[TCMUG] Geo-Mapping for Human Rights

[David William Bitner]

Sahana has worked with the Open Street Map folks to acquire base map data /
services during actual events as well as exercises. The level of integration
is typically through Tiled Map Services and GeoRSS being displayed through
Sahana's OpenLayers interface.

Some of the interesting things coming out of the Humanitarian OSM folks
include the related project Walking Papers that provides something very
similar to the National Grid based maps that we provided for the Red River
Floods only they are bar coded in a way that allows them to be very quickly
scanned back in to digitize information from hard-copy back into digital
form -- a very interesting approach for quickly gathering data without
computers in the field during disaster situations.

There is also a certain amount of overlap with the OpenAerial Map project
which had stagnated but has some momentum and potential funding for getting
things (at least discussions) back on track again.  If anyone has interest
in this, I recommend strongly that you join the list and read some of the
archives and wiki discussions.

Other areas that there is a lot of work on in Sahana and Humanitarian
mapping is on using SMS messaging (with geolocation if possible) to gather
data.  Sahana has worked at adding this capability natively as well as
looking at integration with groups like Instedd and Ushaidi.

Perhaps we should look at a Humanitarian Geospatial focused meeting in the
near future.  I know that there were planned to be presentations at GIS/LIS
on the flood response and we could likely find someone to recycle that
presentation for us, or at least get folks who responded to attend for the
discussion.

If humanitarian open source software is of interest to anyone on this list,
I would recommend that they sign up for the Humanitarian-ICT (
http://humanitarian-ict.org) community mailing list which tries to keep a
broad view of the topic of Software for managing and responding to
disasters.


David
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:03 PM, <neuhausr at bitstream.net> wrote:

> David,
>
> At MN GIS/LIS, I was pretty interested by the session on the Red River
> flooding and the Emergency work done by MN GIS folks, so I for one think
> it sounds interesting.  I also notice you're listed on the Humanitarian
> OSM Team page--is that related?
>
> Brad
>
> > I sit on the Project Management Committee of Sahana, the Disaster
> > Management
> > Software that is mentioned in that thread.  It has a situational
> awareness
> > component built in based off of Open Layers.  The geo component of the
> > software is fairly basic, but if anyone is interested in a demo of the
> > whole
> > system, I'd be happy to add that to an agenda for a meeting sometime.
> >
> > David
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 8:09 PM, Matthew Pettis
> > <matthew.pettis at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> Another application of mapping and political cross-over, if people are
> >> interested...
> >>
> >> http://www.newtactics.org/en/blog/new-tactics/geo-mapping-human-rights
> >>  <
> http://www.newtactics.org/en/blog/new-tactics/geo-mapping-human-rights>
> >>
> >> --
> >> One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you
> >> end up being governed by your inferiors.
> >> -- Plato
> >>
> >> It is from the wellspring of our despair and the places that we are
> >> broken
> >> that we come to repair the world.
> >> -- Murray Waas
> >>
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> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > ************************************
> > David William Bitner
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
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-- 
************************************
David William Bitner
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