Crowdsourced Mapping Could Help Prevent the Next Big Ebola Outbreak

TAKEPART.COM by Jessica Dollin                                                                     April 14, 2015

Ebola dominated headlines this past year, but the epicenter of the outbreak wasn’t on a map until after the virus had infected and killed thousands. Without geographical resources, aid workers were tasked with the challenge of navigating remote areas to locate people in need of assistance.

So what if there was a way to provide this type of information—and what if you could help from the comfort of your own home? OpenStreetMap (OSM), an online project to create a free, editable map of the world using crowdsourced data, is making that a reality through an international initiative known as the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). The effort works in collaboration with the Missing Maps Project, which identifies vulnerable places in the developing world using the OSM technology. 

“Government administrations in these countries are quite limited and it takes too much time to obtain from them essential databases such as town place names, geolocalization of hospitals,” said Pierre Beland, a HOT activation coordinator who is co-leading the Ebola response. 

Think of OSM as the Wikipedia of maps—anyone with an Internet connection can take part in digital volunteerism by logging on to the website to add and update information, in this case by helping label remote locales or mapping out the most crisis-prone areas around the globe.

Read complete report.
http://news.yahoo.com/crowdsourced-mapping-could-help-prevent-next-big-ebola-204508728.html;_ylt=AwrBJR_Vvy1Vr3oAXPnQtDMD