Mappers

12Apr

On being a HOT Board Member

After 4 years, today my last day as a Board Member of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. We have annual board elections announced at our Annual General Meeting in a few short hours. During my time on HOT’s Board, I served as a Member-at-Large, Secretary and President. Serving on the HOT board has been challenging and rewarding as the NGO has grown in leaps and bounds. It has been an honour to be part of that journey with fellow board members, members, staff, community allies, donors, and supporters. (Thank you.)

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) applies the principles of open source and open data sharing for humanitarian response and economic development.

Being a Board Member for a small NGO can be a serious commitment. HOT’s Board is transitioning from operations to a strategic board. It is something that every open source community does over time. To support this change, the board, staff and membership have learned much about organizational development, governance and fundraising. This has taken substantial leadership from two Executive Directors (Kate Chapman and Tyler Radford), staff, and many fellow Board Members. Some of the ‘back office support’ that the HOT board provided previously are now staff and community roles. (One example of organizational development, is the Board Primer that I curated.)

Honestly, serving HOT changed my life and I am thankful for all the experiences. And, I am thankful for all the amazing people with whom I met or collaborated.

HOT Activation Sprint

What being on the Board taught me

We all have our goals – personal and career.

Being on the HOT Board taught me to be a better leader. There are so many proud moments as I reflect – watching and supporting leaders, learning about all the amazing projects and advocacy work, and sharing the HOT story in many public forums, like this Datashift article. I helped build and support a growing NGO. HOT truly inspires me, as do the staff, partners and extended community. The skills I learned have helped my career – organizational development, strategic planning, meeting management, co-writing grants, interviewing staff, hiring an Executive Director, communications planning, and planning a strategic board meeting.

Other skills that I learned and/or honed: negotiation skills, coordination, dealing with conflict, managing people, and mentorship. Everyone’s Board Member path is different. If you are considering running for a board and/or joining a Board, I am available to talk.

I remain an active member of HOT, including co-leading our Governance Working Group.

(Photo credit: Jakarta HOT Activation Workshop, ccby by Mhairi O’Hara)

Thank you and keep on inspiring,

9Jan

Data @ IFRC #9: Joy of Data, Data Courses to jumpstart your Brain

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

This week I had a chat with a colleague about our theory of change. To me, success is data skills increased in the organization (outside the IT department) by closing the gap between technical and traditional ‘non-technical’ humanitarian roles. Some of the key skills required to be data ready are not data science related but more about how we share and communicate. Over on the General Assembly blog this piece illuminates that Data Skills can be acquired by those with non-math backgrounds. “Non-math backgrounds bring new perspectives to data analysis.”

Learning Opportunities

Have you made some resolutions to learn new things? There are numerous courses kicking off soon: satellite imagery, mobile literacy curriculum, data analysis and data visualization.

ESRI Massive Open Online Course on Satellite Imagery: “Digital images of earth’s surface produced by remote sensing are the basis of modern mapping. They are also used to create valuable information products across a spectrum of industries. This free online course is for everyone who is interested in applications of earth imagery to increase productivity, save money, protect the environment, and even save lives.”

Mobile Information Curriculum:“The Mobile Information Literacy curriculum is a growing collection of training materials designed to build information literacies for the millions of people worldwide coming online every month via a mobile phone.”


Learn Data Analysis Circuit from General Assembly :“Learn to gather, analyze, and tell stories through data with SQL, Excel, and visualization.”

Data Exploration and Storytelling: Finding Stories in Data with Exploratory Analysis and Visualization: “This course will introduce you to ways to use data as a source to tell stories. We’ll demonstrate techniques and tools to interrogate data for answers – gathering, cleaning, organizing, analyzing, visualizing and publishing data to find and tell stories.” (Hat tip to Jason Norwood-Young. I’m enrolled in this course and welcome IFRC colleagues to join me.)

Community and the Joy of Data

For years, many of us have been working in community engagement. Community data as core to any project’s success. New articles from Civicus “Making Citizen Generated Data Work” and ICRC “Can Citizen Driven Response Improve Humanitarian Action.” Both are excellent works. But, we need to start dropping “citizen” and replace it with “Community” to be more inclusion. Many people live in areas where they are not ‘citizens’. Data is often about ‘power’ and ‘inclusiveness.’

BBC has released their documentary “The Joy of Data” on youtube. In one hour, dive into the “witty and mind-expanding exploration of data, the story of the engineers of the data age, people most of us have never heard of despite the fact they brought about a technological and philosophical revolution.”

