Crisis Mapping

Who: Crisis Mapping Project

When: December 2014 and June 2015

Where: Brisbane

Website: http://netengine.com.au/projects/crisis-mapping/

Vast swathes of the planet’s land-masses aren’t mapped, mainly because the majority of mapping applications are powered by commercial sponsorships and advertising - which just aren’t present in most areas of the developing world. At the Brisbane Summer Hackathon in 2014 and Winter Hackathon in 2015, RHoKers contributed directly to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Missing Maps Project. The main goal of this project is to map the most vulnerable places in the world, to enable international and local NGOs as well as individuals to use maps and data to better respond to crisis affecting the areas. 

In the Summer 2014 Hack, we focused on mapping remote communities in West Africa, until, in response to an urgent request from the Red Cross for assistance, we diverted our focus to mapping the coastal communities in the Philippines in anticipation of Typhoon Hagupit making landfall. Our Brisbane hackers contributed to the fact that less than 50 lives were lost in this Typhoon. At the Winter 2015 Hack, the  team went one further and worked on improving the open source software behind the mapping itself. Their efforts were approved and to be incorporated in the software in the U.S.