The HOT Tasking Manager is the tool where most of the work of the Missing Maps community and members happens. The projects created tell us a lot about the current mapping efforts and also show where we already succesfully mapped basic infrastructures like roads and human settlements. Tools like OSMatrix or OSM Analytics try to find ways to visualize how the OpenStreetMap changed over time. Nevertheless, we still don’t have a map of all Missing Maps projects! We think, that it is time to change this. That’s why the disastermappers heidelberg / GIScience Heidelber team had a closer look at the HOT Tasking Manager and extracted all the information related to the Missing Maps project.
Overall, there are 268 projects in the Tasking Manager which have “Missing Maps” in their name. Most of these projects are located in Africa, but there is also a considerable number in Carribean and South Asian countries like Honduras, Haiti or Bangladesh. And there is even a Missing Maps Tasking Manager project in Japan (#1699).
When looking at the number of projects created per month, this leads to encouraging results. Since the first Missing Maps project created in November 2014, projects are constantly created. In terms of projects created 2016 was definitely a phenomenal year for the Missing Maps project. In march 2016 35 projects were created, most of them by the American Red Cross. In collaboration with Red Cross partners in the Bahamas, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru these projects addressed local hazards and vulnerabilities in dozens of disaster-prone communities. The “Map South Kivu” project led by MSF is one of the projects, where projects were created over a longer time period (more than 12 month and there is still a lot to map!). By now, 18 projects has been created to map this part of DRC that, for decades, has faced unceasing humanitarian crises.
Most of the projects (70%) are completely mapped. Nevertheless, progress is still needed regarding the validation of the contributed map data. Only half of the projects which are completed are also validated to more than 95%. This underlines, how important it is to encourage the mappers of today to become the validators of tomorrow.
Want to have a look at the map yourself? We created a uMap for you:
http://u.osmfr.org/m/105221/
Further information regarding the Missing Maps projects can also be found at the diasastermappers heidelberg news blog.