Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

Recent Updates

Posted by alyssa on May, 11 2013
Throughout the day you could hear the simple question - 'Is that a building?' -- followed by conversations about shadows, and people, and the construction of a city that seemed so far away from our own.
Posted by mikel on Apr, 29 2013
Early this year, HOT was activated in Mali. Pierre Beland took the lead on this activation, and produced for OCHA this excellent report. Recommended reading, for the comprehensive qualitative and quantitative look at this creative and awesome collaboration. I'd personally love to see this level of...
Posted by mikel on Apr, 25 2013
The State Department Humanitarian Information Unit has launched Imagery to the Crowd! [inline:Screen-Shot-2013-04-24-at-2.24.34-PM.png] This is important formal recognition of the partnership we've built over the past couple years. The premise is simple enough. HOT needs current aerial imagery to create up to date maps following a disaster event. The US government acquires that kind of imagery from commercial providers. Sharing the imagery with the OSM community means better maps for responders.
Posted by mikel on Apr, 24 2013
Humberto Yances has written up his wonderful OSM community work in La Boquilla, and HOT wants to share great work by HOT members (note, this is not a formal HOT project). From an idea, to engagement, to mapping, to distribution, to use, La Boquilla clearly demonstrates what can happen with an open, networked, community based approach. [inline:equipo.jpg] From these evocative beginnings ...
Posted by sev_hotosm on Apr, 10 2013
Bangui, la capitale de la République Centrafricaine, a été prise le 24 mars par les rebelles de la Séléka, trois mois après leur arrivée depuis les contrées septentrionales du pays. Dans la mesure où la situation dans la capitale est devenue assez tragique, comme elle l’était déjà depuis quelques temps pour de nombreuses autres villes et villages, il est temps maintenant de démarrer une Activation HOT officielle afin de répondre à cette crise. Dans les lignes qui suivent, je fais un rapide aperçu d’OSM dans le pays et des besoins à combler. Un peu de contexte OSM en RCA avec EUROSHA
Posted by sev_hotosm on Apr, 10 2013
Bangui, the capital city of Central African Republic, has been taken over on March 24 by the Seleka rebels, three months after their coming from the northern part of the country. As the situation in the capital is quite tragic since, as it was already for many cities and towns, it is time now to start an official HOT Activation to respond to this crisis. In the following lines, I make a short update on OSM in the country, and the needs to be fulfilled. A bit of OSM context in CAR, with EUROSHA
Posted by nicolas on Apr, 2 2013
Ten days that I am back in Haiti to start a new HOT project with USAID in the northern departments of the island with a mixed crew of hotties and Haitian mappers. Over the next three months, we will train 60 Youths from the communities and map with them as much of this region and eventually build there a strong OSM local group rooted in the University of Limonade.
Posted by kate on Mar, 20 2013
Today we are excited to announce the relaunch of LearnOSM in conjunction with the MapBox team (read their blog post about it here). [inline:screen_shot_learn.png] LearnOSM was originally envisioned by Jeff Haack, it came out of necessity from HOT's work in Indonesia. There are many training materials for OpenStreetMap, but few that have been designed in a clear way for beginners. Often instructions are buried in a wiki or assume someone already has some indepth technical knowledge. Birth of LearnOSM
Posted by Augustin Doury on Mar, 7 2013
English version Voilà déjà un mois que j’avais quitté Dakar. Sur place, le projet OSM_SN initié par HOT en mai 2012 avait déjà touché de nombreuses personnes, fin 2012/début 2013, mais beaucoup d’entre eux n’étaient pas résidents de la capitale Sénégalaise, il était donc important de former à nouveau des mappers locaux bien établis.
Posted by Augustin Doury on Mar, 6 2013
Version française It has been already one month since I left Dakar. In the capital, the OSM_SN project initiated by HOT in May 2012 had reached a lot of new mappers in December 2012/January 2013, but lot of them were not from Dakar and its neighbourhoods so training new Dakar mappers had been a priority.