Missing maps: as a human genome decoding project, only for cities
A huge number of settlements, the most vulnerable to catastrophes and epidemics, remained a blank spot on the world map ... until today. Become part of an unprecedented plan: map the farthest corners of the world.
The Guardian Cities department will host the “Missing Maps” project meeting: draw a map of an African city. Join: cities@theguardian.com
Map of Monrovia (Liberia) before and after. Thanks to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), a free electronic map will help the city in the fight against the Ebola virus.
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In 2010, an earthquake hit Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died. But the worst was to come. The cholera epidemic broke out of control. Ivan Gayton from Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) was contacted by a nurse from a remote village, lost in the Haitian forests. "Help, please," she asked, "We were overtaken by a terrible disease that we have not yet encountered."
Ivan sent the MSF group on several trucks to the Baradères settlement to help the nurse. Their maps were very conditional. Entering every village, they thought: “It seems to be the same: the people here are dying like flies.” But no. Leaving the doctors and equipment, they drove on, past the thousands of dying inhabitants. The road was cut short - they took the boat and sailed along the coast. Finally, a pier appeared, "littered with corpses like wood," according to Geyton. That nurse worked here. MSF employees did everything in their power. In the next few days, more than 600 mortally ill people arrived. Doctors saved many; at least half would most likely die.
On the territory of Haiti, among patients of the Doctors Without Borders, less than one percent died of cholera. Among those residents to whom help did not reach, mortality was 40 percent. The $ 100 million donated to charities saved countless lives, but thousands of people in Haiti died anyway. Heyton compares the selection of sites for medical camps with the sorting of patients in military hospitals. “Someone is seriously injured, but can wait, someone dying has to choose those who are in a state between them in order to save as many lives as possible. It’s impossible to help everyone, ”he says. “Entire settlements and regions of Haiti were left to die. Calls like that, from the nurse, were received weekly. But he was one of the few to which we responded. I'm sure we lost a huge number of people. ”
Visualization of one year of edits to OpenStreetmap.
It was very difficult for us to answer the question: is our expedition to Baraderes, was it the best use of the available forces? “Haiti was a giant emergency operation, and we, the Doctors Without Borders, took responsibility for it ourselves, but we could not do everything. I was focused on determining exactly where our help is most needed: where we can provide maximum assistance for the largest number of people. ”
Location, location, location is the cornerstone of epidemiology, since John Snow collected the addresses of victims of cholera , put them on the map of London, traced the source of cholera to Soho, and blocked infected water intake. However, after a century and a half, cholera and other diseases continue to torment our world. And one of the reasons for our failures is the lack of maps.
Surprisingly, a large number of cities around the world remain uncharted. No one knows exactly how many there are, but more than a million people in developing countries live day to day without accurate maps of their cities. Employees of organizations helping these territories in development buy photocopies of photocopies of maps, collect place names from ads, use satellite images without names of streets and cities, or are forced each time to find out the way from local residents.
In the west, we take for granted that every street of every city is on Google maps, here, when the Doctors Without Borders asked the patient where he came from, they often didn’t even have ideas what kind of answer they got. What is bobere? Street, village, district, region, or perhaps a province? “Often, it can be a random mix of sounds!” Says Geyton: “If there was one source of cholera in Haiti, we would never know where it is. We needed a map to match the messages that came to us and the places described by patients with something on the ground. ”
Stage 1 ... volunteers at a meeting place in the city of Kinshasa (Congo) describe satellite images in OpenStreetMap. Photographer: Jorieke (Human aid team, HOT)
Gradually, it came to the realization that detailed maps would be useful not only in Haiti. Moreover, why wait for a crisis? If humanitarian agencies had such maps for regions threatened with natural disasters, armed conflicts and epidemics, they would be one step ahead in dealing with their consequences. But where to get these cards?
A brilliant solution to this problem was the Missing Cards project, which started this month. The project will bring together the efforts of the Doctors Without Borders, the American and British Red Cross, the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Map Help Team and other participants to create free maps for each settlement on earth. The project is as important and as large as the project for deciphering the human genome.
The method developed by the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Map Help Team is simple and, crucially important, allows you to participate in a project remotely.
The method is very simple ... buildings in the city of Malawai (Malawai), described in OpenStreetMap.
Click here to see live broadcast of object sketches.
The first step is to get satellite imagery. Often, community snapshots are provided by organizations you don’t expect from, for example, the US government or Microsoft. Then the pictures are available for drawing in the free mapping editor OpenStreetMap.
