News of Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group.
Posted in Events, Uncategorized, VGI Group on Sep 14th, 2018
As previously announced, Sabrina Marx and Melanie Eckle recently visited Dar es Salaam to attend the Missing Maps Members Gathering and to join the FOSS4G and HOT Summit community for their joint annual gatherings.
The Missing Maps Members Gathering was the first side event of the conference week. Likewise to previous years, the Missing Maps members [...]
Posted in Services, Software, Uncategorized on Aug 16th, 2018
Recently a consultancy and development agreement about OpenStreetMap Analytics Development has been reached with the World Bank in the context of the Open Cities Africa project and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI).
The main objective of this consultancy is to develop and implement new functionalities for OpenStreetMap [...]
Posted in Events on May 24th, 2018
Last weekend Heidelberg was the host city of this semesters geography “BuFaTa” (Bundesfachschaftentagung). During this four day event student associations from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and their members came together to discuss, learn and spend time together. The event was organized by an excellent student team from Heidelberg.
The disastermappers Heidelberg contributed to the BuFaTa by organising a Missing [...]
as mentioned earlier this Monday will see the first of our disastermappers heidelberg Mapathons this summer semester. But this will definitely not be your only chance to participate in some collaborative OSM mapping or learning how to work with OSM data this semester at Heidelberg University. So here is the current schedule. This should help [...]
Posted in OSM, Publications, VGI Group on Apr 2nd, 2018
Over the last years, the growing OpenStreetMap (OSM) database repeatedly proved its potential for various use cases, including disaster management. Disaster mapping activations show increasing contributions, but oftentimes raise questions related to the quality of the provided Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI).
In order to better monitor and understand OSM mapping and data quality, HeiGIT developed a [...]
Posted in Events, External Projects on Mar 28th, 2018
Over the last couple of years a new group of actors has become increasingly important to support disaster management - digital volunteers. They support disaster responses and humanitarian activities from all over the world. Crowdsourced Wikipedia articles are oftentimes the first source of information people read to learn more about a disaster. Likewise, the OpenStreetMap [...]
Disaster events damage human infrastructure and its surroundings within seconds. To support humanitarian logistics, the Disaster OpenRouteService needs the latest, most accurate data available. While crowd-sourcing OSM updates during disasters proved very successful, there is not yet a convenient way of automatically accessing up-to-date OSM data for specific regions of interest. Addressing this need, HeiGIT [...]
Posted in Events, External Projects, Press release, Services on Aug 10th, 2017
We are happy to hereby announce the official partnership of the HeiGIT/GIScience Research Group Heidelberg and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)!
The GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University has been supporting the use of OpenStreetMap for humanitarian and disaster management purposes already since 2008 when the first instance of the Disaster and Emergency OpenRouteService was developed [...]
Posted in Events on Jul 13th, 2017
Already one year ago that MapSwipe was officially launched!
A big thank you to our contributors for your support - one year of tapping, swiping and putting families on the map!
In just one year thousands of users contributed more than 10 million taps and thereby provided crucial information on unmapped places.
In projects like shown below settlement [...]
Posted in Research on Jun 30th, 2017
In the aftermath of a disaster, knowing the condition of buildings, infrastructure, and utilities is critical to both immediate response and long-term recovery efforts. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is often asked to help identify damage to buildings and other assets in the affected region. In the past, limitations in post-disaster [...]