HeiGIT members Melanie Eckle and Martin Hilljegerdes were invited to the “Digital in civil protection” congress of the Landesverband Westfalen-Lippe in Münster to share insights and to present current activities all around “Potentials of Open Data and Digital Humanitarians for civil protection“. They shared experiences and impacts of the collaborative efforts of the Missing Maps project and related work of the GIScience/ HeiGIT team, including openrouteservice for disaster management and ohsome osm analytics.
The presentation was supported by Stefan Scholz of the General Secretariat of the German Red Cross (GRC) who shared experiences about the collaboration with the GIScience/ HeiGIT Team and the impact of open geoinformation, geo technologies and humanitarian mapping for the international and national GRC operations.
The HeiGIT and GRC representatives furthermore showed how national and regional GRC volunteers can get involved in these international efforts, and how they can support as well as benefit from them. Moreover, participants learned how they can make use OSM data, the presented workflows and services for their regional activities.
The event was attended by different members of regional and local German Red Cross entities as well as representatives from universities and research institutes. Participants discussed current developments around the use of digital technologies and data, as well as related challenges and potentials. Find further information about the event here.
The event already lead to several ideas around further collaboration in practical activities and research and we are very looking forward to taking these first impulses further.
