I have been looking for opportunities to volunteer for a while and, due to family, work and other commitments, I cannot commit to volunteering regularly. This discounts me from volunteering at a local charity as they would want me to be available on a regular schedule so they can plan their workload.
Therefore, I have been searching for online volunteering opportunities. I wanted to contribute online so I could use any spare time I have helping out, whether it was a free 10 minutes or an hour at a time.
I was browsing reddit and came across a post that mentioned the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT OSM) that uses volunteers to trace data from satellite images on to OpenStreetMap for use by aid agencies when responding to situations of political crisis and natural disasters. Microsoft has donated all their Bing satellite images for use by HOT OSM.
I browsed a number of web sites to see if the data was actually being used and came across a few references to the maps being used on the ground. The HOT OSM projects are tied in with the Missing Maps and MapGive projects and do seem to be making a difference. This was one of the criteria for the use of my time.
I first had to learn how to edit OpenStreetMap, so I followed the steps at LearnOSM and practiced on the OpenStreetMap in my local area, including the use of the JOSM application.
I then learned how to use the OSM Tasking Manager from this section at LearnOSM so I could start contributing to the projects.
If you browse the OpenStreetMap wiki there is a lot of help and information if you are unsure about any aspects of the process. For example, I have been working on projects in West Africa and one area I was unsure of was how to identify what type of road I was looking at on the satellite images so I could tag it correctly. After a bit of searching I came across this post which helped enormously.
I wondered, as you probably will, why the aid agencies don’t just use Google Maps. There are several reasons, which can probably be articulated better by others:
- Google decides what is displayed on Google Maps
- anyone can edit OSM and the data stays freely available
- OSM is free for everyone to view, download and print
- in areas of concern Google doesn’t display every road, street, track, path, wall and building (which is what you will be filling in if you volunteer)
An overview of the Humanitarian OSM Team is available at their wiki.
If you are interested in volunteering and, like me, you are a bit techie but are unable to commit regularly, then this is the one of the better uses of your spare time. You will make a difference.
griffp 