When there is a disaster the earth often moves, or buildings are swept away, or roads become impassible. It is helpful for rescuers and victims to know about these changes. A lot of these changes can be seen by up-to-date aerial or satellite imagery. But what is most helpful for people on the ground is a map that they can load onto their phone or GPS that can route them to different areas and tell them about the conditions there. This is where the
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team comes in.
HOT is made up of volunteers all over the world who update the OpenStreetMap database when disaster strikes. They receive aerial, satellite or even drone images and put them up on their website. They have a
Task Manager that keeps track of what areas have been updated. It also allows more experienced mappers to check the work of other volunteers.
The concept was proven after the earthquake in Haiti many years ago. There were very scarce maps of Haiti available anywhere. But after the earthquake hit most of the country was mapped in twenty-four hours.
Right now there are hundreds of disaster mapping projects on HOT. But they just opened a task for
Buncombe County in North Carolina. Volunteering is easy. If you can draw a rectangle or a line on your computer screen you can
volunteer with HOT.
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