Just the tools, please

You are swamped and have no time for a course? The World Bank has you covered:

5 tools for Capturing, manipulating and visualizing data.

Are you designing workshops or leading teams? Our friends over at Fabriders have compiled an extensive list of Session Design tips, including the often overlooked “How Adults Learn.”

Digital security is increasingly a concern. Over at Electronic Frontier Foundation, they have tailored security learning packages for numerous user groups. The closest group to our humanitarians is journalists. How can we be data ready and ensure data protection? This is a high priority of the Movement. Thankfully, there are leaders like Rakesh Bharania taking aim at this literacy gap:

“Humanitarian action is increasingly dependent upon ICT. In the absence of legislation and standards within the community, humanitarian organizations must recognize the Obligation to Protect as it applies to information security, data protection and privacy as an essential part of the humanitarian mission. All humanitarian actors – whether they work for a humanitarian agency, are crowd-sourced volunteers on the Internet, or from the private sector – must be educated on the Obligation to Protect and how all parties must ensure appropriate and secure use of ICT and datasets.”

Read more “Humanitarian Information Security and the Obligation to protect.”

Latest in Humanitarian Data

The Center for Humanitarian Data (an OCHA initiative) is set to open in August 2017. Check out their website for details. They are building tools and processes using open source and open data principals.

16Dec

Data @ IFRC #8: Participatory video evaluation, Maps for Climate Change

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

December is full of data – not enough sleep, all the deadlines and mountains of details. This dispatch of Data @ IFRC will cover examples of new data uses across the Federation, some insights from global events and, of course, some resources/reading.

Participatory Video

Often when we consider ‘data collection’, we tend to focus on math and stats. Data comes in all sizes and shapes. While there is some debate about how to weigh qualitative and quantitative data, we are a humans first organization. My colleague Miki Tsukamoto is piloting a project on Participatory Video for Evaluation in Ndaleta, Tanzania. This project was done in collaboration with the communities, a Participatory Video team and the Tanzania Red Cross Society.

Learn more about this method.

Planning Participatory video @ifrc

(Photo via Miki Tsukamoto, IFRC)

We also have some great practices in community engagement for local voices. As we consider how to share the data journey @ IFRC, it will mean demonstrating impact with stories and data bits. To us, they go hand and hand.

Maps for Climate Change and the SDGs

It was my pleasure to chair a panel at the Open Government Partnership all about Open Mapping. The session focused on how maps could make a difference in cities by illustrating examples from community engagement, mapping business, opensolarmap as well as sharing how mapping electricity could help.

The outcome of this session was to demonstrate that by involving the community in mapping, we can city-build together to achieve our SDG goals but that civil society, organizations, governments and business will need to collaborate.

Open Mapping Leaders at OGP 2016
(photo of Christian Quest, Christina Franken, Miriam Gonzalez, Heather Leson and Davida Wood.)

Thanks to the panelists for a dynamic conversation.

Building Data Literacy Networks

At IFRC, there are many data leaders and data curious. We hosted an informal Data Working group session to talk about what people want to learn/share. We also identified some opportunities and barriers. Often when people talk about ‘data literacy’, they leap to IT or data science. We aim to build inclusive which is why I was delighted to have a wide range of participants from HR, the Library, IT, Health, Emergency Response and my colleagues from Policy, Strategy and Knowledge. Together we determined a roadmap for skillshares and plans to help each other on our data-driven innovation journey.
Data working group session Dec. 5th

(photo via heather)

What is IATI?

IFRC Signed the Grand Bargain agreement. This means that we are researching how we can work with the International Aid Transparency Initiatives Standards. This video is a good starting point to understand the project:

What is Data Protection?

Colleagues at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hosted a Webinar on Data Protection. This was co-hosted by the Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP). They are seeking feedback for revised Data Protection Standards.


“The purpose of the standards, initiated and led by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and involving several humanitarian and human rights NGOs and UN agencies, is not to provide a ‘how-to’ guide for practitioners but, rather, to establish a living body professional standards informed by international law, professional ethics, good practice, and operational reality.”

You can review the webinar here.

Winter Reading

You don’t have to be a data scientist to innovate with data.

