Severin Menard and I are in Nairobi for the International Conference of Crisis Mappers. We decided to host an afternoon mapping party with the community. Fortunately, we had some training helpers from Ketty Adoch and Zacharia Muindi. The mapping party included curious observers, trainers, storytellers and some process helpers. We focused on the Typhoon Philippines area, but also reviewed the upcoming project in Central African Republic.

Getting the Imagery to the Crowd

Joshua Campbell from the United States Department of State, Humanitarian Information Unit gave a brief presentation about the current work of HIU and how they will support HOT in the future. Imagery for the Crowd was established to find a way that to recreate the surge support that we learned from HOT in Haiti. The idea is to enable volunteer mapping effort by providing access to high resolution commercial imagery services that are compatible with OSM editors. Currently, they have three active projects. The first is supporting the Open Cities Project in Nepal (Kathmandu): from February they mapped 120, 000 mapped which is now being ground assessed. Second, they are currently working with the Typhoon in Philippines. The power of the crowd is that 26, 000 buildings mapped in Cebu that were not previously mapped. The third upcoming project is in the Central African Republic. More on this initiative: Imagery to the crowd from Joshua Campbell

What's next for Imagery to the Crowd

The Imagery to the Crowd initiative is also going to provide clarification on how to submit imagery requests. They want to reinforce and support what is already going on with the HOT Team. What is the priority of the data, temporal bounds, priority areas, what is the operation goals (development, human rights, etc.)? HIU needs well justified requirements and a timeline for each imagery release. The license does require that there is some relation to the interests of the US government. Meaning - the department needs to justify the request. The campaign will start in January with a template for how to make a request. They will be supporting the HOT community to help them with outreach and map teaching to help grow capacity.

Live from the Mapping party

There is magic when you bring people into a room to teach and learn together. We have humanitarians, mappers, digital volunteers and civil society groups together today at ICCM. Severin gave a demo and helped people sign up to OpenStreetMap. Next, he walked folks through the LearnOSM steps to show how easy it is to map. Because of "ID", the barrier to entry was lowered even more. The best part of the ICCM Naiboi Mapping party was having new participants walk into the session late only to be trained by newly anointed OSMers. Thanks to all who trained and participated. Thanks to Josh and Benson for the HIU help and coaching.