Learning through the Challenge

Yesterday, the Ahmadu Bello Geomappers had its second official training for its members, while also improving their skills using the Malaria Challenge task. ID Editor was utilized during the first part of the training, owing to its flexibility and ease of use. The participants were introduced to the Hot Tasking Manager, and the training commenced with HOT OSM project 2846.

One common challenge encountered by the participants during the training was identifying buildings. As many may have observed, most of the areas earmarked by the HOT OSM community for the malaria mapping is rural, so buildings structures might not look like buildings in urban areas. A lot of the participants have this initial problem (identifying a real building), however we were able to overcome this challenge.

At some point during the training, participants have to switch from the custom imagery to Bing satellite imagery due to image resolution and global coverage. During the second part of the training, JOSM tools were introduced to the participants. Many thanks to our friend (Yolani Martins*) and the entire George Mason University Chapters for providing an excellent JOSM Toolkit. A copy can found here https://goo.gl/S0q6Co.

We walked all participants on how to download, and install the software, and the building plugins as well. The event was well attended, and some buildings were contributed to the Malaria challenge!

*Yolani Martins is a USAID GeoCenter YouthMappers Virtual Intern.