In the tragic aftermath of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince in January 2010, members of the OpenStreetMap and OSGeo communities rallied to produce geographic data that directly assisted humanitarian aid workers in the rescue of disaster victims.

1. How Crowdsourcing
Changed Disaster
Relief Forever.

2. FOSS4G
8 September 2010

4. (time machine sound)

5. FOSS4G
2008

6. best
conference

7. best
conference
all
year

8. best
conference
every
year

9. you
are
awesome

10. your
software
is awesome

11. your
software
is useless

12. without
data

13. data

14. (meanwhile, back
in 2010...)

16. =

17. =

18. = +

23. “Crowdsourcing”

24. Coase's
Penguin

25. Yochai
Benkler

26. Yochai Ronald
Benkler Coase

27. Yochai Ronald Free
Benkler Coase Software

28. Commons-Based
Peer Production

29. Commons-Based
Peer Production
●
Non-monetary motivation

30. Commons-Based
Peer Production
●
Non-monetary motivation
●
Discrete, multi-sized pieces

31. Commons-Based
Peer Production
●
Non-monetary motivation
●
Discrete, multi-sized pieces
●
Low-cost integration

32. “Crowdsourcing”

36. 12 January 2010
16:53 (GMT-5)

38. 9,000,000
people in
Haiti

39. 3,000,000
affected

40. “there will be between
100,000 and 200,000
dead in total, although
we will never know the
exact number.”

42. Centre National
de l'Information
Géo-Spatiale
(CNIGS)

46. 12 hours later...

51. TelaScience

52. HaitiCrisisMap.org

57. 275 editors
500,000
objects edited

58. 600 editors
1,000,000
objects edited

63. “... the best source of transportation
information that we have for Haiti …
everybody is using OpenStreetMap.”
- UN OCHA aid worker

65. “We used OpenStreetMap on a
daily basis... Usually, it is impossible
to get this information.”
- UNOSAT technical staff

67. “I wish you could see [the team's]
faces light up when I ... tell them
that I'm going to give them street
level detail maps.”
- Fairfax County, Virginia
SAR team leader

70. “Without a doubt,
OpenStreetMap has
helped to save lives.”
- MapAction coordinator

71. “Crowdsourcing”

72. FAIL?

73. (time machine sound)

74. GIS and the Neogeographer
Schuyler Erle <sderle@metacarta.com>

75. GIS and the Neogeographer
GIS is ...
● Analytical
● Precise
● Deliberate
● Money is at stake
● Lives are at stake

76. GIS and the Neogeographer
Neogeography isn't
much like that
at all.

77. GIS and the Neogeographer
Neogeography is...
● “Mashups”
● “Web 2.0”
● “Red Dot Fever”
● Hacks
● Imprecise
● Fast

78. (meanwhile, back
in 2010...)

79. FAIL?

80. your
software
is useless

81. without
data

84. (time machine sound)

89. (meanwhile, back
in 2010...)

91. Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap
Team

92. mapkibera.org

96. “No map of the world is
worth a look if the land of
Utopia isn't shown there.”

97. If you have
worked on...

98. GDAL

99. MapServer

100. Mapnik

101. GeoServer

102. PostGIS

103. TileCache

104. OpenLayers

105. … then you have
helped save lives.

106. How Crowdsourcing
Changed Disaster
Relief Forever.

107. How You
Changed Disaster
Relief Forever.

108. Schuyler Erle
@schuyler
schuyler@simplegeo.com
With special thanks to:
Tom Buckley Stuart Gill
Kate Chapman Erica Hagen
Nicolas Chavent Mikel Maron
Steve Coast Jesse Robbins
Erdem Ergin Christopher Schmidt
Galen Evans Robert Soden
http://hot.openstreetmap.org/