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New Contributors and Nepal Earthquake

Byron North
Saturday, 11:10am – 20 min
David Parr
MSU Denver

The April 2015 earthquake in Nepal saw an unprecedented response in new volunteer map data contributors from around the world. The new contributors raised questions on their data quality, including positional and attribute accuracy. In a disaster relief situation, having quality spatial data is critical to the mission of saving lives.

This talk examines the impacts of new contributors versus existing contributors, the issues and response of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) to the Nepal Earthquake, the concerns regarding the new contributors, and the response of HOT to addressing the desire to keep an open, volunteer-driven platform and the need to ensure data quality.