Flash Floods Malawi 2024
| General Information | ||||||||||||||
Flash Floods Malawi On February 28, 2024, Nkhotakota District in central Malawi experienced flash flooding. The Nkhotakota District Council reported that heavy rains in the Dwangwa area resulted in the flooding of the Dwangwa and Kaombe Rivers, affecting surrounding areas. According to a Facebook post by the Malawi Department of Disaster Management Affairs, as of February 29, approximately 7,000 people had been displaced, with nine camps established in Traditional Authorities (T/As) Kanyenda and Mphonde. The Open Mapping Hub Eastern and Southern Africa is collaborating with OSM Malawi to provide open data for relief to flood-affected communities in Dwangwa, Malawi. This mapping initiative will facilitate the identification of infrastructure exposed to flooding, laying the groundwork for the development of data-driven community resilience programs in response to climate change. | ||||||||||||||
Flash Floods in Malawi
For Aid Organizations
Map and Data Services
Exporting OpenStreetMap data
See Downloading data for instructions on getting large scale map data, or see the focused exports below:
- A custom export is available on the HOT Export Tool
- Regularly updated OpenStreetMap exports are available on the Humanitarian Data eXchange (HDX)
About This Disaster Activation
About HOT
To learn more about the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), explore more of our wiki-pages (root: HOT) or our website hotosm.org. HOT is a global community, mostly of volunteers, and it is a US registered nonprofit able to contract with organizations (email info at hotosm.org to contact our staff), we are also a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Coordination
- Lead(s):
- Patrick Kalonde (OSM Malawi - Coordination Lead)
- Wilson Munyaradzi (OMH ESA Support) wilson.munyaradzi@hotosm.org
Data Quality
All contributions through HOT's Tasking Manager are tracked with a unique changeset comment tag: #MalawiFloodResponse
Validation
Validation permissions for the Tasking Manager projects are restricted to users with intermediate or advanced level.
For Mappers
How You Can Contribute
Learn to Map
- Most of our volunteer needs are for remote OSM contributors, visit LearnOSM.org to get started.
Mapping Priority
- Please choose from highest priority first
- Experienced mappers are also asked to participate in validating completed tasks. Information on validating can be found here
Please see this HOTOSM Collate table for all the projects in this campaign as well as their completion status and priority.
Mapping Instructions
Project-Specific Mapping Notes
- Malawi follows the East Africa Tagging Guidelines when tagging highways, please refer to them here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines
- Imagery: Please use BING , which is currently set as the default imagery for mapping. You may switch to ESRI World Imagery, for comparison.
- Some squares will already be partially or fully mapped, map in more if needed or fix up the existing mapping, or submit it with "Yes" selected in response to "Is this task completely mapped?" if it is already complete.
- Existing mapping does not match imagery - This happens in some areas, when different imagery sources are used. If this occurs, check to make sure you are using BING Imagery.
- Alternative imagery is better - Sometimes due to shadows, alignment, and other factors it may be easier to trace features using other imagery. That is fine as long as you adjust for any offset. When finished please leave a comment in the Tasking Manager when you mark done/stop mapping to say you used alternative imagery. See LearnOSM for detailed instructions on handling imagery offset, or Aerial Imagery & Alignment for adjusting in the iD editor.
- Here are some annotated mapping tips specific to rural area:
Buildings
- Please accurately outline all the buildings you can find. The outline should be for the full size of the building even if it is partly covered by trees in the imagery.
- Take care to not include the building shadow in the building outline.
- After tagging as a building, please leave all the 'Fields' empty - this information is added later by local mappers.
- After drawing the outline and tagging as a building, use the 'Q' key in the iD web editor to "square" the corners.
- Many buildings are very close, but do not actually touch each other, try to map them close to each other without letting them connect or share nodes with each other, roads or residential area outlines. In the iD web editor, holding down the "alt" key will keep nodes from "snapping" to each other and accidentally connecting.
In the iD web editor, you will only have the option to tag new features as buildings, see below for editing or adding other features. Only if you have personal knowledge of a building, please add that information to the building, like the type of building (hospital, school, gas station, etc) or a name if it has one.
Roads and Paths
- Quick Tutorial: Roads - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZWur1YG1k
- Please connect roads to existing road networks wherever possible.
- Many minor roads tend to meander and become ‘braided’ where they encounter an obstacle such as a wet patch. Please only map the central ‘braid’ in this situation rather than all the side routes.
- Very short segments that do not connect to anything should not be mapped.
- Short segments of a road or path that you cannot see through the trees but seem very likely to exist should be mapped to keep the road complete
- Try and map a little beyond your task square so the person who maps the task square next to yours can easily connect them.
- Always connect roads to other roads where they meet and never end roads on Residential area polygon edges.
You will most often use the following "Road Features":
- Minor/Unclassified Road - This is for roads that connect small villages and settlements
- Residential Road - These are roads that are in settlements but only are used for access to houses and buildings.
Water Ways
- Use the imagery 'opentopomap' to decide the flow direction of the waterways.
- https://opentopomap.org/#map=10/-16.7197/35.1013
Community Mapathons
| Date | Time | Lead Community | Country | Location/ Meeting Link/ Registration Link | Type | Status | Notes | Social Media Post |
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