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Tacloban City, on OpenStreetMap
Tacloban City, on OpenStreetMap, after the typhoon hit. Photograph: /OpenStreetMap Photograph: OpenStreetMap
Tacloban City, on OpenStreetMap, after the typhoon hit. Photograph: /OpenStreetMap Photograph: OpenStreetMap

Online volunteers map Philippines after typhoon Haiyan

This article is more than 10 years old

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team coordinates mapping effort after enormous storm devastated country

More than 700 volunteers have collaborated to provide rescue workers with high quality maps of areas in the Philippines hit by typhoon Haiyan.

Working on OpenStreetMap, a collaboratively created map of the world – like Wikipedia, but for cartographers – the volunteers have made over 1.5m changes, providing information for humanitarian aid workers on the ground and updating maps to reflect damage from the storm.

The work is co-ordinated by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), a volunteer group which lets disaster relief workers set tasks for mapmakers at home. Users who want to help out can log-in to the tasking manager, where they are presented with a list of requests from the team.

Most of these are as simple as tracing the road network of an affected area from pre-existing satellite imagery. One asks users to trace the backbone road network for Masbate Island, in the north of the affected area; another asks the state of buildings and roads in Roxas City, in the west.

The biggest tasks call for huge areas to be covered in exacting detail using pictures of what the area looks like after the storm.

"Use new satellite imagery to trace buildings, infrastructure, areas, natural features and other important visible features of the city of Ormoc," lists one requests, as well as "map the current state of Tacloban City area after Typhoon Haiyan inflicted heavy damage to buildings, infrastructure and areas".

With post-typhoon satellite imagery, the volunteers have the task of checking their traced maps against the reality of the situation on the ground. Structures can be marked as damaged or destroyed, and so the volunteers can begin the odd work of undoing the mapping they have already done.

Already, the mapping is showing results. A picture shared by the Red Cross's Robert Banick shows the massive increase in detail on a map of Tacloban City after volunteers started filling in the gaps:

'After' map shows details provided after volunteers have filled in the gaps.. Photograph: https:/twitter.com/RBanick/status/400055778435809280 Photograph: https://twitter.com/RBanick/status/400055778435809280

The Red Cross has been using volunteers to improve their maps of under-charted areas since the Haitian earthquake in 2010.

Then, OpenStreetMap users improved maps of Port-au-Prince from the barest outline of the major roads in the area to a fully-detailed map of all the roads in the city and its outlying slums .

Thanks to the efforts of the HOT, responders on the ground have been provided with daily updated downloads for GPS systems, and can use the Field Papers service to print physical atlases of the area, for places where connectivity may be low to non-existent.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Typhoon Haiyan storm surge destroys house in seconds - video

  • Britons donate almost £40m to help victims of typhoon Haiyan

  • Typhoon Haiyan: fears not all survivors have been reached

  • Typhoon Haiyan – how do you rebuild after such destruction?

  • After Haiyan: how to act on scientific advice that's politically inconvenient?

  • President of the Philippines vows to remain in typhoon-ravaged area

  • Is climate change to blame for Typhoon Haiyan?

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