Humanitarian OSM Team/Working groups/Activation

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General Information
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Working Group: Activation
Meetings: Weekly
Membership: All Are Welcome
Contact: HOT Slack

The HOT Activation Working Group (AWG) focuses on developing and proposing procedures, workflows, tools, and other items for management of HOT's disaster (or, crisis) mapping. We collaborate with the goals to increase participation in mapping and activation coordination, supporting local OSM communities during disasters, and connect with the humanitarian stakeholders to better meet their needs and make the data most useful and easy to use. During activations (or, disaster mapping) this group also serves as a place for those involved to discuss, coordinate and plan. Everyone is encouraged to become involved; especially if you want to contribute to coordinating disaster mapping during a crisis - this is the group for you!

How to Get Involved

To notify us of an emergent event that may need HOT assistance: email us at: Activation @ hotosm.org or notify the #disaster-mapping channel on the HOT Slack (must register)

To join the working group:

  • Review our Terms of Reference (ToR)
  • Attend the Next Meeting: Check the Working Group Calendar for schedule
    • There are no requirements to attend, any and all are welcome to join!
    • Currently the meetings are usually one hour, held weekly, alternating time zones to accommodate people in different geographies
    • Meetings are usually conducted via text in the #disaster-mapping HOT Slack channel
      • Alternative platforms can be used when needed, by request, and approval/ability of the Working Group lead(s) to fulfill such request
      • Email Activation @ hotosm.org if you are unable to access Slack and would like to join
      • Note: we have historically, and continue to, prefer text meetings in order to make attending easier for non-English speakers
    • Meeting times and length may vary, especially during the onset of large disasters, the best way to stay informed is through the Slack channel!

Meeting agenda and minutes

HOT Activation WG Trello - this Trello board is used for our meeting agenda, summaries/minutes, and more (such as projects or activities planning and tracking).

Activation Working Group Structure

  • Leads: currently Ralph Aytoun facilitates most meetings, we are looking for someone to assist him.
  • Co-Lead(s): currently we are looking for co-leads
  • Hub-Leads: these are HOT staff who represent our four regional hubs in disaster related activities
    • Eastern and Southern Africa: TBC
    • Western and Northern Africa: TBC
    • Asia-Pacific: TBC
    • Latin America and the Caribbean: TBC
  • Members: All who join in our activities - maybe you?

Materials, Resources and Tools

Working Group Policies and Information

  • All who participate in HOT activities including the Activation Working Group should know, and strive to uphold, the Code of Conduct
  • Working Group priorities, objectives and activities are developed through a Terms Of Reference document approved by the Board of Directors
  • For more information on the Activation Working Group and HOT in general, visit the HOT website

Activation (i.e. Disaster Mapping) Resources

Staff, volunteers, partners and more have come together via the Activation Working Group to develop procedures and resources to enhance disaster mapping efforts, including:

  • The HOT Activation Protocol
    • This is a thorough guide for managing disaster mapping from onset to conclusion
    • In its origin, the protocol was specific to HOT Disaster Mapping but it has since been updated to make it more useful generally
  • Incident Size-Up form
    • This form in its current state is specific to HOT usage, although others are welcome to conduct initial estimation of incident impact and needs
    • The AWG will likely alter this form in the future to be more generically useful for disaster size-up
  • The Activation Triage spreadsheet (restricted to AWG Leads)
    • This spreadsheet is populated with the information submitted from an Incident Size-Up using the form above
    • Once a decision is made to "activate" the spreadsheet is used to track process and contains a mostly complete Activation history
  • Disaster Services - Activation Landing Page
    • This page is linked to the Activation Triage spreadsheet, which incorporates size-up information from the Incident Size-Up form, though it takes some manual input to update the page
  • The Wiki-Template
    • HOT typically uses this template for documenting disaster mapping efforts on the OSM wiki
    • Anyone is welcome to use or modify for their own use but note it will not fully satisfy requirements of the Organised Editing Guidelines by itself
  • Disaster Mapping (Activation) Training
    • Currently the AWG is discussing the future of the HOT Training Center - Activation Courses as it is now nearing 10 years old and some of our processes have changed
    • Until a replacement or alternative is created, we encourage those interested to take the self-paced training modules to gain knowledge and skills essential to HOT disaster mapping efforts
    • Efforts have been made to shift training to "Community-Led Activation" and a curriculum was tested in 2023 with members of the Perkumpulan OpenStreetMap Indonesia(POI) team
    • The Working Group also maintains a record (Activator Roster) of individuals who have completed training - due to containing contact information, this document is restricted to AWG Leads and will likely change as processes and trainings are updated or replaced

Other Materials, Resources and Tools

  • For most document creation and storage HOT, and the Activation Working Group uses GoogleDrive, most AWG resources can be found in this folder (some material may require access permission)
  • The Activation Working Group also uses Trello for meeting agendas, minutes and tracking disaster mapping activities and other projects
  • In the past and potentially from time to time the Activation Working Group has used various meeting platforms including IRC, Meet, Jitsi, Skype, Teams, Mumble, and Zoom; often to meet the needs of partner organizations or individuals who need to meet with us - during a disaster incident we need to be prepared to use different or new platforms to ensure effective communications
  • The Working Group also monitors the Activation @ hotosm (dot) org email address for communications from individuals or organizations interested in participating in the working group and/or notification of disaster incidents that HOT should investigate

Historical AWG Documentation

Early Works of the AWG

Archived Meeting Minutes

Previous Meetings: (After May 2016 notes/minutes were moved to Trello, see above)

Reference

Retrieved from "https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Working_groups/Activation&oldid=2755261"