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MapSwipe: Powering Humanitarian Response

Ready! Set! Swipe!

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

There are many situations where it’s necessary to develop up to date maps, update existing maps, or add a higher level of detail to a pre-existing map. These areas slated for mapping or updating can be immense, and this can be a very time consuming process, often taking many hours, days, months, including many people inspecting aerial or satellite images, or numerous and diverse sources.

To make this an easier process, MapSwipe divides the area to be mapped or updated into tiny small areas or tasks that then allows people to look more efficiently and quickly to indicate in each smaller area if there is an object to pay attention to. ��Why does this make the work easier? Because it also allows the work to be separated into tasks that can be carried out by many people at the same time. People who are inexperienced in mapping and technical cartography are also able to participate! This also leaves the more difficult and technical work that is more time consuming to the technical cartographers (of which there are far fewer.)

Let’s look at an image in the next slide to get a better understanding of what this looks like.

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

Previously, mappers had to spend days scrolling through thousands of images of uninhabited forest, desert, or remote areas looking for communities that need mapping. Mapswipe helps eliminate needless work by volunteers.

This would be a huge area for people to map.

This is the result of MapSwipe. Much Better.

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

MapSwipe is part of

the Missing Maps

project

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

A request for humanitarian mapping data is created

HOT task manager and OpenStreetMaps use the data and add more detail

MapSwipers quickly create valuable data

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

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What is MapSwipe? What does it do?

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Humanitarian Impact: MapSwipe Use Cases

Quickly crowdsource the identification of humanitarian impact in aerial imagery

MapSwipe Output

Flood instances
Informal shelter locations

Provide focus for in depth analysis

Inform crowdsourced or AI mapping of buildings in identified areas

Crowdsource validation

Compare crowdsource identified areas with AI

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MapSwipe has achieved remarkable success, proving itself as a powerful tool in driving impactful humanitarian response.

Let’s explore the transformative impact of MapSwipe!

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2024 - Hurricane Beryl Activation (HOTOSM)

On July 01, 2024 Hurricane Beryl impacted St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada as a Category 5 hurricane. Damages include 20-40% of homes damaged in Bequia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 98% of houses and infrastructure heavily damaged or destroyed in Union Island, St Vincent and Grenadines, 100% of homes destroyed in Canouan, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 98% of infrastructure destroyed in Carriacou and Petite Martinique, Grenada.

130 humanitarian mappers swiped through the area in less than 24 hours, leading to a quick response time in understanding where the affected populations were living on the islands. �

https://www.hotosm.org/projects/quintana-roo-hurricanes-response/

https://mapswipe.org/en/projects/-O1RkCrXIt9l4i_EqDJt/

https://mapswipe.org/en/projects/-O1WyzgyhTwknlLCb3VC/

https://mapswipe.org/en/projects/-O1Oc7_QW5vN14RuzeCj/

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2024 - Amazonian Mapping for an Inclusive and Sustainable Amazon (HOTOSM)

The social impact mapping initiative, “Amazonian Mapping,” by the Latin America and Caribbean Open Mapping Hub (LAC Hub), seeks to map built elements, land use, and critical environmental conditions in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) free and open-source cartographic database. This allows local actors and specialists to use this information to understand risks and impacts and implement organized actions in their territory.

The initiative will address the “cartographic void” in this region, especially regarding the distribution of these populations and the threats they face, and promote knowledge exchange and technical training in mapping and spatial data use among communities and various actors committed to the preservation and sustainability of the Amazon. Detailed and comprehensive cartography of the region will expand visibility and facilitate access to all information for the Amazon defense sector.

This is a long term project across several countries, including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, with each area being put on MapSwipe to more easily identify where the structures, roads, and deforestation are present.

https://www.hotosm.org/updates/amazonian-mapping-for-an-inclusive-and-sustainable-amazon/

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2024 - Belize Wildfires (HOTOSM)

In June 2024, Belize began grappling with unprecedented wildfires that have destroyed over 10,000 hectares of agricultural land, affected more than 200 families, as well as caused over eight million US dollars in damages. The fires, fueled by extreme drought and rising temperatures, have devastated wildlife habitats and threatened communities, particularly in the Cayo and Toledo Districts. The National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) reported severe impacts in villages like San Pedro Columbia and Crique Jute. In response, the Open Mapping Hub in Latin America and the Caribbean launched efforts to support recovery, working with local partners to assess data needs and enhance future preparedness.

