HOT, it seems, is at another inflection point.

I would like to contribute and lead now to this new set of challenges.

I got involved with HOT 2011 and later served on the board from 2015-2018 focusing on stabilizing and foundation building to create a sustainable HOT. That sustainability has just been secured, at least for the next 5 years. The security that comes from long term guaranteed funding also has many pitfalls. I have the strategic and practical experience to return to the HOT board and make a difference.

I am a very strong advocate for local mappers and have helped train people throughout the world to map their own communities. Having contributed training and seed funding to mappers in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Haiti, West Africa and many other places. Local communities are the heart of OpenStreetMap. They are the reason HOT exists. They are the reason we must continue to be vigilant about the type of NGO HOT can and should be.

In my last days in my old job leading the GIS team at American Red Cross I secured the funds for Tasking Manager 4. I lead the team that created Portable OpenStreetMap, OpenMapKit, and many other technical tools related to improving map workflows and map quality.

Today, my day job is not day to day to mapping nor to OpenStreetMap. After some time away from the HOT board and Missing Maps to focus on my new job for a little bit I’m excited to re-engage and contribute again to the leadership of an amazing organization. I have strong strategic, fiduciary, and board experience that is needed at the moment to help HOT scale effectively.

I’m not going to give a list of priorities for the things I will focus on. I think it best to list my tenants that will guide my conversations and decisions on the board.

1. What is in best interest of local mapping communities?
2. Is this in the best interest of HOT’s volunteer mappers?
3. Is this making HOT just another INGO?
4. Are HOT paid staff best supporting local mappers?

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Missing Maps Leaderboard Updates

When Missing Maps started, it was impossible to imagine what it would ultimately become. The goal was to simply make more open map data available before disasters and to help the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team build more local mapping communities.

Early on we realized we needed better ways to quantify and track the impact of Missing Maps to OSM. Nearly 4 years later, we are making great progress on both of those fronts. Our efforts eventually produced the Missing Maps leaderboards, which sought to track individual users and teams.

The Missing Maps leaderboard technology is a streaming, real-time look at who is supporting our work. Initially funded by the Cisco Foundation, the leaderboards became a major way to engage and reward mappers. We were blown away when 4,000 mappers helped out on Missing Maps projects during the first year. Four years later, 52,000 mappers contributed to 1,200 mapping Missing Maps projects, the vast majority of those mappers were making their very first edits to OSM. In 2017, 10% of all new OSM mappers made their first edits in support of Missing Maps. The scale of tracking all these new users created problems for our system.

Thanks to a generous grant from Microsoft Philanthropies, Pacific Atlas migrated the stack to Microsoft Azure, completed a full analysis backfill, and rewrote large chunks to enable things to scale better in the future without dropping edits. As always, all the code is open, including the leaderboard code and the osm-stats infrastructure. We are always looking for help to create new badges or suggest new ideas.

The Numbers

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I’m almost home after three week field mapping trip to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The mapping is part of the American Red Cross’ West Africa Border Mapping project. We hope to verify the location of around 6,000 villages and detail map large portions of 15km of either side of the Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea borders. We are building off of the wonderful work done by HOT volunteers during the ebola crisis. This project is the largest Missing Maps project started to date. Field mapping is always a fun activity and is at the heart of mapping in OSM. Field Mapping is the important verification of the great work done by remote mappers around the world. Most Missing Maps projects have a field mapping component and we are constantly working to improve our methods, build local mapping capacity, and spread the OSM gospel. For this project we are planning on engaging over 200 volunteers to learn how to map in OSM.

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In 2014 Missing Maps came into being we realized that we needed a website. On a layover, flying back from field mapping in Africa, I built up the first iteration of the Missing Maps website. It served us well and was great to share our mission and introduce a new generation of mappers to OSM and HOTOSM. However, after a few months we realized we needed a much stronger platform for the project.

Keeping volunteers engaged between disasters is a key focus for humanitarian organizations around the world. Remotely training a large pool of extremely diverse volunteers requires time, proper tools, and coordination. A disaster is not the time to start the process. Instead, it is imperative to have a large body of well-coordinated volunteers that are ready to assist when a disaster occurs. Part of the Missing Maps engagement strategy is to create tools that will help us identify new mappers with little experience and effectively engage them to commit more time and become long term experienced OSM volunteers who are eventually able to build their own local OSM communities.

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The American Red Cross GIS Team is constantly looking for new ways to improve our workflows and learn from the OpenStreetMap and FOSS4G communities. I’m proud to say that 95% of the GIS analysis and map making we do is done using FOSS4G tools.

A couple of years ago we realized that to be effective consumers of OSM data and FOSS4G software we would need to start contributing and developing ourselves.

In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan we identified a need for a better OSM field data collection tool that could work with structured surveys. Eventually we created OpenMapKit with initial seed money from USAID Global Development Lab. We have used OpenMapKit in several Missing Maps field mapping missions last year in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. During these field trials we noticed that we were continually in need of an OMK compatible server that did not rely on connected cloud services. Due to the remoteness of our mapping locations we also needed to have better ways to interact and edit OSM in a disconnected way for days and potentially weeks at a time.

This fall, thanks to the Page Family Foundation, we began work on our largest and most ambitious mapping project to date. Over the next year we will map 15km on either side of the Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia borders (large PNG). This area was well mapped extensively by remote mappers during the Ebola crisis but lacks ground truthed data such as identifying hospitals, schools, churches, and other POIs. As part of this project we will establish a mapping hub in Guéckédou and develop the software and hardware tools that we need.

