humanitarian.info

Previously. Now: there’s a new mailing list [http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ps: register at talk-ps@openstreetmap.org] for people who want to get involved in mapping in Gaza and the West Bank. They’re still looking for people with direct knowledge of Gaza to join in the editing process. A particular note for me:

In the process, agencies like UNOSAT and EC JRC have started selective release of their data sets .. a great start to open geodata exchange. The OpenStreetMap Wiki has an extensive (perhaps the greatest) collection of Palestinian geodata on the internet, all collected rapidly through crowdsourcing. [My emphasis.]

See? Crowdsourcing can work.¹ More can be found on Mikel’s blog at http://brainoff.com/weblog/index.php?s=gaza+openstreetmap.

1. Sometimes. [↩]

Only joking – intelligent design theory is a truckle of incoherent hand-waving. What I meant to say, of course, is that we need to be thinking about better design when it comes to information products, particularly maps. Last week Rich Treves tried to destroy my self-confidence by posting a picture which is invisible to people colour-blind in the red-green spectrum¹ but he agreed that we have a problem in neogeography, a trend which started as GIS became more easily accessible.

One of my colleagues lamented that the new generation of GIS technicians lacked any real training in cartography (or had slept through that lesson on their course) – the ease with which GIS enabled mapmaking had lowered the barrier to entry, and a whole bunch of new folks were making maps without even having read How To Lie With Maps. My colleague had a vested interest – he had originally been a cartographer before training up in GIS. Neither of us were arguing against GIS or against neogeography, both of which are fantastic leaps forward as far as I’m concerned. We were only arguing that there’s a danger that cartography gets left behind, and that’s a problem – not because it’s some sort of artisan skill which needs to be kept alive, but because cartography is more relevant than ever in an age where maps are everywhere.

With more maps in front of more people than ever before, the obligation on the map maker to communicate effectively is imperative – and in the end, that effective communication depends on good design. Rich’s blog is devoted to the question of how to improve design in neogeography² but there’s still a big design gap. The question is, how can we collectively improve our work? The whole point of neogeography is that it lowers the barrier to entry, so a top-down approach (training, qualifications, etc) won’t fly with the community, let alone make an impact; yet there seems to be little in the way of standards or good practice emerging from the grassroots.

1. Since I am one such person I wept uncontrollably even while I was typing my comment in. [↩]
2. And please, won’t somebody fund him to go to Where 2.0 so he can spread the word? [↩]

MapAction have been a positive force in terms of rolling out humanitarian mapping in the field. Not content with walking the walk, they’re also talking the talk with the publication of a Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping [pdf  3.1MB]. A practical guide for aid workers, it focuses on free resources to produce basic maps – an introduction to the topic of GIS, followed by chapters on GPS use, Google Earth and MapWindow.¹ I’ll  let head honcho Nigel Woof do the rest:

The guide is aimed at aid workers who are not GIS specialists, so it may not be useful for those who are already technically advanced in GIS. However, we would greatly appreciate it if you could help to disseminate the guide to anyone whom you think may find it useful. We are particularly trying to reach NGOs. This first edition is very much a ‘beta’ version and we would like to expand and update it later this year; so we would very much welcome your comments and feedback.

My short review: this is a fantastic addition to the field of humanitarian GIS, and it definitely fills a gap in the market for aidworkers who have no GIS experience but want to start mapping to support their work. Download it and distribute it to everybody you meet on your next mission, and let’s see if we can’t turn this ship around towards the fabled lost continent of Maplantis.

1. I’ve got to be honest – I’ve never used MapWindow, so I can’t tell you how useful this is. It’s built on .NET though, which strikes fear into my Xubuntu heart. Grass! [↩]

Following my thoughts about being mapless in Gaza, I wanted to follow up on the work of UNITAR-UNOSAT, who have made the leap from the more basic satellite images that they used to provide, and are now regularly providing damage assessments. Their analysis of postwar damage in Georgia was very interesting¹ and now they’re producing similar damage assessments over Gaza, with a commitment to update as often as they get new images.

I mentioned the .kmz file that Stefan at Ogle Earth has been putting together, which includes the UNOSAT layer. Stefan also lamented the fact that – while they provide frequent updates and quality outputs – UNOSAT products are only provided in PDF format.

And yet, the result, always, is a PDF map, which is great for printing out but not any good for any other kind of use. In some cases, the PDFs are locked against everything but printing, which means taking screenshots in order to rasterize them for placement in Google Earth… Given the global scope of these maps, their timeliness and usefulness, wouldn’t it be great if these were automatically published as KML to the Global Awareness default layer in Google Earth? People wouldn’t even need to go look for maps when they zoom in on a region hit by an emergency.

Well, I’ll agree with Stefan up to a point. PDF files are useful for nothing except printing – but most of UNOSAT’s potential users only want to print them , and playing around with the data is the last thing on their minds. However the good news is that it looks like they’re already starting – the damage assesssment data is also available as a geodatabase file and as a .kmz file. Einar has been circulating these versions to people working on the response, but has reservations on two grounds.