This really rings true as I look around at the activities across the Red Cross Red Crescent movement. Small data and data skills are among us. Plus we have many diverse skills that could complement the existing knowledge in house. We will need to be ready for data science, especially in the Information Management roles, but there are other ways to innovation. Colleagues over at UNDP have been doing great work:

“Data innovation is the use of new or non-traditional data sources and methods to gain a more nuanced understanding of development challenges.”

See the report with some tactics to activate your projects.

*****

(Note: Data @ IFRC will take a winter’s nap to catch up on reading. See you in January.)

4Dec

Data @ IFRC #7: Data with IFRC Africa, YouthMappers Nairobi

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

Considering Data literacy journeys with IFRC Africa Region

IFRC Africa Strategy Meeting
Converting data literacy theory to practice needs a large infusion of reality. The more people I meet the more value is added as we plan for data literacy programs at the individual and institutional levels. Last week I joined my IFRC Africa colleagues from the regional office as well as the leaders for various country offices and cluster heads. There are 49 national societies (Red Cross/Red Crescent societies) represented by the IFRC Africa Regional office. Countries in the MENA region are supported by the IFRC Beirut office. We converged in Mount Kenya to dive into the strategic plan and roadmap for the coming year. By the end of the week, the walls were covered with charts, lists, and plans. Distilling some of the immediate and future needs, it was a great opportunity to sanity check my data literacy work plan for the coming year. We focused on how to engage youth while supporting some complex changes across countries and major thematic work such as disaster resilience and health. They inspire me with their hard, complex work accompanied by their earnest efforts to incorporate data literacy into their activities. The upcoming IFRC Data Playbook will be co-created across the regions, clusters, thematic areas by many people. Thankfully, we are building alliances with the data leaders, emerging data savvy and the data curious.

YouthMappers Nairobi

YouthMappers around the world

University of Nairobi YouthMappers

Kenyan Red Cross volunteer Esther Muiruri mentioned that the average age in Kenya is 18. If we are going to be data-driven and engage youth, then it is most fortunate that groups like YouthMappers, Map Kibera and Map Mathare are flourishing. From university students to local community leaders, I had an opportunity to connect with the Nairobi YouthMappers Chapter. There are 3 chapters across Kenya. Already they have supported a number of local and international humanitarians and development programs.

(map source: YouthMappers)

Modeling programs

There are many models for implementing shifts in a workplace. Some organizations host interns and fellowships to bring new areas of knowledge into organizations. To be honest, data use is all around IFRC. While assessing ‘data readiness’, my assumption is that there are a number of existing and emerging data leaders within the Federation. We must host skillshares or even consider internal mentorship programs. It really depends on the connections to curate an ecosystem map or, as humanitarians like to name, 3Ws (who, what, where). Slowly we are collecting data on ourselves.

While there are many frameworks to assess data readiness for countries, there are few for individuals or organization. Like any framework, there is a coldness in them, but it helps to give some focus on the data reality check as well as the socialization and feelings (eg. fear of change) that might be considered. Here is a sample of those competency frameworks:

  • Web Literacy via Mozilla (problem solving, collaboration, creativity and communication),
  • Digital Literacy via the World Economic Forum (digital identity, digital rights, digital literacy, digital communications, digital emotional intelligence, digital security, digital safety, and digital use), and
  • Critical Social Impact Skills (below) Social Impact competencies

    • Competencies for Social Impact:
    Critical Social Impact Skills

    (source: Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 23, 2016)

    There are many skills leading up to being a ‘data journalist’ or a ‘data scientist’. Just like any functioning company or organization, we need both soft and hard skills to make this happen. I am most fascinated with building ways we can add small, medium and large tasks/learning opportunities. This means convening and deputizing advocates as I go.

    The Netherlands Red Cross and colleagues created this diagram of ‘the Humanitarian Data Scientist’. I think it is really the ‘Humanitarian Data Team’ as many of the skills rest in individuals across the organization.

    Humanitarian Data Scientist

    (Credit: Maartin van der Veen, 510, Netherlands Red Cross)

    Evidence-Based Decision-making

    The reason we are focused on data literacy is to get data ready. We aim to improve evidence-based decision-making. In parallel, many colleagues are working on technology solutions to connect all the various data elements by topic and region. Humanitarians are very mindful that people come before data. As danah boyd rightfully pointed out this week, we do need to be sure the machines meet our values with algorithm accountability.