The projects were first put up on MapSwipe, covering an area of nearly 2000 square kilometers and mapped by 140 humanitarna mappers over the span of 24 hours.

https://www.hotosm.org/projects/belize-wildfires-response/

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Open_Mapping_Hub_-_Latin_America_and_The_Caribbean/Activations/2024_Belize_Wildfires_Response

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2024 - Forest Coverage Identification, Michoacán Mexico (HOTOSM)

Pilot project that seeks to identify changes occurring in natural ecosystems in the state of Michoacán in Mexico. The aim is to detect areas where natural vegetation has disappeared by observing satellite images. Community participation contributes to the construction of maps that aim to propose actions for restoration, conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems.

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2024 - East Sepik, Papua New Guinea Earthquake (HOTOSM)

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the flood-ravaged East Sepik region of Papua New Guinea in the morning of March 24, 2024. This resulted to the loss of at least five lives and the destruction of around 1,000 homes, according to officials. OpenStreetMap Papua New Guinea with the support of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team created a plan to map building and roads in the affected towns and communities to provide local base data to plan for response and recovery efforts by NGOs and responders on the ground.

The area of interest was put on on MapSwipe on March 25th, 2024 and was fully swiped in less than a week. The MapSwipe data was used to create 9 projects on the HOT Tasking Manager to get the area mapped as quickly as possible utilizing the support of nearly 3,000 humanitarian mapping volunteers.

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2024 - Mt. Kanlaon Volcano Activation (HOTOSM)

On June 3, 2024, Mount Kanlaon an active volcano, and the highest mountain on the island of Negros in the Philippines, and part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, erupted, spewing moderate emissions 300 meters high. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) issued a warning regarding the potential for lahars, and volcanic mudflows, due to the heavy thunderstorms over Negros Island, particularly around Mt. Kanlaon’s southern slopes.

By June 4, 2024, they had recorded ground deformation, volcanic earthquakes, and monitored significant sulfur dioxide emissions and a high-reaching plume from Kanlaon. Canlaon residents displaced by the eruption sought refuge in public schools which had been transformed into evacuation centers, and contended with the aftermath of volcanic ash. Mount Kanlaon's alert level raised from one to two, signifying the potential for more explosive eruptions.

The area was put onto MapSwipe on June 6th and was swiped by humanitarian volunteers in less than 24 hours. This saved considerable time when the resulting MapSwipe data was later put onto the HOT Tasking Manager for more detailed mapping.

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2023 - Food Security - Karnataka, India - Hasiru Aqua Small Pond Mapping (HOTOSM)

Hasiru Aqua, founded in 2020, is a small agritech startup based in Karnataka, India. They support farmers with aquaculture by providing services like water health monitoring, and selling fish-lings and better quality feeds to increase farmers’ fish farming productivity.

In Karnataka, the government provides subsidies to farmers to build ponds for rainwater harvesting. Many farmers who have built these ponds use them for additional purpose like inland fish farming. Due to being new to fish farming, these farmers were struggling with the initial yield. Having a better yield would mean better economic conditions for these farmers and also better nutrition with the increased protein intake in their diet.

In a project run by Harisu Aqua and HOT’s Asia Pacific Open Mapping Hub, MapSwipe and OpenStreetMap were used to find out where these ponds were in the landscape, so Harisu Aqua could reach out to these farmers to provide them with guidance and assistance.

They have helped few of these farmers to improve the fish farming yield. In order for Hasiru Aqua to support these farmers they need to know where the ponds are so that they can reach out to farmers in these areas.