Further, volunteers from all over the world connect to the process remotely and, in the literal sense, trace the contours of houses, roads, parks and rivers in satellite images. Hide the picture, and voila: you have a basic digital map of the city.
Then the map, which still has no names of streets and places, is printed and distributed to volunteers directly on the ground. These "ground units" may include students, schoolchildren, members of scout organizations, etc. Each takes a small part of the map and, armed with a pencil, writes down the names of streets and addresses of buildings.
Finally, the completed maps are sent back to the project headquarters in London, where volunteers enter the names in OpenStreetMap. The result is a free, open to all and forever map of the city.
Stage 2 ... volunteers sign street and house names on the map of Lubumbashi (Congo). Photographer: Jorieke (Humanities team for OpenStreetMap HOT)
The first serious test of this scheme was Lubumbashi, one of the major cities of the Congo, one and a half million inhabitants of which, until today, were deprived of such a simple thing as an online map. Missing maps aim to map the remaining poorest urban areas around the world in two years. And because the first and last stages could be performed by anyone, anywhere, if there were a computer, this scheme is great for crowdsourcing.
Ivan Geyton: “Finally, I can give volunteers the opportunity to help, not only donating money. Many want to help Doctors without limits what is called hands. For example, they propose to knit socks for children and further in this spirit. But I answer them, no, it’s not necessary - the delivery of these socks and their distribution require much more power and resources than the benefits they can give. But with the Missing Cards, they can help true, genuinely field work. This is a huge help. ”
Daily absorbing the generalized contribution of ordinary people from all over the world, Missing maps can expand coverage to the entire planet. Crowdsourcing also gives the project an advantage over Google maps. The Internet giant is also busy creating its own maps of African cities and territories of developing countries. Listening to the valid criticism that the company ignores the places where there is no opportunity to earn money from advertising, Google asks users to supplement their cards. But it is worth remembering that your contribution to Google maps, (regardless of whether they are free now), is wholly owned by Google. If the Internet giant decides to collect money for the use of cards, nothing will prevent him from doing so at any time.
Pete Masters, Project Coordinator Missing Cards: “It is crucial that the cards are open. Any attempt to limit the use of these cards will be illegal. This means that local residents will always have access to the map, and not only the opportunity to see the map, but also the ability to edit and develop the map. ”
This idea, like nothing else, ignites the imagination of the inhabitants in the uncharted places on the maps, says Geyton. “The project license protects the data, preventing them from being stolen, closed or appropriated. These cards are created by the sincere work of volunteers and belong to everyone. Many volunteers just can't believe it. ”
On the map ... Lubumbashi (Congo) got a free, open digital map. Thanks to the project Missing cards. Photographer: Phil Moore / AFP / Getty
In fact, the project has already started: Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross have already begun to recruit new volunteers who are ready to join the OpenStreetMap Human Map Help Team, teaching them how to map the settlements where the Ebola virus is out of control. Ultimately, the project Missing Cards will need to assemble the largest team of volunteers.
The benefits of a digital map of all the settlements on Earth, of course, not only in the field of epidemiology. There are many options for its application in the field of urbanism, such as the planning of road traffic, pollution control, development planning, etc ...
"We used to think of maps as a tool for finding a restaurant nearby or part of a satellite navigation system," says Harry Wood, a member of the board of the humanitarian map-help team at OpenStreetMap. “In addition, maps are widely used in urban planning, for example, in order to decide which of the roads the bus route should take or where to build a new road in the first place. Think about it, maps are a very basic building block of our knowledge, involved in the development of the urban environment in many ways, quietly and imperceptibly improving our lives. ”
"It is important that the cards help not only in the fight against Ebola and cholera," says Wood. “Sooner or later, the Ebola epidemic will recede, but OpenStreetMap will remain an information resource, quietly helping with urban planning and gradually promoting economic growth in these regions.”
As well as the human genome decoding project, which resulted in a complete record of all human genes, reused by scientists around the world to study diseases and develop new medicines, city maps are the building block of urban planning, regardless of whether you are with cholera or crime. Missing maps are a fundamentally important first step. For most of the developing world, our current maps can be a call: Ahead Dragons. We have a long way to go, but at least someone took a sword.
From the translator:
Site Humanitarian OpenStreetMap hotosm.org
A tracker with tasks for describing images for projects HOT: tasks.hotosm.org
Project page Missing Maps missingmaps.org (Unfortunately, with a misconfigured, at the moment CName).
