Crisis mapping

Crisis mapping is the real-time gathering, display and analysis of data during a crisis, usually a natural disaster or social/political conflict (violence, elections, etc.). Crisis mapping projects usually allows large numbers of people, including the public and crisis responders, to contribute information either remotely or from the site of the crisis. One benefit of the crisis mapping method over others is that it can increase situational awareness, since the public can report information and improve data management.

Crisis mappers work with data that comes from diverse sources and can be produced for varying purposes. As such, there is some overlap with big data,international development, and community engagement.

One of the first major events to utilize crisis mapping was the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people and left homes and infrastructure badly damaged. People who wanted to help started mapping the basic infrastructure, especially in OpenStreetMap, and were then able to do more detailed mapping as better resources became available. Crisis mapping in one form or another has been used in many crises since then. Many volunteers have also joined to help with data responses to crises and to build new information-handling tools for both crisis mappers and crisis responders in the field.

Since 2010, crisis mappers have mapped events in Libya (refugees), Japan (crowdsourcing and radiation monitoring for 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami), Chile (Humanitarian response to the 2010 Chile earthquake), Pakistan (2010 Pakistan floods, 2011 floods), Somalia (refugees), Alabama (April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak), and dozens of smaller disasters and events around the world.

Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, hosting Syrians escaping the war, is being actively mapped on OpenStreetMap by UNHCR and REACH workers.

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