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2023 - Hasiru Aqua Small Pond Mapping - How it Worked

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2023 - Hasiru Aqua Small Pond Mapping - How it Worked

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2023 - Hasiru Aqua Small Pond Mapping - The Impact

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2023 - Identifying Settlements - Storm Daniel in Libya (UN / MapAction)

MapSwipe projects were created after Storm Daniel flooded northeast Libya in 2023. The storm, which made landfall on September 10th, caused widespread destruction, including heavy rainfall, flash floods, and significant damage to infrastructure and communities in several municipalities.

During this disaster, the UN and Map Action, a UK registered NGO that specializes in providing mapping for humanitarian emergencies, were pulling on different databases to try and get together a gazetteer (georeferenced list) of settlements in the affected area in Libya. However, there was no real reference data to ensure that no settlements were missed. MapSwipe made this possible as essentially what MapSwipers do is provide a high quality data layer indicating where buildings (and therefore people) are. The MapSwipe layer was used to validate, or identify gaps in, the settlement data they had pulled together.

This would not have been possible without all the volunteers who used MapSwipe to pin down these buildings locations.

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2023 - Identifying Settlements - Storm Daniel in Libya (UN / MapAction)

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2023 - Earthquake Response in Herat, Afghanistan (HOTOSM)

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2023 - Mapping for Heat Resilience - Arizona, USA (ARC)

The deadliest hazard is not a hurricane or tornado, but it is the one that sneaks up unnoticed in the middle of a warm summer day. According to the CDC, more people die in the U.S. from heat than all other natural disasters combined. Heat has been the deadliest hazard in the USA in the past 60 years. While policymakers consider mobile homes and manufactured housing as an option for affordable housing and a solution to the housing shortage in Arizona, residents of mobile homes are 6 to 8 times more likely to perish from indoor heat exposure compared with residents of other types of housing. While mobile homes make up only 5% of the total housing stock in Arizona, they account for 40% of indoor heat deaths every year.

The American Red Cross used MapSwipe to help support Arizona State University’s heat resilience work, with volunteers helping to identify the locations of mobile and manufactured homes in Arizona. These structures are frequently missing from other data sources and represent one of the highest at risk for rising numbers of heat related deaths. Identifying where these residential structures are allows stakeholders to better target outreach and resources to mitigate this risk.

The data will be used by researchers at Arizona State University, The Knowledge Exchange for Resilience and partners like the Arizona Association of Manufactured, RV and Park Model Home Owners (AAMHO), the City of Phoenix and the Salt River Project utility company (SRP) to design solutions for heat resilience among mobile home owners across the state, to better understand the nature and extent of the problem and identify precise cost and locations of where to activate support, energy innovations, and housing weatherization in order to prevent hundreds of fatalities each year.

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2022 - Damage Assessment - Cyclone Batsirai - Madagascar (MSF)

Tropical cyclones devastated Madagascar's east coast in February 2022, affecting over 300,000 people. At the time MSF was providing healthcare but needed to identify the most damaged areas. They used MapSwipe’s Compare project type to get volunteers to compare pre- and post-cyclone images in order to quickly map flooding and damage levels. These projects were completed within days, which enabled quick analysis of affected buildings and MSF sent resulting maps to guide targeted assistance into the communities.

This new project type was used in two areas - Mananjary and Mahanoro, East Madagascar, which had been heavily affected by the cyclone. The users compared two satellite images, one before the cyclone and one after the cyclone. Once the projects were created, each task only took a couple of days to be completed, which allowed a quick response to the cyclone. Once individual tasks were completed, geo analysis was performed on the MapSwipe data to individual buildings and places of interest, which have been affected by either flooding or damage.

The MSF Missing Maps team sent these maps to the Head of Mission of the projects in Madagascar, where the field team then used them to plan humanitarian assistance to the affected areas.

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2021 - Damage Mapping Les Cayes, Haiti (MSF)

Here is another success story of using the compare project type on MapSwipe.

On August 14, 2021, the Grand Sud departments of Haiti were hit hard by an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. More than 2,200 people died and nearly 13,000 were injured. Several infrastructures and 130,000 houses collapsed.