    Short Video (5 minutes): “Transparency ≠ Accountability” (article)

    There is a mailing list for computer scientists driving this agenda: “fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning” (FATML) (click to join)

    (photo credits: Heather Leson, CCby)

11Nov

Data @ IFRC #4: GO Project, Malawi Red Cross

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

Malawi Red Cross MapSwipe 2

Help the Malawi Red Cross

A few clicks and taps could help the Malawi Red Cross with their humanitarian efforts. Games for change in the humanitarian space are growing. The Malawi Red Cross and Netherlands Red Cross have a programme needs your help.
MapSwipe is a gamefied mobile app developed for the Missing Maps Project to enable fast satellite image classification on mobile devices. It is a game that allows anyone to quickly make decisions about which items have roads and/or buildings in the images. These ‘tagged’ images are then sorted to have mappers at Missing Mapathons add the details into OpenStreetMap. Then, the data is used for local programmes like delivering health needs and logistics. The new mission on #MapSwipe for the Malawi Red Cross / Netherlands Red Cross collaboration to raise awareness within vulnerable communities in disaster prone areas of the possible dangers of natural disasters.

GET MAPSWIPE: The easy to use MapSwipe app can be used on android and iphone devices.
ABOUT Missing Maps – Learn more about MapSwipe and Missing Maps on Facebook.

Go with Data

This week we are sprinting on the GO Project – this is a humanitarian emergency data project to support responders in the Federation. IFRC aims to be a data-driven organization based on evidence based decisions. We provide current IFRC datasets, Red Cross Red Crescent datasets, links to other humanitarian resources and data learning materials. The team is envisioning the next steps to get from prototype to implementation. All the code is online.

GO Team sprinting

Teach Around the Data

Clearly expecting people to simply become data ready or a data scientist is unrealistic. So, while we build tools, training and programmes it is key to focus on the ecosystem around data literacy. From
Emmanuel Letouzé, Director and co-Founder, Data-Pop Alliance; Visiting Scholar, MIT Media Lab:

“I am arguing that the current focus on data literacy is an opportunity, reflecting back on the nature and role of literacy in history, to promote and foster a consequentialist, broader and thicker, conceptualization of data literacy as literacy in the age of data, one that will allow citizens and societies to challenge current power structures and dynamics to meet their goals, and perhaps the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Alright, so we build!

Building community around data training

Atlassian site
One of the items that I am keen to build is a Data playbook to serve the diverse communities within the IFRC and National Societies. The existing leaders are creating materials and we are connecting on how to share widely.

A playbook is a document and/or website that is an editable place with recipes, best practices, and technology. There are many styles and methods to build this type of project. Atlassian just launched a new Playbook which truly rocks with easy to use methods to build digital teams. It is inspiring to consider how we can create data literacy guides like this. (source:”Did Atlassian just crack the code on digital teamwork“.)

28Oct

Data @ IFRC #2: YouthMappers and Typhoon Haima

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

How can we support these existing efforts of data leaders? From youth in Bangladesh to partnerships between humanitarians, researchers and governments, here are some examples of Federation bright spots on our journey to be more data-driven.

Bangladesh Red Crescent and YouthMappers

Students at Dhaka College set up a chapter of YouthMappers. They’ve partnered with the Bangladesh Red Crescent for training and support. The YouthMappers mandate is to not just build maps, but foster a mapping community of leaders.

Sawan Shariar:
“I am a volunteer of Bangladesh Red Crescent Society. And now I am working as Youth Chief of Red Crescent Youth, Dhaka College Unit (RCY,DCU). After successfully completed the Training for Training: OpenStreetMap I realize that, this training will be very useful for the volunteers of RCY, DCU. So I tried to understand my teachers and principal, how it’s effective and importance.”

Read more about their work here.

Data for Typhoon Haima (Philippines)

Typhoon Haima Modeling

The Netherlands Red Cross data team prepared map and data products to assist in the Typhoon Haima response in the Philippines. They shared all the items on the Humanitarian Data Exchange. The team partnered with researchers combining government data and machine learning to assist with damage assessment prediction.

See the data and more details on the Humanitarian Data Exchange:
Typhoon Haima

Free Data learning

This week in data learning has a few recommendations:

First off, Until October 30, 2016, Linked In has many courses online for free. I’ll be taking some of the WordPress ones. There is a 1 hour course on Data Visualization (Click here) and a 2 hour course on Data Viz with Excel (click here).

The Tableau conference on November 7 – 11 is being livestreamed. There are some free hands on courses and demos. Sign up here.

