loggers and printer), equiped with tent and basic
camping gears, moving to those Haitian secondary hubs taking
advantage of convoys, vehicle movements and helicopter rotations to
carry out training and surveying work with all willing actors would
for a limited budget certainly pay a large tribute to the current
phase of the relief work and efficiently support the starting
preparedness activities to mitigate the forthcoming cyclonic season.
This should be combined in Port Au Prince with some formal/ ad-hoc
training in LogBase (and any additional workable place) to help
maintaining the capacities grown there.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Much more than techniques were
transmitted at the event of these many sessions which worked as
network incubators. Catalysts of professional networks growth with
the OSM <i>modus operandi</i> opening up for GIS practitioners from
CNIGS, VAM, CNSA., UN and Development projects wide spectra of
cooperation areas. Incubator of social networks <i>tout court</i>
with the strengthening of comradeship ties, relations organizational,
trans-organizational, relations: in one word, something of an OSM
community at work in Haiti.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Second layer of activities was outreach
and meeting to articulate OSM to present and future geo data
management activities in Haiti. This resulted into a shift where by
OSM got considered not only as a data feeder consumed in many handy
formats but also as a functional and powerful data editing
collaborative platform to support geodata management efforts from
Haitian humanitarian and national actors.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Imports and maintenance schemes
involving OSM tied to the Humanitarian Data Model to ensure semantic
interoperability were discussed with humanitarian data custodians and
CNIGS. The work carried out by the community over the Health Facility
objects (PAHO data imports) served as both an illustration and a
model for these talks. This would be mutually beneficial. OSM would
gain a streamlined access to the humanitarian data shareable and
compatible with the scope of the project produced at the event of
this crisis. OSM would become a <i>de facto</i> receptacle of this
humanitarian geodata effort and play a role in data accessibility,
sharing and visualization in support of exiting mechanims. To the eye
of the custodian, OSM is seen as complimentary working as a data
feeder branched to “wild” data collection efforts happening
outside of its reach in community mapping scheme (Precarious urban
areas - Cite Soleil/ Rural Areas). .
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Those talks were engaged with UNICEF
(schools, qualitative indicators on camp), Education Cluster
(schools), CCCM Cluster (camps), WFP/UN LogCluster (Logistics), OCHA
(standardization, capacity building and disaster preparedness) and
will need a follow-up..
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The CNIGS got the full value of OSM as
a common and open receptacle of humanitarian data, as a data feeder
able to leverage the power of the crowd in both perspective and as a
skilled and committed community willing and able to help articulating
and activating global and local capacities. CNIGS engaged in OSM,
getting 10 of their staffs cognizant and is planning use the platform
in articulation with its own data management solution for their base
map layers. CNIGS will advocate for OSM among their partners. CNIGS
has been furnished with an OSM surveying kit (2 laptpops, one
printer, 5 GPS units) in support of this scheme.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Direct illustration of this is the DPC
(Direction de la Protection Civile/ the Haitian National Disaster
Management Agency) considering to make of OSM the technical solution
of their geodata data management pipeline in both disaster
preparedness and direct disaster response. This could start for the
next Cyclonic season. In this pattern, the CNIGS would work as a
geographic information service provider for DPC. If this would happen
ideally in coordination with similar efforts run on the humanitarian
front by OCHA , the benefits for the project and for the constitution
of an OSM community in Haiti would simply be great since the DPC has
a massive presence over the country.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Outreach to the groups of the civil
society was the third pillar of this mission targeted at growing
autonomously the Project in Haiti. The interest for community mapping
schemes based on OSM techniques in precarious neighborhoods of Port
Au Prince is vivid and geographical information is perceived in both
its technical and political aspects. Politically, mapping the
un-mapped camps, population needs, mapping the gaps of both
humanitarian and national current and planned responses is simply a
question of life and death and for a community mapping its own
environment (expressing in a cartographic language its knowledge of
its environment is seen as an evident step and ground on which
building to give more strength to the on-going processes by which the
civil society seeks an active role in the current response.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3 representatives from the Forum of
Communities of Cite Soleil and from INURED (a potential partner for
those type of project) trained last Saturday 3-April in Cite Soleil
attended a second training facilitated by CNIGS in LogBase in the IOM
carre (IOM being the lead Agency of the Camp Coordination and
Management Cluster). Already fluent with GPS and questionnaires
surveys, they made it to the end of the editing process and now need
regular practices.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A surveying kit dedicated to community
mapping has been left under the custodianship of CNIGS. Furnished
with GPS units, access to a dedicated workstation and benefiting from
the technical support of CNIGS, both people from Cite Soleil Forum
and INURED should be able to pursue in their acquiring of OSM
techniques and contribute their pieces of data over Cite Soleil to
the project in articulation of the efforts of the camp custodian
(IOM). In the rural area, SASH a grass root NGO from UK engaged in
mapping the un-mapped camps will furnish a support similar as CNIGS
in community mapping schemes..</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It's hard to predict in such a fast
changing and complex environment the course at which the above
described dynamics will proceed. One thing Robert and myself are sure
of is that OSM made it to nice people which tied to remote community
support and on-the-ground missions with some on-site institutional
support (even limited) should ensure a minimal growth of the project
in Haiti.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Remote support spanning over data
imports, remote survey editing, translation, developments, capacity
building materials in OSM and OSGeo stacks, project proposal writing
works and other work items will be needed as well an as continuous as
possible OSM presence on the ground. This will work both as as
catalysts of the alchemy on the making in Haiti and as an internal
strengthening of OSM/HOT capacities whereby new mappers will be
exposed to the specifics of field humanitarian work and more be able
to step in in the future (Haiti or elsewhere).
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The above short paragraph is meant to
keep digesting the lessons we are learning from Haiti since 12-Jan in
the light of those past 3 weeks and ensure that the OSM project will
remain useful, relevant and efficiently articulated to the current
relief and reconstruction work in Haiti.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Those 3 weeks meant clearly a lot for
us on all plans and we can only be grateful to have had the chance to
deploy in this land and thank again the whole community for the work
invested on OSM at large and on Haiti in particular, the support
furnished by MapAction to make this mission on ECHO funding
possible, the support provided in Haiti by IOM (logisitcs,
worksplace), by CNIGS (human resources), ushaidi (networking and
outreach to INURED & Cite Soleil) and the many we interacted
with.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nicolas-</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Nicolas Chavent<br>Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team<br><a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti</a><br>Mobile (Haiti): +509 348 50 336<br>
Mobile (FRA): +33 6 75 14 29 70<br>Email: <a href="mailto:nicolas.chavent@gmail.com">nicolas.chavent@gmail.com</a><br>Skype: c_nicolas<br>Twitter: nicolas_chavent<br><br>