An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 hit Ecuador on April 16, and the open mapping community responded. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, or HOT, coordinated a global effort of volunteers to rapidly digitize satellite imagery to provide much needed maps and data to support humanitarian organizations deployed to the disaster.
A number of chapters of YouthMappers held remote mapping events to create OpenStreetMap data for relief efforts in Ecuador, including Clemson University, Mason Mappers, and YouthMappers at Texas Tech University. They joined thousands of volunteers in the urgent request for open spatial data, contributing an estimated 25,000 edits.
Coordinator for HOT in Latin America, Humberto Yances sent news from the site: "Daniel Orellana, who coordinates #MappingEcuador project into the country, presents this small but elocuent infograph about advances of this disaster mapping project that HOT is supporting. In just 9 days, 95% of priority area defined by "Secretaría Nacional de Planeación y Desarrollo" (SENPLADES) is actually covered. This is around 10.000 squared kilometers that are already mapped!! Until today over 2200 mappers have made 2.5 Million+ changes to OpenStreetMap using #MappingEcuador changeset comment. Congratulations for all your contributions! "
Felicidades!
YouthMapper Palak Matta, Clemson University, adds building and road data to OSM in HOT-defined priority areas of Ecuador affected by the earthquake. Photo by Blake Lyle.