2014 West Africa Ebola Response

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General Information
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2014 West Africa Ebola Response is an activation of the Humanitarian OSM Team to provide base-map data to assist the response to this disease outbreak.


Nowadays, anyone can consult free OpenStreetMap Online maps, Routing services or even bring the Map on their Smartphone. For crisis like this Ebola Outbreak, thousand of contributors from around the world digitize rapidly the data from Satellite imagery to support the humanitarian organizations that deploy in the affected countries.

Our goal is to contribute to humanitarian relief by providing rapidly a detailed and accurate map (i.e., road network, villages, buildings, etc.) to support the humanitarian organizations. These services help locate people at risk rapidly, and facilitate the delivery of goods and services to remote areas. The various epidemiological services also can use these maps to monitor the situation.

Pierre Béland and Andrew Buck are coordinating this OpenStreetMap Response to the Ebola Outbreak.
email contact : activation@hotosm.org

The OSM servers, Editing tools and Map and Export products let us offer a variety of free Map and Export services to the humanitarian community. The OSM community support to these Activations is also impressive. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team assures the bridge between the OSM community and the humanitarians. We partner with various international organizations and take the responsability to map quickly various areas while the international organizations deploy in the field to respond to this epdidemy and support the local communities.

Jean-Guilhem Cailton, Blake Girardot, Mikel Maron and others support in various ways (ie. Imagery processing and servers, imports, learning material, etc). Others make outreach, organize mapathons, validate the work done, facilitate the progression of the new contributors.




On March 23, 2014 - Individual members of HOT begin monitoring the news regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. On March 24th our organization received a request to activate to assist Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders.

CartONG is supporting MSF Switzerland for the Ebola epidemic going into Guinea, providing the GIS support. One person of the staff is deployed in Guinea. Bing imagery is not available in various areas where suspected cases of Ebola are reported. Pleiades-1A images were bought by CartONG for three towns. Airbus Defence & Space and Mapbox-DigitalGlobe also contributed with free imagery. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has been activated to coordinate the mapping effort by OSM contributors.

VISOV and the American Red Cross GIS Unit also are collaborating in this activation.

The American Red Cross is supporting the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

Starting in July, a new contact group was providing a liaison with the World Health Organization (WHO), The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs (UN-OCHA) and various specialists.

Starting in August, contacts were established with U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) team.

Until the end of April, VISOV monitored suspected Ebola cases, identifying the various travel routes. This information is useful in various ways and helps us to identify which areas to map. See the Visov Map.

July 11, Cedric Moro created a new Map to monitor suspected cases.

Map and Data Services


About OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap offers an online map and spatial database that is updated by the minute. Various online maps are based on OpenStreetMap, including Navigation tools such as OSRM. Tools and services allow data extracts for GIS specialists, routable data for Garmin GPS, GPS navigation with smartphones and other device-compatible downloads. With an Internet connection, regular syncing is possible, because there is open access to the community-contributed data as it comes in. Also bulk with downloads of OpenStreetMap data are ideal for use offline. In addition, maps can be printed to paper, if needed.

Browse the Activation Area to get a feel for the data that is currently available. Different map styles, including a special Humanitarian style, can be selected on the right side of the screen. Though some data may not render (appear) on the online map, it can be exported from the underlying database for other uses requiring more detail(See export section below).

Paper Maps

Large poster-size maps and letter-size paper atlases of custom areas can be printed:

  • FieldPapers Paper Maps with grid for field survey or general navigation purposes,
  • MapOSMatic Large Paper Maps with grid, street index and POI, good for command centers, hospitals, etc.

Exporting OpenStreetMap data

Daily updates

OSMand Offline and Online Maps & Navigation
Download OSMAnd for Android
Download OSMAnd for iPhone
OpenStreetMap data by country
OSM Format
ShapeFiles for GIS softwares
Offline Navigation on Small Devices
● Guinea OSM.pbf OSM.bz2 Shapefile GPS.IMG
● Liberia OSM.pbf OSM.bz2 Shapefile GPS.IMG
● Sierra Leone OSM.pbf OSM.bz2 Shapefile GPS.IMG
● Mali OSM.pbf Shapefile
● Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone OSM.pbf OSMAnd.OBF GPS.IMG

Daily OSM updates in various formats are provided by
GeoFabrik, datendelphin contributor, OSM-fr, SOGEFI and mapas.alternativaslibres.es.

