In the last week Melanie Eckle, who is working at the HeiGIT / GIScience Research Group Heidelberg, was elected as a Board Member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Congratulations Melanie!
The newly elected Board Members Ahasanul Hoque, Pete Masters and Melanie Eckle will join Jorieke Vyncke and Dale Kunce. The Board is elected by HOT’s voting members and oversees the activity of the HOT community and maps out the long-term strategy. Melanie is not only an OSM enthusiast, she has already worked together with many HOT members from various countries and is a driving force to build connections between academia and practitioners. We are looking forward to tighten these partnerships to address to challenges Melanie pointed out:
- How well do we know the HOT community, and what are their needs?
- What is the impact of HOT’s work?
- How can we better identify and meet the needs of potential data users?
- How can we detect deficiencies in the OSM data, improve validation and data maintenance processes, and assure a certain level of data quality?
- How can we better support and encourage local mapping communities, and link remote and local mappers?
Since many of these challenges and the work of HOT in general are closely related to the work of the GIScience Research Group and HeiGIT (e.g. its Humanitarian mapping division), we will support her whenever possible. Keep up the good work!