In the aftermath of this disaster, a MapSwipe “Compare” project was prepared for volunteers to look at pre and post event imagery to determine if damage was visible. The specific study area was the city of Les Cayes 40 km southwest of the epicenter, which was overlaid with MapSwipe tiles. In the resulting map on this slide, you can see where volunteers identified the damage in this area. This data helps humanitarian organizations know which departments to prioritize during the disaster response.

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2021 - Finding Rohit

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2021 - COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Project in South Sudan (MSF)

Figure by HOT, more details here https://www.hotosm.org/projects/covid-19-vaccination-campaign-pilot-project/

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2021 - COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Project in South Sudan (MSF)

Figure by HOT, more details here https://www.hotosm.org/projects/covid-19-vaccination-campaign-pilot-project/

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2021 - COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Project in South Sudan (MSF)

Figure by HOT, more details here https://www.hotosm.org/projects/covid-19-vaccination-campaign-pilot-project/

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2020 - 2021 - Solid Waste Mapping Bamako, Mali

Between July 2020 and April 2021, the World Bank partnered with MapSwipe, The Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT), the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), and OpenStreetMap Mali on the Africa Cash for Digital Work Program, a pilot project centered on creating new remote employment opportunities for individuals affected by COVID-19 lockdowns and engaging them to solve challenges relevant to their community while building relevant skills in GIS and technology.

In Bamako, Mali, more than 100 individuals whose livelihoods were affected due to COVID-19 participated in the pilot program, 45% of whom were women. Users were trained on how to use MapSwipe, which has traditionally included identifying buildings, roadways, and waterways for an exciting new use case: identifying solid waste

Solid waste management is one of the largest challenges facing urban areas. The District of Bamako, Mali generates 1,500 tons of household waste each day, but only 57% of this waste is being collected and disposed of. The remaining waste is dumped openly in streets or burnt in air, causing challenges with air pollution, disease, and flooding.

Using MapSwipe, the participants helped identify where solid waste in Bamako was located to ensure safe and efficient collection of household waste in the future, making Bamako a cleaner, safer city for everyone to live. Together, they spent over 1,500 hours swiping through 6,000,000 imagery tiles and indicating where solid waste in the city was without ever having to leave their home and helping to ensure their safety amidst COVID-19. All individuals received payment for completing the microtasks, helping to offset some of the economic shock they experienced because of COVID restrictions.

And the data generated was a clear success. In under two weeks, users swiped an area of over 450 square kilometers, producing some of the highest quality, detailed data ever produced by MapSwipe.

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2018 - Botswana Malaria Control (HOTOSM)

In 2018, a large scale project involving large rural areas with low population density was put onto MapSwipe in Botswana. Using Mapswipe was a first step in identifying areas with buildings, which helped target where the population was living and where the structures were located. This project was focused on remote and field mapping, with the result being a complete census of one district of Botswana, in addition to pilots in five other villages that were hotspots for Malaria.

This data collected via MapSwipe was used to complete remote mapping in the area which helped create a census that the Ministry of Health, The National Malaria Programme, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) then used to plan for the annual Malaria spray campaigns.

https://mapswipe.org/en/projects/1599/

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2017 - Sex and Gender Based Violence in Haiti (MSF)

In Haiti, particularly in the densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince, the incidence of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) among young people, especially women and girls, is alarmingly high. The city’s varied landscape, with both densely populated areas and sparsely inhabited regions, posed a challenge for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in selecting effective survey points.

To address this, MSF leveraged MapSwipe data, which volunteers generated by identifying populated areas through satellite imagery. This data enabled MSF to precisely target survey locations, ensuring comprehensive coverage while avoiding uninhabited zones. As a result, MSF gained valuable insights into barriers to accessing care, allowing them to enhance outreach, raise awareness, and optimize service locations to better support women and girls, particularly those requiring urgent care within the critical 72-hour window after an incident. The MapSwipe data was used directly to determine where the populations lived.

https://www.missingmaps.org/blog/2018/06/25/mapswipe-story/

https://un.dk/haiti-displaced-women-face-unprecedented-level-of-insecurity-and-sexual-violence/

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People Love Using MapSwipe!

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People Love Using MapSwipe!

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Thank you :)

Ready! Set! Swipe!