Part A Chapter 2 Lesson 6 An introduction to OSM

OpenStreetMap (OSM) – accessible via the hyperlink in the slide title – is a collaborative and volunteer-driven project to create a free editable map of the world and free to use geographic information (GI). For MSF, OSM is an invaluable source of GI. This screenshot shows OSM coverage of central London. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a global online community of volunteer digital humanitarians and represents OSM’s humanitarian wing. It is busy creating and providing free, detailed and up-to-date maps for NGOs (including MSF) and local communities. HOT’s mapping projects are organized through the HOT Tasking Manager. The HOT Tasking Manager – shown in the screenshot – introduces mapping projects, explains what needs mapping, divides mapping projects into small mappable squares, facilitates distribution of these squares and links to OSM’s editing options. This screenshot shows JOSM: a popular OSM editing tool. Volunteer mappers typically download areas of interest from the HOT Tasking Manager and into JOSM, trace satellite imagery of these areas and upload their edits to the OSM database. OSM data is very often extracted from the OSM database using overpass turbo. We will do this in Part B Chapter 5 Lesson 4. overpass turbo is a web-based data mining tool designed specifically for use with OSM. Finally, the Missing Maps project is an American Red Cross, British Red Cross, HOT and MSF joint initiative with the primary and long-term objective to map the world’s most vulnerable places and support NGOs planning risk reduction and disaster response activities. The project utilizes OSM, HOT tools and involves three steps: one, remote volunteers tracing satellite imagery onto OSM; two, community volunteers adding local details such as neighbourhoods, street names and evacuation centres; and three, NGOs using the GI generated to plan risk reduction and disaster response activities. So far, the Missing Maps project has spearheaded the mapping of 8+ million houses and 1+ million kms of road.