[OSM-talk] HOT Activations for humanitarian relief

[Pierre Béland]

Everybody remembers how the OSM community made the news in jan. 2010 with mapping for the Haiti Earthquake. Since then, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has continued collaboration with various humanitarian NGO's and UN agencies to support humanitarian organizations for various disasters and humanitarian relief. 

The recent military conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Syria have created a very complex humanitarian situation. There are presently  hundred of thousand of people displaced and new people are displaced regularly. It is also very dificult for NGO's to circulate on the territory. The logistic to respond to these humanitarian needs necessitates good base maps that are generally not available in these countries. Then, the OSM community is very sollicited to collaborate to map rapidly these areas since the commercial mappers neglect these areas.

The HOT team recently activated humanitarian mapping support for these three countries at the request of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Mali (UNOCHA) and humanitarian organizations. With this very particular situation, we thought of asking other OSM contributors to collaborate to mapping these countries.


You can see the articles published on the HOT Blog to describe these activations.
- http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2012-12-12_hot_pre_activation_south_and_north_kivu_democratic_republic_of_congo
- http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2013-01-28_syria_activation
- http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2013-02-01_Mali_Activation


The OSM Tasking Manager facilitates the coordination of the various remote mappers. We invite the OSM community in general to help the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team respond rapidly to this situation. Below are links to Task Manager jobs for these three countries.

- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/Congo
- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/Mali
- http://tasks.hotosm.org/#all/syria


Other then 
base mapping of various areas, we are asked to geolocate various Basic Services Utilities (ie.
Health facilities, Schools, Water points). This information is crucial for humanitarian organizations and we are looking for
volunteers with local knowledge of these countries to help us on this topic.
These mapping activities are lead by HOT members described below and coordination is generally done via the HOT distribution list http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
.

- Democratic Republic of Congo : Pierre Béland with Claire Halleux has HOT contact in DR Congo

- Mali : Pierre Béland and Frédéric Bonifas
- Syria : Joseph Reeves
- Support to these teams by Nicolas and Kate Chapman

Please join us!

 
Pierre Béland
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
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