Missing Maps – Transcription

Hello. All right, we’re going to get started here with our next session. I know everyone wants to talk and socialize and catch up. Hey, Ross, how are you doing, buddy? Let’s catch up. I’m not going to catch up right now. So we’re going to try to get back on time. Feel free to bring your coffee in. Our first speaker I’m very happy to introduce Rachel Levine from the American Red Cross. And also, missing maps, right? So Rachel is going to talk about missing maps and American Red Cross and give us all an update. So please welcome Rachel. Thank you. [ Applause ] Can everybody hear? Perfect. Hi, my name is Rachel Levine. I am the operations and training coordinator for the GIS team at the American Red Cross. I’m working with the missing mappers. How many are familiar with the missing maps project? Probably everyone, right? So it originally formed in 2014. It was originally a partnership between the American Red Cross, British Red Cross, doctors without borders and the humanitarian OpenStreetMap team. We were to strategically map the world’s vulnerable communities. And as we know, hosting events to trace in OpenStreetMap and use the data for humanitarian purposes has been a concept for a while now. For example, this was take an the American Red Cross headquarters about two years before the partnership was formed. But back then we were all doing this on our own. So what we realized in 2014 is that doing this together really creates magic. It lets us amplify each other’s voices, share our resources and piggyback on each other’s work. And doing this, we’re able to reach millions. How do we organize? Missing maps is a threestep process. First, volunteers trace satellite imagery in OpenStreetMap to what we consider the black and white phase of the map. While you can do this on your own, people often gather together to do this, mapathons, maptenoons, anything with a map pun. And then local color gets added to the map. This is when people with local knowledge add to the map. Step three is the action step. This is when we use the data we produce in our work. So during our first year we focused on working out the kinks of running a mapathon and partnership framework and focused on small scale projects. In year two, focused on projects and partnerships and hit some of the first big goals. One of the biggest accomplishments in step two was the Africa mapping project. We visited about 7,000 communities in a 15-kilometer buffer zone. And to make this happen we developed possum, the portable server that lets us run a complete mapping package without a connection to the Internet. We hit our first goal of mapping 200 million people ahead of schedule. So we’re about to have our third birthday. Thanks for being here with us. And ever since that first year we’ve really grown at astronomical rates, which has let us introduce tens of thousands to OpenStreetMap. We’re 15 global NGOs with partners like Facebook and the World bank. Most recently the Canadian Red Cross and the IFRC joins us this summer. In the third year, mapathons are picking up at a crazy rate. At this time last year we worked with about 12,000 volunteer mappers and we have now worked with about 40,000 mappers. So adding almost 30,000 new mappers to the system in a year isn’t easy, but what we have been able to accomplish is truly amazing. And while missing maps looks to preventively map vulnerable communities, this network of volunteers is trained and ready to assist when we need maps made for the response work. Having this group at the ready allows us to assist with the activations. We have had thousands of people who are able to help out with the Puerto Rico mapping, for example, and we think we’ll be done with the building footprint this weekend. Which is really amazing. And a lot of these volunteers are comings to us through their jobs. So we have really made some great moves with our corporate social responsibility in that world. So we can now be found at Microsoft, Accenture, JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, Cisco, others. And a big thank you to the OSM community to give a safeish space to allow the mappers to develop their skills and map in the system. At a time like this, being able to rely on the community has been incredibly beneficial. And you never know where the volunteers are going to take their skills or spread the OSM gospel. I want to highlight one of our biggest achievements of the year. And through organized tracing events we have a truly amazing feat to assist with malaria. It is preventable, and without transmission, it will cease to exist. HOT has been asked to identify and map places in the most susceptible parts of the world. Since late 2016, almost 6,000 mappers have added 4.7 million buildings to OSM used by numerous organizations around the world to directly plan their activities, including planning indoor spraying campaigns. That campaign makes up about 30% added to the map through the missing maps framework. We have expanded our tools this year. We have expanded the tools under the missing maps umbrella this year. Year one, we developed open map kit, year two, possum. This year we’re really focusing on the OpenDroneMap embedded within Possum. We completed a mission documenting the Reds Cross shelters in the Philippines and hope to do more soon in rapidly urbanizing communities in Haiti. In year three, we have worked to increase functionality which lowers the barrier to entry to using the tools. For tool like possum, documentation that focuses on easy setup and troubleshooting. And because of this, possums are being used outside of the humanitarian context and you can find them being used increasingly more by researchers and academia. Our validation tools are a really great example of the transferable resource to a wider OSM community. You can find these on the missing maps Website. And we’re more and more often hosting validationonly events in communities. So by increasing the usability of our tools we have been able to introduce OSM to more humanitarian partners outside of the mapping community and directly scale up our mapping keeping the initiatives locally based. To prepare for a measles vaccination campaign in Malawi, we added to the map. And because they need to meet 95% for herd immune to work, we partnered with the government to assist in the vaccination campaign to vaccinate 8 million children in a week. And we worked to look at settlement patterns to better focus the campaign and ongoing work in the area. Overall, we have added 15.5 million buildings to OSM in just