The Guardian Cities department will host the “Missing Maps” project meeting: draw a map of an African city. Join: cities@theguardian.com
Map of Monrovia (Liberia) before and after. Thanks to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), a free electronic map will help the city in the fight against the Ebola virus.
')
In 2010, an earthquake hit Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died. But the worst was to come. The cholera epidemic broke out of control. Ivan Gayton from Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) was contacted by a nurse from a remote village, lost in the Haitian forests. "Help, please," she asked, "We were overtaken by a terrible disease that we have not yet encountered."
Ivan sent the MSF group on several trucks to the Baradères settlement to help the nurse. Their maps were very conditional. Entering every village, they thought: “It seems to be the same: the people here are dying like flies.” But no. Leaving the doctors and equipment, they drove on, past the thousands of dying inhabitants. The road was cut short - they took the boat and sailed along the coast. Finally, a pier appeared, "littered with corpses like wood," according to Geyton. That nurse worked here. MSF employees did everything in their power. In the next few days, more than 600 mortally ill people arrived. Doctors saved many; at least half would most likely die.
On the territory of Haiti, among patients of the Doctors Without Borders, less than one percent died of cholera. Among those residents to whom help did not reach, mortality was 40 percent. The $ 100 million donated to charities saved countless lives, but thousands of people in Haiti died anyway. Heyton compares the selection of sites for medical camps with the sorting of patients in military hospitals. “Someone is seriously injured, but can wait, someone dying has to choose those who are in a state between them in order to save as many lives as possible. It’s impossible to help everyone, ”he says. “Entire settlements and regions of Haiti were left to die. Calls like that, from the nurse, were received weekly. But he was one of the few to which we responded. I'm sure we lost a huge number of people. ”
Visualization of one year of edits to OpenStreetmap.
It was very difficult for us to answer the question: is our expedition to Baraderes, was it the best use of the available forces? “Haiti was a giant emergency operation, and we, the Doctors Without Borders, took responsibility for it ourselves, but we could not do everything. I was focused on determining exactly where our help is most needed: where we can provide maximum assistance for the largest number of people. ”
Location, location, location is the cornerstone of epidemiology, since John Snow collected the addresses of victims of cholera , put them on the map of London, traced the source of cholera to Soho, and blocked infected water intake. However, after a century and a half, cholera and other diseases continue to torment our world. And one of the reasons for our failures is the lack of maps.
Surprisingly, a large number of cities around the world remain uncharted. No one knows exactly how many there are, but more than a million people in developing countries live day to day without accurate maps of their cities. Employees of organizations helping these territories in development buy photocopies of photocopies of maps, collect place names from ads, use satellite images without names of streets and cities, or are forced each time to find out the way from local residents.
In the west, we take for granted that every street of every city is on Google maps, here, when the Doctors Without Borders asked the patient where he came from, they often didn’t even have ideas what kind of answer they got. What is bobere? Street, village, district, region, or perhaps a province? “Often, it can be a random mix of sounds!” Says Geyton: “If there was one source of cholera in Haiti, we would never know where it is. We needed a map to match the messages that came to us and the places described by patients with something on the ground. ”
Stage 1 ... volunteers at a meeting place in the city of Kinshasa (Congo) describe satellite images in OpenStreetMap. Photographer: Jorieke (Human aid team, HOT)
Gradually, it came to the realization that detailed maps would be useful not only in Haiti. Moreover, why wait for a crisis? If humanitarian agencies had such maps for regions threatened with natural disasters, armed conflicts and epidemics, they would be one step ahead in dealing with their consequences. But where to get these cards?
A brilliant solution to this problem was the Missing Cards project, which started this month. The project will bring together the efforts of the Doctors Without Borders, the American and British Red Cross, the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Map Help Team and other participants to create free maps for each settlement on earth. The project is as important and as large as the project for deciphering the human genome.
The method developed by the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Map Help Team is simple and, crucially important, allows you to participate in a project remotely.
The method is very simple ... buildings in the city of Malawai (Malawai), described in OpenStreetMap.
Click here to see live broadcast of object sketches.
The first step is to get satellite imagery. Often, community snapshots are provided by organizations you don’t expect from, for example, the US government or Microsoft. Then the pictures are available for drawing in the free mapping editor OpenStreetMap.