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The entire Missing Maps team hasn’t had a chance to get together since the HOT Summit when most of our planned meetings were cut short due to the Nepal Earthquake. This past week we finally gathered in person in Toronto, Canada for a few days of planning and strategic thinking.

The powwow kicked off with a wonderful mapathon hosted by MSF Canada. 60 new mappers joined the Missing Maps project and helped map parts of South Kivu.

Over the course of the three days we discussed several topics:

• Welcoming new members CartONG and Netherlands Red Cross,
• How to better support HOT,
• Updates and upgrades to tools such as the Tasking Manager,
• Planning for OSM Geo Week and #100Mapathons,
• Planning for Missing Maps 1 year anniversary,
• Missing Maps website changes and updates,
• Update on Missing Maps and HOT by the numbers from @dekstop,
• Sharing member organizations plans for the upcoming year, and
• Identifying potential new members and partners.

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Today I had the first of three “office hours” on HOT’s Mumble channel. I was glad that a few people stopped by and I was able to answer a some questions. Very happy to hear voices and connect them with names. I even had a chance to talk with Russ about the activation curriculum. Below are a couple of the highlights from that discussion.

What is the role of regional/local HOT, ie. HOT South America?

I do believe that HOT should be doing everything it can to empower and assist local OSM groups. OSM is great in that the local mapper always supersedes the remote mapper. I think building local communities should follow this same parallel. OSM communities should be driven by local needs and desires but can be supported from remote partners or HOT.

Thinking about this a little more I would add that I don’t think we should have a HOT South America, or a HOT Africa. OSM is the larger project that binds us together. Our goal of HOTties is not to setup local HOT organizations but to empower locals to map their communities and engage and collaborate on the map of the world. HOT should work closely with OSMF to fund grants community grants for equipment and other resources. This will allow HOT to train and mentor mappers to map features for humanitarian use while the larger OSM community goes about its normal business as it does in most of the world.

What is the most important thing for HOTs future?

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HOT is still at a pivotal time in its growth. We haven’t fully put the events the past few board elections behind us. The old debates of what a ‘HOT project’ is versus what is HOT, the role and responsibilities of the board, and silly conflicts, still go on. HOT must grow out of this current adolescent phase if it is to become truly successful and sustainable. HOT is and will always be a mapping NGO. However, to get HOT to where it needs to be, it needs to be about more than skilled mappers and dedicated activators. HOT needs to improves its fundraising, administration, and visioning to become an accountable organization. I know that there has been some resistance to HOT growing as an organization and that there are those members that see HOT the NGO as being different from the HOT community. I understand the resistance but disagree, HOT the NGO and HOT the community should be the same thing for a variety of reasons, most importantly fundraising. More partners are counting on our work both during activations and normal times.

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American Red Cross

I work full time for the American Red Cross where I lead the GIS team. We work around the world and frequently have contact with HOT and other organizations throughout our work. We work closely with HOT during disaster response to prioritize and plan activations. I often talk about HOT or about HOT’s perspective in my work with government agencies, corporations, and other non-governmental agencies.

In the past I have worked to give money to HOT for collaborative technology projects such as the Tasking Manager Upgrade. HOT is currently under contract to the American Red Cross support the development of OpenMapKit.

I serve as a de facto liaison between the Missing Maps project and the US Department of State Humanitarian Information Unit given my physical proximity to the HIU. I help coordinate imagery requests from the project and often create tasks on the tasking manager for Missing Maps.

I am frequently interviewed by the media in my role at the American Red Cross and often speak on behalf of the larger humanitarian mapping community which includes HOT.

Missing Maps

I co-founded the Missing Maps project with the British Red Cross, MSF, and HOT. I co-wrote the Memorandum of Understanding that explicitly outlines that member organizations must donate a defined part of all donor raised funds to HOT to ensure HOTs economic viability. Missing Maps is the only instance where I oversee any funds that are given to HOT for operations. The HOT Board approved and signed the MOU in 2014.

As I have stated before I will recuse myself from any discussions concerning financial matters with HOT and ARC. This follows not only good board practices but existing ARC and HOT rules.

My HOT journey and story really starts with the State of the Map US conference a few years ago. I had just started working for the American Red Cross and was asked to talk about how and why we use OpenStreetMap. At the conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Mikel, Schuyler, Russ, and many other passionate HOT folks. Six months later, I was fully embedded and accepted into HOT, working very closely with Andrew Buck and Pierre Beland to provide the NGO perspective for the Typhoon Haiyan activation. In the weeks and months to follow, I learned of the tremendous passion and dedication that all HOT people have for the organization, the work, and the continued success of HOT.

It is with that same passion that I ask for your nomination to the HOT Board. HOT is still at a pivotal time in its growth. We haven’t fully put the events the past few board elections behind us. The old debates of what a ‘HOT project’ is versus what is HOT, still go on. HOT must grow out of this current adolescent phase if it is to become truly successful and sustainable. HOT is and will always be a mapping NGO. However, to get HOT to where it needs to be, it needs to be about more than skilled mappers and dedicated activators. HOT needs to improves its fundraising, administration, and visioning to become a sustainable organization. I know that there has been some resistance to HOT growing as an organization and that there are those members that see HOT the NGO as being different from the HOT community. I understand the resistance but disagree, HOT the NGO and HOT the community should be the same thing for a variety of reasons, most importantly fundraising.

… See full entry