1. The first is regarding the added value of releasing the data more widely – what is it, exactly? My response is that to fulfill their mission as effectively as possible, UNOSAT should be producing multiple formats and distributing across various distribution channels – and a side effect of this will be an increase the possibility of useful and interesting applications emerging. We can’t predict what they might be – and they might not even appear – but the whole neogeography field is based around innovation – it just needs the data to enable it.
2. The second concern is more difficult to address – the question of whether the data will be misinterpreted or misused. This data will never be 100% accurate, which can lead to criticism of the agency publishing it if people don’t understand that. There’s also a slim chance that the data might be abused – for example, to misrepresent the situation on the ground – although the chances of this seem very small. My response to these problems is that people are free to criticise on the basis of the PDF file already, and releasing the data is unlikely to increase the type or frequency of criticism. We faced this all the time in the Humanitarian Information Centres – people would come in waving a printout and saying “Your maps are wrong!”, to which charge we would patiently explain that all maps are wrong, and would they like to help us improve?

To some extent Open Street Map have already started to deal with these issues using their existing community mechanisms, but UNOSAT is different – it’s a formal organisation in a large bureaucracy without the mandate or means to deal with public enquiries like this. Perhaps the best approach would be a tag-team of UNOSAT and OSM – sharing data as widely as possible, with UNOSAT the corporate source and OSM the buffer to address these issues as they arise?

1. Although under-utilized on the ground – that’s the next obstacle we have to overcome, guys! [↩]

Stefan delivers the Google Earth goods:

UNOSAT has just released a map dated January 9 that contains satellite imagery of Gaza City acquired by the WorldView-1 Satellite on January 6… I’ve added that map to the Gaza maps network link for Google Earth, which in the meantime also contains the updated OCHA Gaza situation map, dated January 8.

While Jon gets irate about the state of humanitarian mapping in 2009:

Impressive work all around but I need to gripe about what I see as an antiquated way of approaching humanitarian disasters at least as far as mapping is concerned… We can’t keep doing this.  We need to evolve.  There are too many people relying on us.  It is time to work past licensing issues, or whatever the real issues are, and start making substantive changes.

And Mikel defends the indefensible prospect of better maps of Gaza:

There’s a again an presumption of insider knowledge here, that anyone who is operating in Gaza is going to know what’s up. I don’t believe that… There are better things for you to do for Gazans. Don’t do this. Most of us can’t do anything directly. Actually no one from anywhere can get into Gaza to help. Why discourage a contribution?

I’m with all of these guys, all of whom are doing sterling work in trying to push the boulder of humanitarian mapping up a particularly steep hill called “business as usual”. Nigel Woof at MapAction recently asked me for feedback on the main lines of progress in humanitarian GIS in the last year¹ but I still feel like my 2006 essay on is largely still accurate – although I will agree that it fails to cover neogeography particularly well²

I still feel that our biggest problem is our lack of a clear objective in improving spatial data provision. I agree with Mikel that the OSM approach can really improve data quality in real time – but if nobody will use that data, then it calls into question the whole endeavour³ – but I would still encourage people to contribute to OSM on the basis that it is a long-term investment in a public good.

But still nobody answers my basic questions - who are these maps for, when are these maps for, what are these maps for? Maybe different projects answer different needs – but then we run into the interoperability question (I agree with Jon here – PDF files? In 2009?). Crowdsourcing alone isn’t the answer, but in this case it’s a better start than business as usual.

1. And Nigel – apologies for not getting back to you sooner. [↩]
2. Time for an update, possibly. [↩]
3. See also Ushahidi for another application of this objection. [↩]

High resolution satellite imagery, that is… zing! While the news from the Middle East may be depressing as hell, it has provided a stimulus for Open Street Map to improve their spatial data for Gaza. Jon has done a comparison of existing online maps, showing Google Maps to the initial winner – although OSM are working hard to update their offering, and as Jon says “the flexibility OSM has shows it’s value as a quickly adaptable humanitarian tool.”

Following OSM’s initial request for support, Alertnet ran the story yesterday, and updates will be posted on Mikel’s blog. This is worthwhile stuff – as well as being potentially useful for people working in that area, it’s a long-term contribution towards the spatial data infrastructure of the middle east. If you have any knowledge of Gaza, then you can contribute via the Wiki – and if you’ve got any of that high-resolution sat imagery, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you…

Those crazy jokers at the UN Joint Logistics Centre have just released version 2.0 of the UN Spatial Data Infrastructure for Transport database schema, based on feedback received since last September’s release and developed with WFP and Ithaca (good to see that partnership being productive). This version covers an XML schema, the schema documentation, template databases and emergency assessment forms. The main main changes in version 2.0 include:

1. “Light” and “Comprehensive” UNSDIT packages. The most significant change has been the packaging of a “Light” subset of the Comprehensive UNSDIT package to better match information requirements in sudden-onset emergencies.

Now this is a very smart idea indeed. When you’re doing the emergency response end, the last thing you want is to wade through a massive amount of barely-relevant data or fill out a single field in a 400-field db. A light version makes a lot of sense – I’d be interested to know what the process was for deciding what what was included and what wasn’t.