Reading

Given that philanthropy supports the heart of what we do, learning more about the over $300 Billion economy (just in the USA alone) seems like a major priority. A recent publication Philanthropy in Democratic Societies is shining a light and ask for critical thinking around the function and role of these big organizations. Happy reading!

Why does Data Literacy Matter

“In the next economy, the most important skills may be difficult to quantify or commodify—but optimizing for human welfare demands that the people driving the innovation economy take them seriously.”

http://www.knightfoundation.org/articles/social-good-in-the-sharing-economy-summit-explores-the-values-of-our-tech-future

21Oct

Data @ IFRC #1: Hurricane Matthew, Small Data, 5 minutes to learn

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

Co-creating spaces and networks to get people involved with technology has always been my passion. At the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent, I am contributing to a movement-wide initiative to build a data-driven organization making evidence-based decisions. The role is leading Data Literacy Programs. For years, I’ve been building data learning and use into communities, software projects, NGOS and research institutes. Now, I have an opportunity to support a vibrant network. Join me on this journey as I write as we go. This is a prototype newsletter to serve the community. Feedback welcome.

Mapping with the American Red Cross

Around the world, mappers continue to add details to support efforts in Haiti in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. You can see real time edits by clicking this. Also see the overall edit statistics here is a link of global changesets. Some of the projects are being lead by the team at American Red Cross (you can see the progress on the HOTOSM Task Manager (Task Manager – a way for people to divide up the work.)

Number of OSM Contributors: 2,145
Number of Map Changes: 2,734,621
Total number of Changesets: 31,722

Mapping Haiti

More or Less 5 minutes to learn

1. How to build multi-line data viz from Infogr.am (3 minute video)

2. What is Data Science?
Everyone keeps changing the definition. Over at Data Science Central, they’ve aggregated a list of articles to help you wrap your head around it.

15 hours, more or less, to learn

Free: ESRI is hosting a MOOC “Going Places with GeoSpatial Analysis”

Free: Data Visualization: Principles and Practices

XKCD:Self-Description

Pie Charts Explained by XKCD
(Source: XKCD)

Big Ideas

How do we become data literate organizations? Well, over in the social media marketing world, Ryan Holmes is sharing tactics to help organizations become more digital literate. How can we build small interventions and big impacts within our organizations.
“The problem — this digital skills gap — was deeper and more pervasive than I realized.” – Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite.

What about small data?

With all this talk about big data, I have been waiting for more praise for small data. There is data nutrition (re:insights) in all types of data. Hamad Haddadi, former colleague, shared a book from some of the Small Data Lab folks: Small Data: tiny clues that uncover huge trends. (Added it to my reading list.)

Measurement

“How to measure” and “what to measure” seems to be constant debate. The Social Progress Imperative launched their SDG( Sustainable Development Goals) measurement report card. Can we or should we use this methodology or a hybrid for NGO programs? And, should we even be measuring unlike things? A recent ICTWorks article shares some thoughts on the value of ranking systems:

“I have a proposal – it’s modest and unsolicited: stop funding rankings. Start, instead, funding internal capacity building workshops – invite experts, practitioners, and providers (whose time you pay for) to start from the issues and your context, and build practical, ethical, user-centered approaches from the ground up.” – Sean Martin MacDonald

Audio Book

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality – Cathy O’Neil

I’ve been listening to this audio book for a few weeks. When we think about barriers for using data in humanitarian response, it is always good to know what the machines are up to and some of the ethical questions to consider.

Help wanted

What kind of content would you like to see in my Data reports? Do you have links to share? Send it all my way – heatherleson at gmail dot com.

18Aug

Co-creating and Celebrating Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

Maps connect us and tell stories. On Thursday, September 22, 2016, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team will convene for our 2nd annual HOT Summit in Brussels on the eve of the State of the Map conference. Both events celebrate OpenStreetMap and the community.

HOT Summit Logo

Top 5 Reasons to be at the HOT Summit

1. Leaders will share their map stories from around the globe

Check out the amazing programme of speakers from Indonesia, Canada, US, Tanzania and more.
HOT activation traininng in Jakarta

(Photo by Mhairi O’hara at the HOT Activation Workshop, Jakarta 2015)

2. Meet and build HOT and OSM together

The map is bigger than one individual. It is a community, a network of networks.

Bill Gates on OSM in Nepal Response May 5, 2015

3. Provide input into HOT’s future strategic planning

We are 6 year’s young and so much to do. Give us advice, take a task, share your experience, express your opinion. We will have many conversations and coffee conversations about the future of HOT. Help us co-create this strategy.

