Recent Updates

HOT and Wikimedia Indonesia join forces

Posted by Katrina E. on Oct, 25 2012

We met at the National Library of Indonesia-- partly for its space and partly for its reference materials. Unlike the English wikipedia, Wedimedia Indonesia requires two or more sources per page. Full articles require sources every sentence. The community of wiki users in Indonesia is small and so they do not have the manpower to be constantly editing and administrating all the articles. Our team met up with some administrators of Wikimedia to help them create and edit pages on the major roads in Jakarta. Who: John Vandenberg, the President at Wikimedia Australia, Wikimedia Indonesia teams and HOT: Indo. What: Learning how to edit wiki road pages, upload pictures on wiki commons and link these pages to OSM, and other maps.

Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR 2012)

Posted by Katrina E. on Oct, 24 2012

HOT was invited to speak at the 5th AMCDRR conference. Emir Hartato spoke on behalf of HOT about our work in Jakarta last year, our resources and support and partnership with AIFDR. [inline:20121022_140526.jpg] Title: Jakarta Participatory Capacity Mapping Process: Based on Jakarta´s Participatory Mapping for Preparedness with OpenStreetMap Experience Organizers: Jakarta´s Disaster Management Agency (Jakarta BPBD)/ OCHA Indonesia Moderator: Faizal Thamrin, UN-OCHA Indonesia Time and Place: October 22nd 2012, 14:00-15:30 a.m., Jogja Expo Center (JEC), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Update from the Red Cross on Gulu and Lira

Posted by mikel on Oct, 22 2012

An update and thank you from Robert Banick at the American Red Cross on Gulu and Lira mapping The first stage of the Red Cross's on-the-ground mapping exercises are wrapping up and I wanted to provide an update to all the incredible volunteers who got us this far. [inline:2012-09-06 12.57.56 HDR.jpg] Your contributions to OSM were huge to us in Gulu, where we led a training on GIS basics for 12 Uganda Red Cross Society members. OSM in Gulu was used throughout to ground the course in real data: our GPS exercises were about collecting data for OSM and our mapping sessions made heavy use of the Gulu data. Uganda Red Cross staff were pretty delighted to see their contributions go right into the map. [inline:Gulu Fire Risk.png]

Become a tutor of the Eurosha volunteers!

Posted by sev_hotosm on Oct, 4 2012

Nicolas and I have been training the 25 Eurosha volunteers who will be split in 4 four teams for being deployed 6 months in Chad, Central African Republic, Burundi and Kenya over the next 6 months, starting within the next 5-10 days. Marion, Gloria, Alexandra, Anna, Iolanda, Adelina, Désiré, Filip, Lenka, Federica, Jorieke, Morgane, Assania, Serge, Aude, Katerina, Claudia, Orsolya, Pascal, Nanhas, Barbara, Lenka (yes, there are 2 Lenka), Janja, Marine and Hannington are enthusiastic volunteers with social sciences, development, humanitarian or geography backgrounds for most of them, coming from Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Chad, Bulgaria, Burundi, France, Hungary, Kenya, Belgium, Slovenia and Central African Republic. [inline:P1200042 1024x768.JPG]

HOT at PICNIC

Posted by harry on Sep, 30 2012

I presented the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team at PICNIC festival in Amsterdam. See the video here: Thanks to the European Journalism Centre for inviting HOT to be there and for organising an interesting session on crowd-sourcing in disaster mapping. There's a further video (interview) with me and more description of the session and the conference on my blog

From Remote Tracing to Field Mapping in Padang

Posted by joseph on Sep, 24 2012

Padang, West Sumatra, has been identified as one of Indonesia's most vulnerable cities; in 2009 an earthquake claimed over 1,100 lives and destroyed or damaged more than 300,000 buildings. Additionally, more powerful earthquakes are predicted for the coming decades with over 300,000 people currently living in the tsunami inundation danger zone. In total over 800,000 people are at risk from earthquake and tsunami activity in Padang. This post details the successful combination of volunteer led remote mapping and training on the ground.

Selamat New HOT Trainers

Posted by Katrina E. on Sep, 11 2012

This week six Indonesians were welcomed to the HOT project. These six university-aged Indonesians will be trained to teach OSM to government officials, teachers and students throughout the country (you can see all of the training material at LearnOSM). Under Va and Kate, three new trainers will be travelling to Kupang (East Nusa Tenggara), Makassar (South Sulawesi), and Manokwari (Papua) to teach the workshops. The other team, under the leadership of Emir and Joseph, will head to Padang (South Sumatra), Surabaya (East Java) and Bandung (West Java).

The OSM Project Senegal: joining Tech Camp Dakar 30-31 August 2012

Posted by nicolas on Aug, 28 2012

I am starting a second short trip (28-August – 2-September) to Dakar where HOT has been invited to be part of the TechCamp organized these 30 and 31 August by the US Embassy to facilitate sessions around OpenStreetMap and mapping. We'd like here to thank the organizers for choosing HOT, our friends and partners from JokkoLabs – a co-working space in Dakar - who recommended HOT to the be part of the Camp, and finally, the Fondation de France and the Association OpenStreetMap France (OSM-FR) for their continued support. All made this second trip to Senegal possible.

Tropical Storm Isaac getting to Haiti

Posted by sev_hotosm on Aug, 23 2012

Came accross this serious hurricane warning today from NOAA, informing that the tropical storm Isaac may hit Haiti severely from the next 24-36 hours. We think it is worthy to take Isaac seriously and so we are starting a local preparation coordinated by Jaakko Helleranta and Brian Wolford who have been living in Haiti for almost two years and have carried out many OSM activities and participated to HOT programs there.

Preventative Mapping in Uganda with the Red Cross

Posted by Katrina E. on Aug, 20 2012

HOT has teamed up with the American and Ugandan Red Cross to virtually map the cities of Gulu and Lira. These two cities have expanded rapidly in the last twenty years and currently do not have up-to-date maps. This becomes an issue for the Red Cross because maps are necessary for better community disaster response. In Northern Uganda, mapping resources are unreliable for finding locations when emergency response, such as for a house fire or traffic accident, is required. Updating these city maps is important for many reasons, especially so that response vehicles can identify the quickest routes for fires or accidents.