{"id":1081,"date":"2015-05-18T22:43:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T22:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2023-05-07T04:10:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T04:10:52","slug":"gis-in-action-crowd-sourced-mapping-of-earthquake-impacts-in-nepal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/gis-in-action-crowd-sourced-mapping-of-earthquake-impacts-in-nepal\/","title":{"rendered":"GIS in Action – Crowd Sourced Mapping of Earthquake Impacts in Nepal"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post looks at how GIS is being used in a crowd sourcing way to respond to humanitarian needs around the world.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Recent event in Nepal have been eerily familiar – many of will know what it’s like living in the shadow of aftershocks and the long road ahead. \u00a0There are lots of ways we can help, like contributing money or donating supplies. \u00a0Those with a geospatial bent now have another way to contribute to work on the ground, and not just in Nepal, but in many other places and on a variety of different projects, but specifically with helping to build up accurate maps of places affected by some sort of problem. \u00a0This is crowd sourcing<\/a> at its geospatial \u00a0finest, methinks.<\/p>\n

Let’s start by looking at Humanitarian Open Street Map <\/a>and their\u00a0OSM Tasking Manger<\/a>\u00a0in particular.\u00a0 This website is allied with Open Street Map<\/a> (OSM), a crowd sourced mapping tool along the lines of Google Maps but more like Wikipedia in that anyone can contribute. \u00a0I’ll have more to say about OSM in another post, but for now, let’s have a look at the Tasking Manager:<\/p>\n

\"HOTOSM\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a number of projects listed here, all related to Nepal. \u00a0Each can be clicked on, leading you to a gateway of a\u00a0requested task. \u00a0Organisations (the Nepalese government and NGOs in this case) put requests in for mapping tasks needed and anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection can help. \u00a0Here’s the page for the first one\u00a0shown above<\/p>\n

\"FirstProject\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the map we’re taken to the project area which has been broken up into quadrants, and a common mapping task for each. \u00a0Status is indicated by the colour of the square. \u00a0Clicking on the “Instructions” button takes you to this page:<\/p>\n

\"Instructions\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This pages gives us some background on what’s needed. \u00a0At top left, the “Entities to Map” tells us that they’re needing “roads, buildings, settlements, waterways” to be mapped. \u00a0Further down, under “TAGGING GUIDE” we’re told that they’d like us to “Trace all roads. Often in the mountains, only paths exist. Trace these paths and assure to connect them to the road network”. \u00a0Later on we’ll see that we can do this on top of a recent satellite image. \u00a0So for this task we’re helping to map the roading infrastructure as part of the response. \u00a0Whatever data we add are then available to the Nepalese government for their own mapping and analysis. \u00a0Neat, eh? \u00a0Let’s go to the “Contribute” page and see how it works.<\/p>\n

\"Contribute\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We’re just about ready to start mapping. \u00a0We could click the “Take a task at random” button to be taken to one of the unattended to squares. \u00a0Alternatively, we can pick one based on the legend at lower left:<\/p>\n

\"Legend\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From this we can see that 4 areas are currently being worked on. \u00a0The grey ones haven’t been worked on yet. \u00a0Any labelled as Done have been mapped by someone but not checked for accuracy by someone higher up the food chain. \u00a0Those that have been Validated have been mapped and checked and are now part of the global Open Street Map database. \u00a0Let’s have a look at a random task:<\/p>\n

\"RandomTask\"<\/a>We’ve zoomed in to one of the unvalidated squares and are just about start mapping. \u00a0To take part I’ll first need to log in to Open Street Map and then I’ll click “Start Mapping”:<\/p>\n

\"Mapping\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Above, the drop-down menu for “Edit with” is shown. \u00a0We’re going to be looking at a satellite image and using some built in tools to create lines on any roads that we see. \u00a0I’ll click the iD editor and let’s see how it looks.<\/p>\n

\"Editing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A new tab has opened and\u00a0we can now see a satellite image as a backdrop plus some editing tools. \u00a0We can see familiar GISy things like Points, Lines and Areas. \u00a0We can also see that someone’s already been doing some work on this area. \u00a0If you look at one of the earlier images you’ll see there’s some information on who’s done that work and when. \u00a0If we want to contribute, we would scan around this image and either adding new data on roads, tracks and paths if they haven’t been digitised in yet, or making corrections where appropriate. \u00a0When we’re finished, we can move back to the original tab and click Unlock or Save. \u00a0This saves what changes I’ve made and will alert someone at HOT that this areas needs to be reviewed. \u00a0Again, once this area has been validated, it’s labelled as Done and we’ve helped in some small way with the response to their earthquakes. \u00a0All from the comfort of our own desktop. \u00a0Back at the main HOTOSM<\/a> page you can have a look through all the different projects and levels of completion. \u00a0They range quite widely, from disasters to wildlife mapping, to social impacts. \u00a0A good chance to put your geospatial skills to good work.<\/p>\n

Another example of this is Tomnod.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Tomnod\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This based on the same idea of citizen mappers. \u00a0As with HOTOSM, you’re able to map features based on satellite imagery. \u00a0As you can see above, they’re focused on damaged buildings, major destruction, damaged roads\/bridges and the presence of tents\/shelters. \u00a0Clicking on “Start searching” takes you here:<\/p>\n

\"TomNodSearching\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One difference with Tomnod is that you make use of pre- and post-event images so you can assess what’s been damaged or where tents or shelters have been established. \u00a0There is a similar type of online editor that allows you to digitise and tag what you see on the map.<\/p>\n

There are more sites of this kind out there, built on the idea that we can visually interpret what’s on satellite imagery as a contribution to the earthquake response. \u00a0We’ve probably all heard the stories of remote areas that have yet to be reached by search and rescue. \u00a0Here we can directly help with that, with the satellite images taking us easily to those difficult to reach places – we can be the eyes in the sky to help let the people on the ground know what’s happening.<\/p>\n

C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post looks at how GIS is being used in a crowd sourcing way to respond to humanitarian needs around the world.\u00a0 Recent event in Nepal have been eerily familiar – many of will know what it’s like living in the shadow of aftershocks and the long road ahead. \u00a0There are lots of ways we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4153,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions\/4153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}