Information about the various OSM export formats

  • OSM.pbf and OSM.bz2 : These compressed OSM files are recognized by various GIS softwares.
  • Shapefile : This data can be imported to GIS software, such as Quantum GIS or ESRI ArcGIS for Desktop.
  • OSMAnd.OBF : OSMAnd / Android and iPhone Offline map and navigation
    Note: launched 2015-04-19, the first iPhone version does not yet integrate all the functionalities of the Android version.
  • GPS.IMG : Garmin GPS format
    • » Rename the IMG file to gmapsupp.img and move it to the Garmin directory of the GPS card
  • Other Mobile devices : See other Mobile device products.

OSMand software download

Both Online tiles and Offline vectorial tiles are available through OSMand. Using the Offline maps stored on the phone, you dont need access to any mobile network. While using the online option, you should verify how much data is downloaded.

Custom Exports (to be rerun at any time)

See Downloading data for instructions on getting large scale map data. See Shapefiles if you need this format to export to GIS tools.

OSM extracts, as feature layers (Overpass service)

The Overpass queries below let users extract specific layer features. The output is in, OSM format. The links below query the Online Overpass Service, and the file is downloaded automatically. Rename the file called "interpreter" for better documentation of the Query content.

  • Place names Rename interpreter file to Guinea-Liberia-Sierra-Leone-places.osm
  • Highways Rename interpreter file to Guinea-Liberia-Sierra-Leone-highways.osm
  • Waterways Rename interpreter file to Guinea-Liberia-Sierra-Leone-waterways.osm
  • Residential landuse Rename interpreter file to Guinea-Liberia-Sierra-Leone-landuse-residential.osm
HOT Export Service - GIS Analysis

This script can be rerun at any time to obtain up-to-date extracts of OSM

Custom Android/OSMAnd offline file

  • Customize Navigation Offline Data for Android smartphones : Conversion procedure at OsmAndMapCreator

Install by copying to OsmAnd directory on your Android device.

Offline Road Navigation with Small Devices

With the availability of small communication devices, Offline data for navigation proves to be very useful for humanitarians deployed in foreign countries. We support the humanitarian NGOs using navigation data and invite them to give us feedback on the use of these devices in the context of field deployment. Daily updates assure that the most up-to-date data is available for downloads. With limited communication in a disaster region, it is recommended that users download data in bulk before traveling to these regions for offline use.

  • This OSMAnd Tutorial shows how easy it is to navigate with OSMAnd.
  • Copy OSMAnd files : Files downloaded are placed in the download directory. Move these files to the osmand directory. After you rerun OSMAnd, these files will be available.
  • Copy Garmin GPS files : In general, you should rename the img file to gmapsupp.img and move it to the directory called Garmin. After restarting your GPS, you should see this new map.

Reporting map errors while traveling with OSMAnd

With OSMAnd, you can notify the OSM mappers of problems with the map.

  • First enable the "Edit OpenStreetMap" plug-in in OSMAnd by going to "Settings" -> "Plugin-manager" and check the "OSM editing" plug-in.
  • Go to the map view in OSMAnd, and long-press near the error you found
  • Click on the balloon that pops up and select "Report an error in OpenStreetMap." (if this option doesn't show up, double-check that you enabled the right plug-in)
  • Write a human-readable, preferably English message, explaining how to fix the error or what is wrong.
  • When you get back to a location with Internet, you can upload the bugs to notify us. Go to "Settings" -> "OSM editing" -> "Locally saved OSM POIs/Bugs" and use the bottom-left button to upload all your bugs.


The bugs will appear on the map, and will be handled when a mapper sees them. The mapper will try to correct the error using your message and the aerial pictures available. Please don't ask questions, as we will probably not be able to answer them. But please describe what's wrong and how it should be.