2. “Light” UNSDIT Assessment forms. The same concern guided the choice to release an assessment package narrowed to the minimal set of information requirements of a sudden onset emergency response.

An even smarter idea. This is something that should be adopted by all the clusters, not just logistics.

3. ESRI Personal Geodatabase and Shapefile template databases. UNSDIT template databases aligned to version 2.0 of the UNSDIT schema are made available through this release as ESRI Personal Geodatabase and Shapefile to better serve for partners operating within an open source environment.

And it gets smarter still!

Some additional news worth reporting: UNJLC is planning to offer a Web Mapping/Reporting and a data download service at some point, which will be a considerable step forward (and hopefully be more useful than GeoNetwork is currently – jpeg maps of goat distribution, anybody?).

Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron spoke at Where2.0 on Disaster Technology. Streaming video is a bit of a non-starter on my shonky internet connection, but both of these guys have an interesting take on the sector. They’re both technology evangelists, but minus the utopianism that makes my fists itch. A platform like Where2.0 is fantastic for getting the word out and (hopefully) engaging more people in the process of development for humanitarian action.

Here comes the requisite word of warning: for many people the politics of humanitarian assistance (both international and organisational) don’t appear on their radar. If we want useful tools to come out of this sort of forum, we have to communicate the political realities that technology will bump up against. Myanmar is a case in point; there’s a lot of activity (as per my earlier post) but the dots just aren’t joined up, and this needs to stop.

I used to think that this was just a phase that we were going through; then I thought that it was a naturally occurring state that we had to work around; then I realised that the endemic problems of co-ordination that we have were emergent properties of the system; but now I’m not sure what I think. Maybe I should leave the thinking to other people for a while.

Anyway, watch the video. You’ll enjoy it. They’re American, you know.

Rich Treves blogs on Google Earth design, and his ideas are solid (I particularly like his post on 2005 – 2015: the Lost Decade of Neo-Geography?). A recent interest in humanitarian applications, and some discussions with people like Nigel Woof of MapAction, have lead him to develop TMapper, a thematic mapping tool for Google Earth. Needless to say, this is exactly the sort of thing that I was looking for in Bangladesh (and would doubtless be useful for Myanmar, ahem).

Now, I haven’t been able to play with this yet, because my shonky mobile internet connection means that the download is too large and difficult. However from the description this looks like a first step in making Google Earth more versatile, which can only be a good thing. I’m slightly worried by the .NET dependency, and I worry that perhaps this might end up falling between two stools – too complicated for non-GIS folk to easily use, and too lightweight for GIS folk to feel comfortable with.

Nobody’s perfect, however, and at least this is something we can test. Thanks to Rich for giving this some thought and putting in the time – he’s looking for feedback, so if you want to play around with TMapper, let him know.

• MapAction and BrightEarth both feature in an article in the Independent entitled “Mapping the disaster zones” – how they think up the intensely creative titles for these articles, I just don’t know. Interesting enough, but these articles always leave me with a sense that the writer just doesn’t get it – apparently “Within 48 hours: The latest field information is combined with accurate 1:5,000,000 “base maps” to form the first complete maps of disaster-zone data”, which is news to me.

• At the bottom of the press release Intel, Grameen Announce Joint Business Venture to Fuel Social and Economic Development Opportunities Empowered by Technology, we learn that Intel have teamed up with NetHope to develop new solutions for the field, the first (and possibly last) of which is the Aid Station, a “rugged, purpose-built, low-cost technology platform suitable for use in harsh, remote locations”.

• Jon Thompson sends me links to two initiatives which mainly force me to ask the question “Why?” NGO Post and Commkit are both well-intended, but both seem to be hell-bent on reinventing the wheel. If Digg works, why not just create an NGO channel on it rather than build an entirely new NGO version of it? If you need “a humanitarian communications platform that is autonomous (works with very little infrastructure) and accessible (anyone can use it)”, then why not use the internet with Sahana running on it? OTOH, it’s standard NGO practice to reinvent the wheel, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised – however if anybody can shed any light on either of these, I’ll be more than happy to revise my opinion.

• Development Gateway have launched two new dgCommunities – one for Disasters Prevention and Response and one for Stabilization & Reconstruction, both with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This partnership seems to have emerged out of CSIS giving up on the idea of launching their own community, the Hub, which explains the inclusion of S&R (terminology which the US military loves and the humanitarian community does not). I’ve nothing against community sites, but I’m waiting to see one in this sector which works as a community (particularly following my own experience with AidWorkers Network).

• The OLPC XO2 is announced. Quoth OLPC news:

On top of that it seems as though a new UN Millennium Development Goal is in the works. The press-release quotes Nirj Deva, Member of the European Parliament, as saying: “One Laptop per Child and the XO laptop are crucial to the fulfillment of the proposed UN Ninth Millennium Goal: to ensure that every child between the ages of 6 and 12 has immediate access to a personal laptop computer by 2015.”

Somebody shoot me. Or better still, send me more news for this section.