What can be learned from the volunteer mapping efforts for Haiti?
Perspectives, community, planning, spatial data January 31st, 2010
The unfolding events in Haiti have underscored the fact that accessibility to map making tools and open spatial data can make anyone a mapmaker. Mapping is an activity that provides a tangible means for concerned citizens to reach out and help make sense of a very complicated and evolving situation where the more that is known, the more that can be done, and the quicker the mapping response, the quicker aid will reach the effected population.
The various Crisis Camps that are taking place to respond to the devastating earthquake in Haiti have stoked the advancement of the citizen mapmakers who are creating detailed, timely and valuable volunteered geographic information. While in the past there were only separate mapping efforts from various government entities and non-governmental organization that might each struggle with available data and resources, now there’s a mapping effort by many that are far removed from the area or event that can support good work on the ground.
Organic Efforts
Within a very short time frame the small and poor country of Haiti has been mapped extensively with great detail, far exceeding the quality of any previously available maps. Largely this effort was done by volunteers who benefited from the availability of freely provided high-quality data, such as satellite imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. This certainly isn’t the first disaster that has benefited from such resources, but this event was different in terms of the quick mobilization of collaborative teams that quickly and efficiently teased out information from this data from far-flung locations as diverse as New York, Chicago, Montreal, London and Bogota, Colombia.
Social networking was largely responsible for the quick and collective response. The tools such as Twitter and Facebook spread the word quickly that there was need for technologists to assist, and many responded to the unprecedented opportunity to do more than just send money. While the information technology efforts weren’t relegated to mapping only, the mapping effort was one of the more visible aspects of the effort that quickly put a visual face to the scope and severity of the disaster, and it was an aspect that was widely covered by the news media.
Communications Aggregation
One of the more interesting aspects of this effort was the mapping of SMS text messages from those that were in need of help. With a devastated communication network with little capacity, text messages were often the only means of communication with the outside world, and many messages came in, even from those trapped in rubble. A volunteer effort took these messages, having to translate many from Creole into English, and endeavored to geolocate them in order that help might be sent to where it was needed most.
The map aggregation of this information provided near real-time information for first responders in Haiti. Having this information in their hands made these responders much more effective. Word spread quickly of this map resource and many teams were able to provision their personal GPS devices with updates and accurate map data to greatly speed their response times.
Open But Not Interoperable
OpenStreetMap and Google Mapmaker were largely the mapping tools of choice, but amidst all the mapping there was a call for a conflated and coordinated effort between the two. The spectre of interoperability was magnified by the altruistic intent of the effort where data created to help in one platform couldn’t be used to update the other, causing a needless duplication of effort and knowledge gaps that degraded both platforms despite the best intentions of all involved.
The Open Geospatial Consortium approach of W*S services were active and effective to help eliminate such duplicated efforts. There were Web Mapping Services to pull together SDI layers, and Web Feature Services to help bring framework data such as boundaries, hydrography, transportation and population to the masses. There was also a OpenLS route service to help route emergency services based on OpenStreetMap data.
While all these efforts were helpful, clearly more work needs to be done for greater coordination and easier portability of data between different platforms and different creators and users of the data.
Making Mapmakers
In the heat of the mapping effort, many untrained mappers were adding quality information that helped to solve problems, but also plenty of bad data were also generated because of unfamiliarity with the mapping process, and the fact that people will always have different approaches to the task at hand. While it’s difficult to learn the nuances of the task during the heat of such a moment, the WikiProject Haiti did a good job of aggregating lessons and providing a place for discussions.
Perhaps at no other time has an event exposed so many novices to the power and the complexities of mapmaking. We can expect that these now-trained volunteers will be willing and eager to help out in the next such event, and that their ranks will swell. In the interim, the geospatial community would all benefit if we were prepared to facilitate these efforts with more and easier tools for quick and coordinated mapping where the work of all benefits those that are in need and those that are at risk.
REFERENCES/RESOURCES
Crisis Commons – Home of the collaborative CrisisCamps
WikiProject Haiti – Earthquake Map Resources
Google Map Maker – Mapping Haiti
ESRI Haiti Disaster Relief and Support
Open Geospatial Consortium Haiti Effort
Posts
February 1st, 2010 at 8:57 pm
I volunteered for the Crises Camp (DC) on the first day. As a GIS professional with some image analysis training, I was frustrated by the tools at our disposal (donated, lightly processed, true-color satellite imagery), especially when given to a task (id’ing destroyed buildings) that could be done very quickly given better data. I was reassured to learn of the Disaster Charter that provide the data and analysis that are needed for analysis- I think that the charter’s signatories need to examine how to focus the public urge to respond and focus it to tasks that can’t be done through automated analysis, as well as figure out how to provide the public the data to contribute to the disaster.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:05 am
Good thinking … we with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team are thinking about how to template the response, so that volunteers from novice to experienced has roles they can quickly slot into, and so that organizations and networks have easy access to the data OSM is producing, and a forum to make requests.
Just a note on OSM and MapMaker … the only sticking point with interoperability between the two is the license; MapMaker has a non-commercial license which prevents integration with OSM.