A message like "This hamlet is called Petifu instead of Wari" will result in a correct map, while a message like "How is this hamlet named?" is unsolvable for us.

After a mapper handles (and hopefully solves) the bug, the correction will be available the next time you download the maps.

Use of OSM data for Humanitarian Missions

Zones not yet covered

Humanitarians that operate in the area may discover areas not yet mapped in detail, They can contact us via the HOT discussion list.


About This Humanitarian Activation

About HOT

  • To learn more about the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), explore our wiki pages (root: HOT) or our web site hotosm.org. We are a global community of mostly volunteers. We are also a U.S. nonprofit able to contract with organizations (email info at hotosm.org to contact our staff). And we are a U.S. 501-c-3 charitable organization organization, and donations are tax deductible in the United States.

HOT Updates

History of this Activation

Reactivity of the OSM Community

  • March 23 - HOT Members begin monitoring news reports about the outbreak and informing community.
  • March 24 - We receive a request for activation from CartONG and MSF-CH

HOT Activates

  • March 24 - We begin trying to locate imagery for the three main towns (Guekedou, Kissidougou, and Macenta)
  • March 25 - We have multiple versions of the Landsat 8 tile covering the area online in several different color bands
  • March 25 - We begin using the Landsat imagery to trace roads and village perimeters
  • March 25 - We also do the same from Orbview 3 image strips across the area
  • March 26 - Reception of high-resolution imagery for the three main towns, creation of Task-Manager jobs and appeal to contributors to map.
    Detailed mapping for the three towns is realized in 20 hours, including Gueckedou (250,000 people).
  • March 27 - Adding more areas of interest as Tasking Manager jobs, see below.
  • March 28 - Landsat imagery coverage now in bands 432 and 753 extended over the whole of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
  • March 28 - Main towns nearly complete. Early results obtained from population analysis.
  • March 29 - More mapping of buildings in key towns, and a small group of volunteers fill in the remaining buildings of the towns in the population-study test data set of 500 villages.
  • March 30 - Uploaded topo maps for most of Guinea and began rectifying them to correct for errors in the original maps. Team plans to start entering all the names on these maps over the next couple of days.
  • March 31 - Continuing work on the GNS import and beginning of work to align them to imagery and to add names from the topo maps over the larger area.
  • April 1 - First two topo sheets around Gueckedou and Kissidougou have had all names entered. Most of the residential areas in this region have been traced but a few remain to be traced.
  • April 1 - Adding two more topo sheets, one to the north and one to the west, for name entry.
  • April 2 - Received imagery for Mamou from DigitalGlobe in response to a request for priority towns in the area. This was the last of the priority towns for which we had no imagery. A task manager job was created and within an hour of posting 17 people were working on the task simultaneously.
  • April 4 - Received Spot images for the area around Guekedou and a Pleiades image covering Foya.
  • April 5 - Continued tracing of roads and residential areas, and correcting village names and locations from topo maps and GNS around the Guekedou area.
  • April 6 - Spot and Foya images were traced in the Task Manager and are now complete.
  • April 14 - Team received a fourth Spot image, covering the remaining portion of the area northeast of Guekedou, where there had been only low-resolution imagery. A Task Manager job was set up as soon as the image was online.
  • April 16 - The road tracing from the fourth Spot image is about 90% complete.
  • June 19 - Team receives a request from the Red Cross to reactivate the mapping effort around the Kailahun district of Sierra Leone in response to recent outbreaks there.
  • June 23 - After several days of informal mapping in the Kailahun area a Task Manager job is set up to ensure complete coverage of the area of interest (or at least the portion where we have Bing imagery).
  • July 15 - Mapping of the Kailahun district, Sierra Leone, is completed
  • August 7 - Mapping of the Kenema district, Sierra Leone, is completed

Global Ebola Response

Tools, Adaptation and Services

OSM developers communicate over the Internet through various communication channels. In 2013 they implemented the new Humanitarian Map Style, a map more adapted to humanitarian actions. This map, hosted by OpenStreetMap of France, is integrated into various online map tools.

