Coworker Aids Haiti Earthquake Victims

During December, Innovation Showcase coworker Tim Waters joined us here at Old Broadcasting House. Tim is a freelance geospatial developer and consultant who runs he’s own company called Think Where. Tim also volunteers with OpenStreetMap (OSM), a free editable map of the whole world. OSM allows users to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way.

Following the devastating storms in Haiti last year, Tim organised the import of extensive road networks to be placed into the OSM database. It found that the majority of residential streets were unmapped.

Immediately after the recent earthquake, first responders and the wider GIS “crisismappers” sprung into action in coordination with other OpenStreetMappers. No one had accurate maps of the country on the ground, nor a vision of where the problems were, what buildings had collapsed and which bridges were down. OpenStreetMap began listing the data that was available and putting the pieces together.

Tim continues,

“There were several old paper maps available on the internet but inaccessible to the mappers who needed them. Together will my client, New York Public Library (NYPL), using my developed open source software I was able to set up a Map Warper instance to make these resources available. The NYPL map division also added several maps of their own that cover the island. Others followed including DigitalGlobe, who then released their satellite imagery.

“People were then able to identify informal tent camps, downed bridges and destroyed houses, aiding damage assessment efforts and dynamic routing applications, using online and desktop based mapping tools. Aid workers on the ground were putting OSM maps on their GPS devices, and printing them off for use in paper maps. The feedback said that the data was the best available from people across the world!”

To find out more about Tim Waters, visit his website at http://thinkwhere.wordpress.com/.

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