Since March, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has been supporting the work of Doctors Without Borders by mapping out areas that have been affected by the Ebola outbreak.
During a disaster, the Humanitarian OpenSteetMap Team (HOT) activates to help coordinate mapping of disaster areas. These activities include mapping out roads, buildings, locations of refugee camps, and other resources. In addition, they also maintain a wiki with information about the disaster. To get an idea of what this looks like, here’s what the OSM community did after the earthquake in Haiti.
OpenStreetMap – Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.
Currently, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team is reposonding to several requests from Doctors Without Borders to help map areas affected by the Ebola outbreak. If you’re a beginner with OpenStreetMap, they’re asking for people to map out the roads using Bing imagery. More experienced mappers are being asked to trace out features near Ebola Treatments Centers in West Africa.
If you have an OpenStreetMap account, you can log into the OSM Tasking Manager and select tasks.
If you don’t have an OpenStreetMap account, you can sign up for an account for free here. OpenStreetMap is easy to use and there are several tutorials available, including this one by Chicago’s very own Ian Dees.
If you have time available, please consider spending some time assisting OSM in the effort. For questions directly relating to the HOT Team at OSM, you can email them at [email protected].
