Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Inc.
Washington, United States of America · Founded 2010
https://www.hotosm.org/en/Headquarters location
Operates in: KE, PH, SN
Mission
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team coordinates volunteer mappers worldwide to create free, open-source map data in areas vulnerable to disasters and humanitarian crises, ensuring that communities appear on maps and can be reached during emergencies while building local mapping capacity.
Current technology use
The core technology is OpenStreetMap (OSM), a Wikipedia-like platform where volunteers worldwide trace roads, buildings, waterways, and infrastructure from satellite imagery or by walking communities with GPS-enabled smartphones. HOT coordinates "mapathons" where hundreds of volunteers simultaneously map crisis zones, adds AI-powered tools that detect buildings automatically to accelerate mapping, and deploys field mappers who validate and enhance remote mapping with ground-truth local knowledge.
Public notes
HOT partners deeply with humanitarian organizations who become the primary users of the mapping data. The Missing Maps Project, a collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Red Cross, and other agencies, focuses on proactively mapping vulnerable areas before crises occur so responders aren't starting from blank maps when disasters strike.
Press and research
- Academic work
Mahabir R, Croitoru A, Crooks A, Agouris P, Stefanidis A. News coverage, digital activism, and geographical saliency: A case study of refugee camps and volunteered geographical information. PLoS One. 2018 Nov 8;13(11):e0206825. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206825. PMID: 30408059; PMCID: PMC6226103.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6226103/
The last several decades have witnessed a shift in the way in which news is delivered and consumed by users. With the growth and advancements in mobile technologies, the Internet, and Web 2.0 technologies users are not only consumers of news, but also producers of online content. This has resulted in a novel and highly participatory cyber-physical news awareness ecosystem that fosters digital activism, in which volunteers contribute content to online communities. While studies have examined the various components of this news awareness ecosystem, little is still known about how news media coverage (and in particular digital media) impacts digital activism. In order to address this challenge and develop a greater understanding of it, this paper focuses on a specific form of digital activism, that of the production of digital geographical content through crowdsourcing efforts. Using refugee camps from around the world as a case study, we examine the relationship between news coverage (via Google news), search trends (via Google trends) and user edit contribution patterns in OpenStreetMap, a prominent geospatial data crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we compare and contrast these patterns with user edit patterns in Wikipedia, a well-known non-geospatial crowdsourcing platform. Using Google news and Google trends to derive a measure of thematic public awareness, our findings indicate that digital activism bursts tend to take place during periods of sustained build-up of public awareness deficit or surplus. These findings are in line with two prominent mass communication theories: agenda setting and corrective action, and suggest the emergence of a novel stimulus-awareness-activism framework in today’s participatory digital age. Moreover, these findings further complement existing research examining the motivational factors that drive users to contribute to online collaborative communities. This paper brings us one step closer to understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive digital activism in particular in the geospatial domain.