Talk:Typhoon Haiyan

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Discuss the Typhoon Haiyan wiki page here

Note: 'A more effective contact channel for all HOT discussion/questions, would the #hot channel on http://irc.openstreetmap.org or the HOT mailing list


Too early ?

Excuse my silly question but does it make sense to start emergency remote mapping when the aerial imagery is either obsolete or low-res ? From what we see in the news is villages or towns completely destroyed like after a tsunami, buildings are out, roads covered by garbage, etc. So what is the interest to ask the crowd to map buildings or roads which do not exist anymore ? Would not that be more sensible to limit the mapping of place names and wait some days until new hi-res imagery is available and published for the arm-chair mappers ? --Pieren (talk) 11:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is useful to get a good level of basic data. When we finally get after Haiyan imagery you can easily mark buildings and roads as destroyed/damaged. The mapping speed is going to be higher as if you have to map everything from scratch. --Hedaja (talk) 10:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

@ all before: As far as I understand the HOT mapping usually current(!) satellite imagery is provided which can be used – see Typhoon_Haiyan#Mapping_response ("from, Nov 14, Post-Disaster imagery from various providers started to be available"). However, if not already present roads still could be valuable. For example see this blog post. In fact, I (not involved in HOT) am a bit disappointed seeing those questions here but no answer of active users. I have asked Harry to provide a better answer. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 01:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I think Pieren made the original comment because some of the first jobs we created for the typhoon, were set over an area which didn't have bing coverage (and at a time when bing was the only imagery source we had available). Hi res Bing imagery is available in funny strips. So it was not a case of being too early, more being a little bit wrong with the job areas specified. Of course mappers can always mark a task as done, on the basis that there's nothing that can be done there, but I think setting up jobs with this assumption creates a bit of unnecessary confusion. We should avoid it really. Some improvements could be made to the admin interface for designing jobs in the first place. -- Harry Wood (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

"after" imagery

Is there any source of aerial images after Haiyan? -- 2013-11-12T20:01:27‎ Max333

Yes. Post-typhoon imagery is now available (maybe not back when you asked that question on Nov 12th). It is linked off some of the new jobs. This is used by us for creating maps, in accordance with a license agreement. It's not intended for wider/public consumption. -- Harry Wood (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

humanitarian tagging ?

Hi, I am both mapper (volunteer) as humanitarian aid expert. Looking what has been mapped already, the result is quite good - for conditions prior to Haiyan. But I note that no humanitarian tagging has been used at all - I looked into the OSM-data and used the search-function in JOSM with the Tacloban area downloaded, but the words "humanitarian", "camp_site" or "evacuation" return cero result. (If I am wrong and other areas have humanitarian tagging, please correct me).

To start, we (=mapper community with OCHA-support) should start to map at least camp sites and official and non-official evacuation centres and shelter sites. Haiti is a good example for humanitarian tagging (see: http://haiti.openstreetmap.nl/). --Friedrich (Federico) (talk) 13:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes certainly. Do you have some on-the-ground information about where evacuation centres and camps are being established? -- Harry Wood (talk) 16:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I will be on the ground from 23 November to 9 December (Cebu, Tacloban, Samar Island) with GPS switched on. I suggest that you publish an e-mail account where people like me can send their GPS tracks and waypoints (there might be other humanitarian aid workers in the field, but as me without time available to map in JOSM or without mapping skills).--Friedrich (Federico) (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2013 (UTC)