Road by BraveBros. from the Noun Project noun_106568_cc

(Image credit- Road by BraveBros. from the Noun Project)

4. Learn new skills from peers

The talent in this community to teach each other is amazing. Having an in person space to learn, ask questions, grab a side table to map makes the HOT Summit a space for everyone. Just ask. I am sure that we will find someone who can answer your questions or even learn a thing or two from you!

Mapping Nepal (photo by Gopinath Parayil))

(Photo for the Nepal Earthquake response by Gopinath Parayil)

5. Have fun mapping for change with your new friends

A few of the HOT community attended the World Humanitarian Summit. Many of us had not met before in person. Times of laughter and solidarity make all the difference.
HOT at WHS 2016

(photo for WHS 2016 using Heather’s phone)

Why join us?

How can we get to the next million participants creating the largest open map? How can improve everyone’s experience from novice to advanced? What are some of the project highlights from around the world?

Achieving our mission to help humanitarians and economic development with OpenStreetMap means widening the circle. Sure, we will talk fine details about mapping, but there is space for everyone to explore and contribute. Even if you are not a ‘mapper’, but are curious about open source and open mapping, then join us. We aim to improve the map and grow the global community. Over the past months, our team has been demonstrating how HOT can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and help humanitarians with Missing Maps. This action packed day has tickets available for 66.24Euro. (Register today!)

15Jul

You can MapSwipe!

Every day we use our phones. We tap, we read, we photograph, we chat, we view, and we connect. But wait! What if your ‘tapping’ time could help a humanitarian? Queue MapSwipe.

mapswipe_lockup_whiteblue larger

Your quick tapping decisions about images could save mappers time and help the most vulnerable. Satellite imagery for project regions are added to MapSwipe. Then, we give you project tasks focused on looking for key items. For example some projects will look for houses, if you see a house in a tile, you tap once for yes (tile turns green), if you are unsure you tap twice (tile turns yellow) or if the tile is flawed (blurry), then you tap three times (tile turns red). Multiple people look at the tiles so that we can crowdsource to higher accuracy. Once the project is completed, we share the curated data with mappers who will review and map the data on OpenStreetMap. All of this is to help humanitarians have the best map possible.

MapSwipe main project screen “In a humanitarian crisis, the location of the most vulnerable people is fundamental information for delivering food, shelter, medical care and other services where they are most needed. And, although it may be hard to believe, millions people around the world are not represented on any accessible map.” (Pete Masters, Missing Maps Coordinator, MSF, July 14, 2016)

MapSwipe is available today on the Google Play and Itunes stores. Download and MapSwipe Today!

MapSwipe is a Missing Maps project aimed to proactively map the places in the world where the most vulnerable people live before a crisis happens. Missing Maps is a partnership between Medecins sans Frontieres, American Red Cross, British Red Cross, Netherlands Red Cross, CartoONG, and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

Please share MapSwipe widely with your friends and family. And, do let us know how we can improve. Help bit counts!

About MapSwipe Team and Project

MapSwipe was funded by MSF UK for the Missing Maps Project. Currently, all projects are for Missing Maps partners, but this might change in time. The tool was developed by an amazing team. Congratulations Ivan, Pim, Sadok, Alison, Pete, Astrid and Bennie. You all inspire me. (Note: My contribution of advisor was on my personal time as a proud Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board Member. )

Imagery is provided by Bing (Thanks Microsoft!).

Thanks for Mapswipebe a mobile volunteer with mapswipe

12Jul

Data Driven Summer Schools

Summer is here in the northern hemisphere. My office is a ghost town with people on annual leave. Living in the Middle East means that I consider summer a time for major learning endeavors. Fortunately, many universities also see this opportunity.

The 2016 Big Data Peace and Justice Summer School has a great lineup of data leaders. Their aim is to connect researchers and practioners on how the data revolution is infusing peace and justice work. The application deadline is July 15th, 2016. The Peace Informatics Lab invites people to join for the Summer School on August 15 – 9, 2016. (Register here)

In a few weeks, I am off to teach at the ESA Earth Observation Summer School. I am excited about the topics and potential to co-create with students, fellow teachers and ESA leaders. (applications for this are closed)

Earth Observation summer school

What are you learning this summer? Taking any courses? Reading any ground-breaking books in your respective field?

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