[HLUG] Crisis Mapping on Radio 4

[George DiceGeorge]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s6mf0

Dr Kat Arney meets the people trying to change the world one map at a time. 
These are volunteers who use their free time to map the world's unmapped 
places and people.

She sees how being on a map affects people's work, education and rights. And 
in extreme weather or after a natural disaster, she hears how mappers might 
help us to find the people who have fallen off the maps. She also hears from 
crisis mappers, people who source any information they can after tragedies 
to document what is happening on the ground as fast as possible.

This story starts in January 2010, when a huge earthquake hit the island 
nation of Haiti. Thousands of miles away, a group of American students heard 
about the damage, logged onto their laptops and started mapping any 
post-disaster information they could find online. Their aim was to help the 
rescue and relief services save as many lives as possible.

Four years on, international contingents of cartographers now deploy after 
every natural disaster, and in areas of political unrest and civil war. They 
scour the internet for cries for help on social media, then mark them on 
maps to try to get help to people who need it most.

There's also a project making a continual effort to make the most accurate 
physical map of the globe. Contributing could mean joining a mapping party 
in London. Or cycling around rural Uganda with a GPS device.

Thousands of volunteers are now spending their spare time contributing to 
these efforts. Some of those who started it all have become internationally 
recognised in a new area of expertise. As volunteers assemble around the 
world, Dr Kat Arney asks how powerful these maps can be and also assesses 
the problems that come with them.

Produced by Clare Salisbury and Jolyon Jenkins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qck84
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Damaged_buildings_crisis_mapping