Two OpenStreetMap tools, the Tasking Manager and the JOSM editor, are essential parts of this activation. As new imagery is available, new jobs are added to the Tasking Manager. This tool has allowed HOT to coordinate efforts of mappers around the world. Some days there were more then 200 simultaneous mappers registered on the Task Manager and editing, mainly with the JOSM editor. Other online editors, such as OSM's ID and Potlatch 2 editors, also are used for less-intensive mapping. LearnOSM.org offers material to instruct beginners and more advanced mappers in these editors.

UNMEER Routing / Travel Time Tool

/UNMEER Routing Project

Coordination

Andrew Buck and Pierre Beland are coordinating this activation. The request for activation first came from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). The HOT team coordinates with CartONG, American Red Cross, UN-WHO, UN-OCHA and the Digital Humanitarian Network. This coordination contributes to a quicker and more-efficient response, and assures that a range of map products and services are offered to the humanitarian organizations that operate in the region.

The HIU unit of the State Department (MapGive initiative), Airbus Defence & Space and Mapbox-DigitalGlobe collaborate by providing free aerial imagery.

Amadou Ndong assists with mapping parties in African communities. A support team of experienced OSM members coordinates local contributors through the #hot IRC Channel. Mapping contributions from around the world through the Internet are coordinated through the use of the HOT Tasking Manager. Each contributor is assigned a square, called a "task," to map. When a task is complete, the contributor marks it "Done" on the Tasking Manager, and more-experienced contributors check their work to assure its accuracy.

Support Team

Jean-Guilhem Cailton is supporting imagery processing, and TMS server. User:russdeffner assisted in the coordination by creating and updating this wiki page on behalf of the coordinator team, now a team effort.


News about this activation for Ebola

Mapathon events

In some parts of the world, OSM members are organizing "mapathons," events where mappers gather to learn about mapping and to tackle specific map tasks. Mapathons give members an opportunity to meet-like minded mappers and to learn how to contribute to OpenStreetMap. Other mapathons are more generic, not focusing on specific tasks or crises, but providing a shared experience of mapping while improving mapping skills.

Upcoming events are listed below. Please indicate date, group and location of the mapathon. Link to more details for these events.

Past Events

Statistics about the Ebola Effort

The humanitarian workers operating in West Africa are facing a very difficult and stressful context. To respond adequately to this epidemic, they need detailed maps of the region. The OpenStreetMap community has accepted this responsibility, and, by the beginning of August 2014, more then 700 contributors from around the world had contributed, digitizing information from aerial imagery. locating villages, adding names to identify those villages, and tracing roads and buildings.

This activation has been in two phases. At the end of March 2014, three cities in Guinea were mapped rapidly. Later coverage was extended to areas in Sierra Leone and Liberia, close to the Gueckedou area in Guinea. With the extension of the epidemic at the end of June, HOT reactivated to respond to the increasing needs of the humanitarian field workers on the ground.

The table below shows the growth of both the number of OSM contributors and the number of modifications of objects in the OSM database since the beginning of this activation.

By the beginning of May 2014 478 contributors had participated and 2.2 million objects had been modified or created in the OSM database.

By the 8th of August, the effort passed 5 million objects modified and more than 8,000 places. There were 449,743 buildings traced. Note that 8,296 of these buildings are represented by a simple node because the imagery for these zones is not detailed enough to show the outlines of the buildings. This contribution was made possible by the work of 840 volunteers around the world participating remotely through the Internet.


2014 West Africa Ebola Response by the OpenStreetMap community
Cumulative Statistics of OSM contributors / objects modified
(Note : Aug. 20, 2014, we made corrections to statistics published previously)
Date Contributors Objects POIs1 Places Buildings2
2014-03-26 160 300,246 23 1,045 31,376
2014-04-07 403 2,072,042 323 5,422 206,841
2014-05-01 478 2,501,522 1,718 5,914 235,289
2014-06-01 528 2,759,871 1,958 5,967 241,633
2014-07-01 589 3,289,431 2,124 6,927 293,235
2014-08-01 768 4,646,245 2,834 7,779 423,751
2014-08-08 840 5,014,560 2,902 8,296 449,743
2014-08-20 1,002 5,860,244 2,993 12,296 505,748
2014-09-01 1,201 6,724,532 3,096 15,189 555,717
2014-09-07 1,273 7,007,193 3,204 18,215 571,813
2014-09-12 1,333 7,358,384 3,267 19,560 593,865
2014-10-06 1,657 9,055,498 3,574 32,992 750,888
2014-11-09 2,179 11,068,759
2014-11-23 2,586 12,025,864