Further, volunteers from all over the world connect to the process remotely and, in the literal sense, trace the contours of houses, roads, parks and rivers in satellite images. Hide the picture, and voila: you have a basic digital map of the city.
Then the map, which still has no names of streets and places, is printed and distributed to volunteers directly on the ground. These "ground units" may include students, schoolchildren, members of scout organizations, etc. Each takes a small part of the map and, armed with a pencil, writes down the names of streets and addresses of buildings.
Finally, the completed maps are sent back to the project headquarters in London, where volunteers enter the names in OpenStreetMap. The result is a free, open to all and forever map of the city.
Stage 2 ... volunteers sign street and house names on the map of Lubumbashi (Congo). Photographer: Jorieke (Humanities team for OpenStreetMap HOT)
The first serious test of this scheme was Lubumbashi, one of the major cities of the Congo, one and a half million inhabitants of which, until today, were deprived of such a simple thing as an online map. Missing maps aim to map the remaining poorest urban areas around the world in two years. And because the first and last stages could be performed by anyone, anywhere, if there were a computer, this scheme is great for crowdsourcing.
Ivan Geyton: “Finally, I can give volunteers the opportunity to help, not only donating money. Many want to help Doctors without limits what is called hands. For example, they propose to knit socks for children and further in this spirit. But I answer them, no, it’s not necessary - the delivery of these socks and their distribution require much more power and resources than the benefits they can give. But with the Missing Cards, they can help true, genuinely field work. This is a huge help. ”
Daily absorbing the generalized contribution of ordinary people from all over the world, Missing maps can expand coverage to the entire planet. Crowdsourcing also gives the project an advantage over Google maps. The Internet giant is also busy creating its own maps of African cities and territories of developing countries. Listening to the valid criticism that the company ignores the places where there is no opportunity to earn money from advertising, Google asks users to supplement their cards. But it is worth remembering that your contribution to Google maps, (regardless of whether they are free now), is wholly owned by Google. If the Internet giant decides to collect money for the use of cards, nothing will prevent him from doing so at any time.
Pete Masters, Project Coordinator Missing Cards: “It is crucial that the cards are open. Any attempt to limit the use of these cards will be illegal. This means that local residents will always have access to the map, and not only the opportunity to see the map, but also the ability to edit and develop the map. ”
This idea, like nothing else, ignites the imagination of the inhabitants in the uncharted places on the maps, says Geyton. “The project license protects the data, preventing them from being stolen, closed or appropriated. These cards are created by the sincere work of volunteers and belong to everyone. Many volunteers just can't believe it. ”
On the map ... Lubumbashi (Congo) got a free, open digital map. Thanks to the project Missing cards. Photographer: Phil Moore / AFP / Getty
In fact, the project has already started: Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross have already begun to recruit new volunteers who are ready to join the OpenStreetMap Human Map Help Team, teaching them how to map the settlements where the Ebola virus is out of control. Ultimately, the project Missing Cards will need to assemble the largest team of volunteers.
The benefits of a digital map of all the settlements on Earth, of course, not only in the field of epidemiology. There are many options for its application in the field of urbanism, such as the planning of road traffic, pollution control, development planning, etc ...
"We used to think of maps as a tool for finding a restaurant nearby or part of a satellite navigation system," says Harry Wood, a member of the board of the humanitarian map-help team at OpenStreetMap. “In addition, maps are widely used in urban planning, for example, in order to decide which of the roads the bus route should take or where to build a new road in the first place. Think about it, maps are a very basic building block of our knowledge, involved in the development of the urban environment in many ways, quietly and imperceptibly improving our lives. ”
"It is important that the cards help not only in the fight against Ebola and cholera," says Wood. “Sooner or later, the Ebola epidemic will recede, but OpenStreetMap will remain an information resource, quietly helping with urban planning and gradually promoting economic growth in these regions.”
As well as the human genome decoding project, which resulted in a complete record of all human genes, reused by scientists around the world to study diseases and develop new medicines, city maps are the building block of urban planning, regardless of whether you are with cholera or crime. Missing maps are a fundamentally important first step. For most of the developing world, our current maps can be a call: Ahead Dragons. We have a long way to go, but at least someone took a sword.
From the translator:
Site Humanitarian OpenStreetMap hotosm.org
A tracker with tasks for describing images for projects HOT: tasks.hotosm.org
Project page Missing Maps missingmaps.org (Unfortunately, with a misconfigured, at the moment CName).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/240911/
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