Facing the most severe earthquake for the past decades, Nepal and especially the Kathmandu area show unimagineable devastations. In order to provide emergency and rescue forces with near real time information concerning infrastructural conditions of roads and buildings the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T.) as part of the OpenStreetMap Community coordinates the crisis mapping activities for Nepal.
We together with our colleagues in Brazil are supporting local efforts and currently set up a osm crisis map collecting an visualizing latest OSM information which is currently also used by UN Global Logistics Cluster:
OpenRouteService Disaster Map: www.openrouteservice.org/disaster-nepal which will be updated every 30 minutes.
The map provides additonal layers which show important emergency related POIs like hospitals, camp sites, rescue stations etc. as well as damaged and collapsed buildings (if available).
Furthermore, the additional OpenRouteService SOS – route profile currently considers passable and impassable tagged ways and dynamically adjusts the graph weights of OSM streets accordingly.
ORS also provides an Accessibility Analysis Service for a given location, the possibility to export GPS tracks to be used offline in mobile device and the interactive Avoid Feature Area Tool (in case areas are severely effected by debris and not accessible at all). These features are thus potentially valuable for Search and Rescue (SAR) units.
Please have a look at OSM taginfo and the OSM Nepal earthquake wiki to see which disaster related OSM tags and informations are currently edited.
Please share and donate your data to OSM in order to provide NGOs like the UN, Red Cross, THW, MSF and all others with lifesaving information on the ground.