1POIs do not include nodes with place and building tags.
2By Sept. 1, there were 11,769 buildings represented as nodes because the imagery in some areas is not detailed enough to trace the outlines of buildings. These are included in this building statistic.


The statistics on contributor activity take account of nodes, ways and relations that were created, modified or deleted.

The net effect of these contributions on the OpenStreetMap database is remarkable. In comparison with the OSMPlanet of early 2013, the net effect on the map as of August 15 for Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is :

  • 62,442 km of highways added from 21,597 (+289%)
  • 15,124 km of waterways added from 16,000 (+94%)
  • 11,162 Places added
  • 505,372 buildings added

How OSM products and services are used by the humanitarians

This section is to show various examples of OSM usage by the humanitarians organizations to organize aid, distribute goods, track cases. Please share stories from humanitarian teams and software developpers. Link below to studies, blog updates and softwares.


How You Can Contribute

Edit the Map

  • You can contribute from the Internet by tracing buildings, roads, waterways, etc. To react rapidly to support humanitarians deploying, we need a lot of contributors for remote editing. Visit LearnOSM.org to get started.
  • More experienced OSM contributors are invited to read the guidelines on Highway Tag and to revise the classification of roads. You also can assure the quality of the mapping by validating the Task manager tasks or using the various OSM Quality control tools.
  • Humanitarian field teams and knowledgeable local people also are essential. You can complete the map by adding the names of roads or various infrastructure items. You even can edit the map using small mobile devices. In addition, applications are available for online or offline mapping.
  • Add a Note or report an Error using the Notes feature on the Online Map. OSM contributors will edit the map from your comments.

