OpenStreetMap (OSM)

See the following -

Hack To Help The Philippines

Billy Mitchell | InTheCapital | November 15, 2013

The Philippines can take any help it can get right now, totally devastated last weekend by the typhoon that struck the island nation off the coast of Vietnam in the Pacific. While your immediate inclination may be to donate cash and be done with it – and no, this is not telling you not to donate – there are many other routes through which you can help the relief efforts. Saturday in D.C., one group will join together to help through hacking. Read More »

2015 Was a Good Year for Creating the World's 'Missing Maps' with OpenStreetMap

The Missing Maps project, which launched in 2014, aims to literally and figuratively put more than 20-million at-risk people on the map using OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a platform. We need to fill in "missing maps" before the next disaster strikes, ensuring the maps have detail sufficient for emergency responders to hit the ground running. OpenStreetMap is an open and free source of geographic data. Anyone with a username can add, edit, or update data, so the Missing Maps project is community driven and focuses on local knowledge. Remote volunteers around the world use satellite imagery to trace features, such as roads and buildings. Community members and volunteers in the area then use the base map to add local data to these shapes, including street names, addresses, building types, and points of interest. As we look back at 2015, here are a few success stories from the Missing Maps project...

An Open Source Mapping Primer

As you've surfed the web, you've surely come across many sites using embedded maps to display data. Humans are visual creatures, so presenting temperatures, crime statistics, or population densities on a map often makes quickly discerning patterns and spatial relationships easier than presenting the same facts as a boring table. Visualizations based on maps can be quite sophisticated and even show patterns across time as well as space; Maps Mania is one blog showcasing many great examples of online maps. But displaying data on an embedded map doesn't need to be a complicated affair. You can do it using open source tools. In this post, I offer some tips for getting started doing this...

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Citizen Cartographers Fill The Gaps In Maps

Hal Hodson | New Scientist | July 5, 2013

...[M]aps are a vital resource, especially when deciding what infrastructure to build or in the event of a humanitarian crisis. Now teams of mappers are working to chart some of the most obscure corners of the developing world using OpenStreetMap (OSM), the citizen-mapping tool that today has over 1 million registered users.

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Commence - Mapping Financial Services Training

Mhairi O'Hara | Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team | January 11, 2016

The Mapping Financial Inclusion in Uganda project is truly underway as we enter our second week of training in Mbale, Uganda. HOT is currently at the Uganda Christian University (UCU) introducing 30 local students to various open source tools with the assistance of students from Makerere University. There will be two days of training before we head out into the field on Wednesday to start mapping the district of Mbale.

In collaboration with the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) agency, HOT held a three day training course last week with 14 students from the Makerere University in Kampala covering several topics including OpenStreetMap (OSM), JOSM, OpenMapKit (OMK), OSMTracker and Field Papers...

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Crowdsource Mapping Helps Recovery Efforts In Philippines

Staff Writer | Here & Now | November 15, 2013

The United Nations says 11 million people are affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which hammered the islands a week ago today. The death toll is now more than 3,000, and the survivors are still struggling to get the food and water they so desperately need. Read More »

Data Innovation, Crowdsourcing On The Horizon For Innovation Fellows Program

Shefali Kapadia | Federal News Radio | April 3, 2014

After the first two rounds of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program showed marked success, the White House announced applications are open for Round 3 of the program.  "We are accepting applications right now through April 7," said Jennifer Pahlka, deputy chief technology officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and one of the executives that runs the PIF program.

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From Open Source Mapping To Improving Your Car's GPS: The Future Of 3D Navigation

Ginny Skalski | opensource.com | October 22, 2013

Having a built-in navigation system in your new car is pretty commonplace [...]. These days many new car owners can just type in the address of where they want to go in to their in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system and a 2D map will pop up with some simple graphics showing them how to get there, or possibly a 3D map if you have a luxury vehicle... Read More »

Google Maps’ Open-Source Rival Gets Huge Boost As Telenav Buys OpenStreetMap Leader Skobbler

David Meyer | GigaOM | January 31, 2014

The Berlin startup scene also has another big exit to be proud of, with the deal carrying a value of just under $24 million. Read More »

How AI, Twitter And Digital Volunteers Are Transforming Humanitarian Disaster Response

Katie Collins | Wired | September 30, 2013

On 24 September a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck south-west Pakistan, killing at least 300 people. The following day Patrick Meier at the [QCRI] received a call from the UN [OCHA] asking him to help deal with the digital fallout -- the thousands of tweets, photos and videos that were being posted on the web containing potentially valuable information about the disaster. Read More »

How Online Mapmakers are Helping the Red Cross Save Lives in the Philippines

Robinson Meyer | The Atlantc | November 12, 2013

It will be months before we know the true damage brought about by super typhoon Haiyan. The largest death tolls now associated with the storm are only estimates. Aid workers from across the world are now flying to the island nation, or they just recently arrived there. Read More »

How Open Data and Open Tools Can Save Lives During a Disaster

If you've lived through a major, natural disaster, you know that during the first few days you'll probably have to rely on a mental map, instead of using a smartphone as an extension of your brain. Where's the closest hospital with disaster care? What about shelters? Gas stations? And how many soft story buildings-with their propensity to collapse-will you have to zig-zag around to get there? Trying to answer these questions after moving back to earthquake-prone San Francisco is why I started the Resiliency Maps project. The idea is to store information about assets, resources, and hazards in a given geographical area in a map that you can download and print out.

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In Sochi, Open Source Maps Beat Google's

Robinson Meyer | The Atlantic | February 19, 2014

[...] OpenStreetMap, a free-to-edit and free-to-use world map often compared with Wikipedia, received a similar—though less validated—commendation last week, when the reporter Greg Miller at Wired found that its maps exceeded Google’s at describing Sochi, the home of the 2014 winter Olympics. Read More »

Knight Prototype Fund: When Storytelling Meets Civic Action

Desiree Everts | Idea Lab | July 17, 2014

Sixteen winners of the Knight Prototype Fund are set to receive $35,000 to help bring their ideas even closer to fruition. The Knight Foundation on Wednesday announced the most recent winners of its fund, which looks to support early-stage media ideas in an effort to push them closer to a formal launch...

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MAPS.ME, The Award-Winning Offline Map And Navigation App, Now Available At No Charge On Major Mobile Platforms

Press Release | Mail.Ru Group, MAPS.ME, My.com | December 3, 2014

Critically Acclaimed Navigation Tool Provides Fast, Detailed and Fully Offline Mobile Maps; Also Announces Plans to Go Open-Source in 2015...

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