three short years and our average mapathon, a new mapper is mapping between 30 and 40 buildings an hour. But when they’re a bit more familiar with some of the concepts behind it, they’re mapping about a hundred buildings per hour. Which brings me to the next slide. We are slowly being found in the education setting and starting younger. On the left, an example from a Belgium geography textbook that mentions missing maps. And then in London. That’s geography royalty. John Snow’s descendent. The John Snow, the cool one. So we’re really making strides in the education sector as well. And mapping at a local scale adds up. And we’re excited to announce the creation of our micro sites pages. These are country pages on the missing maps Website. They’re highlight current projects, number of people who have mapped in the country and top hashtags. So these will update weekly and give mappers a comprehensive look at the scope of our work in that country. Each page will be contact information for local mapping groups. And we’re just starting to roll these out. So if you would like to help shape this resource or be listed as a contact for a country, let us know and help us shape the resource. So in just three short years we have had to stop counting how many public mapathons we have had. We lost count at a thousand. We have hosted in 60 different countries and put about 60 million people on the map. We have tens of thousands of slices of pizza and GEO Week 2017 hasn’t even happened yet. So this year is shaping up to be one of our biggest years for GEO Week. We are hoping to have 200 events in a week. Last year we had 140 in 60 countries. Help us reach that 200 goal by participating this year. So our original goal was to put 20 million people on the map. And we actually already reached that goal. So our new goal is 200 million by 2021, our fifth birthday. So in summary, we know our own communities best. We know what makes us happy. And what makes us feel vulnerable. And what we’re trying to do with the project is expand the group of people who get to join us in deciding how their communities are represented to the world. So when we combine our efforts, we can accomplish anything. And I can’t wait to see where the next three years takes us. We’re taking a picture. [ Laughter ] There we go. So map today. And also, join OSMF, Dale is somewhere talk to them. Maybe you have heard that today. But you should really do it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. [ Applause ] Thank you, Rachel. That was a great presentation. Missing maps is awesome. We do mapathons at DigitalGlobe and pull up the missing maps leader board which is free and open to use if you have the right hashtag. If you haven’t participated in missing maps, do that right now. Everyone is connected and typing away at something. So any questions for Rachel? I think we have two mics. We’ll go here and then over here. AUDIENCE: hello. Can you go back to the second slide? Second slide. Sure. More questions like this, please. AUDIENCE: Second slide. Yeah, one, yeah, two, yeah, three. Got it. If but become involved and go to a mapathons, how do we get to a mapathon. How do they get the map done in year one? AUDIENCE: Yeah. That is the question. Oh, step one. So in step one our volunteers trace satellite imagery in OpenStreetMap and we use the tasking manager that hot manages to make sure we don’t overlap our work. We have had I think 3,000 tasks in the tasking manager to make sure we don’t overlap. Yeah. And we’re going take some pictures. AUDIENCE: You talked about feeling like you had a safeish environment to do the work. Can you talk about what you mean by that and how it can be made safer? I think we have a lot of new mappers coming into the system. And giving them a place where they can get feedback quickly and feedback in a constructive way has been something that we’re working on. You know, the talk channels and whatnot have not always been the most welcoming of places. So what we’re trying to do is create spaces where new mappers can ask intro questions. Might be, that’s silly, why are you asking that? Those kinds of spaces are really what we’re trying to produce with the missing maps project. AUDIENCE: I was wondering if you could talk about how you managed to get volunteers or recruits for mapathons? What do you do? We definitely do outreach. But people come to us. It’s growing like wildfire. Maybe that’s an inappropriate topic right now. People come to us. We’re at college campuses, Red Cross chapters and in people’s offices. I will go to a corporate event and do a talk and this is a great way to volunteer. And a parent says, can I do this for their high school volunteer credits? I have a couple questions, can I just run this with them? Yes, and I’ll sign the form. People are coming us to and bringing missing maps into other aspects of their life. AUDIENCE: Hi. I want to see if you could tell us a little more about your on the ground strategy for community volunteers in step two? How do you get people I imagine there’s places where a lot of people are mapping using satellite imagery from home, but how do you get people in local communities to participate? Sure. Red Cross is one of about 190 national societies, and everything on the ground is with another national society. We go in as an invited partner to teach the tools. But the communities know the communities best. They’re the ones leading the campaign with what they should be documenting. We have suggestions. But with every new project, we have suggestions we have never heard you have that we help work out. We have a very unique framework with the Red Cross because we are the world’s largest volunteer organization. So we can tap into that working at the community level. So we’re going to do one more for Rachel. These questions are great. AUDIENCE: I’m from Montana and saw a meetup in our area that used all of your stuff, they didn’t know OSM, they didn’t know anything, they were GIS people. But you guys package it wonderfully and made it easy to do. It was a public meetup. At the library in their computer room. And we had people from the community that didn’t know what they were doing and had it up. So awesome job. Thank you. Wasn’t a question, but I’ll take it. So we actually have a table in the back if you want to come wave if you want to come and ask questions. We have stickers and pens you can take back to your community. If you want to host an event for GEO Week, we will send you swag. Please stop by and sign up. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. [ Applause ]