Mapping Priority

  • Please choose from highest priority first
  • For experienced mappers, information on validating the tasks can be found here.
  Job No.      Priority Location What to map Imagery Source Task Mapping Status Task Validation Status Date Job Added
Job 463 Guinée roads and residential Landsat-8 Archived NA
Job 465 Guinée roads and residential OrbView-3 Archived NA
Job 469 Guekedou roads and buildings Pleiades-1A, CNES, Astrium / CartONG Complete Complete
Job 470 Kissidougou roads and buildings Pleiades-1A, CNES, Astrium / CartONG Complete Complete
Job 471 Macenta roads and buildings Pleiades-1A, CNES, Astrium / CartONG Complete Complete
Job 472 Medium Kankan roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 473 N'zérékoré roads and buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 475
(dev server)
Population buildings and huts Bing Complete Complete
Job 475 Medium Conakry roads and landuse Bing Complete In Progress
Job 476 Medium Dinguiraye roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 477 Medium Kérouané roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 478 Medium Faranah roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 480 Dabola roads and buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 481 Medium Guinea Topographic Name Entry 1 - JOSM Users Only US Army Topo Map Archived
Job 483 Medium Guinea Topographic Name Entry 2 - JOSM Users Only US Army Topo Map Complete In Progress
Job 484 Medium Mamou roads and buildings DigitalGlobe / Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 485 Zorzor roads and buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 487 Medium Foya, Liberia roads and buildings Pleiades-1B Complete In Progress
Job 489 Medium Guinea, Northern Liberia roads and buildings Spot-6 Complete In Progress
Job 497 Medium Guinea, Northern Liberia roads and buildings Spot-6 In Progress In Progress
Job 503 Medium Southern Guinea roads and buildings Spot-6 Complete In Progress
Job 568 Medium Kailahun district roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 572 High Koidu and Gueckedou areas roads and buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 574 Medium Daru roads and buildings Bing (Mapbox donation) Complete (bad imagery) In Progress July 6, 2014
Job 582 Medium Zimmi roads and res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 583 High Panguma, Kenema, Segbwema roads and buildings WorldView-2, DigitalGlobe, NextView Complete In Progress July 12, 2014
Job 586 Medium Panguma roads and buildings HIU Complete In Progress July 15, 2014
Job 587 High Panguma roads and buildings HIU Complete In Progress July 15, 2014
Job 605 High Bo roads, villages, streets Bing Complete In Progress
Job 616 High Monrovia roads, villages, streets Bing Complete In Progress
Job 620 High Freetown roads, landuse Bing Complete In Progress
Job 621 High Joru roads, villages, streets, buildings HIU Complete In Progress
Job 624 High Liberia roads, res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 625 High Harbel town buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 634 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 641 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 647 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing, Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 655 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing, Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 659 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing, Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 660 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing, Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 662 High parts of Monrovia buildings Bing, Mapbox Complete In Progress
Job 665 High Nimba County roads, res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 666 High parts of Freetown buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 672 High Port Loko, Bombali roads, res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 692 High parts of Freetown buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 706 parts of Freetown buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 711 Kayes buildings Bing Complete Complete
Job 717 High Kerouane and Macenta areas roads, res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 752 High N'zérékoré roads, res. areas Bing In Progress In Progress
Job 755 Grand Gedeh roads, res. areas, buildings Bing Complete In Progress
Job 148 High Bamako roads, res. areas Bing In Progress In Progress
Job 765 High Kouremale roads, res. areas Bing Complete In Progress
Job 767 High Bamako infrastructure, res. areas Bing In Progress In Progress
Job 778 Cestos City roads, buildings Digital Globe, NGA Complete In Progress
Job 780 Zwedru roads, buildings HIU, DigitalGlobe Complete In Progress
Job 817 Kankan region roads, buildings, water Pleiades 1A, CNES, Airbus DS Complete In Progress

Beyond these, we need experienced mappers to make assessments of missing data on a wider scale. Fix up of place names is needed. There are several old topographic maps of this area with lots of place names listed on them and possibly alternate spellings as well.

Monitoring / Validation tools

Response maps

  • Add links/examples of response maps for the area, here...

Tutorials

General

GNS Import

Below are video tutorials of the various steps to do GNS Imports using JOSM.

This YouTube playlist covers configuration of JOSM for doing GNS Name Import tasks and shows the basics of getting started and how to merge name nodes into OSM. You can watch them all in order or just skip around for any that look helpful.

GNS Name Import Tutorial Playlist


Available Imagery

Bing has greatly extended his imagery coverage over the last two years. But for the Ebola outbreak, their high-resolution imagery was not available for the three main towns we need to cover and the adjacent regions. The group CartoNG has purchased imagery on behalf of MSF-Switzerland for the three largest towns in the region. Task Manager jobs have been created for these towns, and they were mapped in 20 hours by our contributors, coordinating through the Task Manager.

Our secondary priority was to trace roads and locations of villages in the wider region. We started with a Landsat 8 image taken the 23rd of March. We also had some scattered Orbview 3 (from around 1990) for a very limited region.

Higher-resolution imagery was later obtained for free by Jean-Guilhem Cailton from Airbus Defence & Space. A new program by Mapbox/DigitalGlobe to offer free imagery to OSM also came to the rescue.

How to add to JOSM

It's easy to add special imagery to JOSM from the task manager jobs, where an imagery URL is provided within the task manager. Clicking the URL should trigger JOSM remote control to add the new imagery as a layer. For more details see OSM Tasking Manager/Setting up JOSM

Bing

Bing is the 'default' Imagery available for OSM (default option in most editors). The Bing imagery coverage is not complete for the Activation area, and alternative imagery sources are provided in the Task Manager Jobs, and described below.

Mapbox / DigitalGlobe

Mapbox / DigitalGlobe imagery now contributes to complete the Bing imagery coverage.

Imagery URL for JOSM:

  • tms[19]:http://{switch:a,b,c}.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/openstreetmap.map-4wvf9l0l/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

Landsat

These Landsat 8 layers were put online by Jean-Guilhem Cailton on OpenStreetMap-France server and show natural color in the "432" image and a traditional "false color" image in the 753 layer listed below:

Imagery URLs for JOSM:

  • Natural colour: tms[19]:http://imagery.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/guinee_c10_l8_pxs432/{zoom}/{x}/{y}
  • False colour: tms[19]:http://imagery.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/guinee_c10_l8_pxs753/{zoom}/{x}/{y}

Orbiew

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OrbView-3

Imagery URL for JOSM:

  • tms[16]:http://b.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/char.GuineaOrbview/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

Pléiades

These Pléiades layers were put online by Jean-Guilhem Cailton on OpenStreetMap-France server

Imagery URL for JOSM :

  • tms[23]:http://imagery.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/guinee_msf_pleiades1a/{zoom}/{x}/{y}

Spot-6

According to the e-mail of Jean-Guilhem Cailton on the HOT mailing list:

"Airbus D&S has offered two Spot-6 images, with 1.5 m resolution, covering the areas around Kenema and Kailahun. They are available in "natural colors," and also with a near-infrared band (NIR), in these TMS layers (that also include the Spot-6 images that were previously offered):

  • tms[22]:http://imagery.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/ebola_spot6/{zoom}/{x}/{y}
  • tms[22]:http://imagery.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/ebola_spot6_nir/{zoom}/{x}/{y}

These are URLs for JOSM, and you must accept the Astrium / OSM license (http://tasks.hotosm.org/license/6) before accessing them. Use source=Spot-6, Airbus

They can be used (along with other imagery sources) for the current priority need to locate villages and hamlets, and access roads and tracks, in the District of Kenema.

And also to complete these elements (settlements and access roads) in the area between Kailahun and Koindu where Bing is obscured by clouds.


0.5 m resolution images should be available soon to map the buildings in the towns of Daru and Kenema, which have lower priority."


(Other Imagery Sources)

  • Add sources and relevant information on imagery (broken into source) here...

Potential Datasources

Add potential data sources here...

Historical Maps

  • Historical maps, and other out-of-copyright sources can be rectified and used as a layer through MapWarper
  • Provide links to historical maps of the impacted area here...

Mapathon events

Past Events


ISERV Viewer

  • ISERV Level 0 Georeferenced and Raw Geolocated images ISERV
  • Provide links to some images from International Space Station...ISERV

Sentinel 1

  • Sentinel1 Radar Satellite images SENTINEL1
  • Provide links to some images from Sentinel1...tool

Media coverage

English

2014

2015

How people can help, republished by various medias

French

2014

Spanish

2014

Danish

2014

Finnish

2014

German

2014

Italian

2014

Dutch

2014

Polish

2014

Portugese

2014

Other Responses including Digital Humanitarian Network

  • For the first step of this activation, the VISOV group has helped us to locate areas to map, following media reports on suspected cases. For this second step, Cédric Moro has setup a new Tracking Map of Ebola cases for Sierra Leone and Liberia.
  • From MSF GIS Officer Field Office - 18-April /2014: "To all OSM-Hot teams, First of all and once again, we would like to send a big THANK YOU to every single one of you. Your work is a gift to us all in the field. Building-scale mapping for such an area is a huge help for our outreach teams, and for many expats newly arrived and needing a briefing on how the outbreak is evolving. Finding remote localities and access to them is often a race against time as a few hours can make a serious difference, not only for patients, but also to arrive in time to prevent new contacts to happen and keep the outbreak from spreading further. Cross-checking between local knowledge and OSM maps allows us to work much faster"
  • From MSF GIS Field Office - 2-April 2014: "A big THANK YOU from the emergency team in Gueckedou and Macenta to all of you guys in HOT/OSM! Your work speed and quality was far beyond our expectations. MapsKits are already distributed to the field teams and received an enthousiastic welcome from our staff, both international and local. As people carry on fighting against Ebola, it is heart-warming to feel presence and support from the international mapping community. Thanks to everyone!"
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