Syria ReMapping 2025 - 2026
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Following the political power shift in December 2024, Syria entered a critical transition period marked by both opportunity and uncertainty. After more than a decade of conflict, there is an urgent need for updated, reliable, and locally informed geospatial data to support recovery, reconstruction, and long‑term resilience planning. Civil society organizations, local governments, and humanitarian actors require accurate information on functional infrastructure (such as buildings, roads, schools, health facilities, and services) as well as damaged or abandoned infrastructure in order to plan safe and sustainable recovery programs. Years of conflict have left Syria with significant geospatial data gaps and fragmented datasets spread across multiple platforms. As a result, coordination remains difficult, with different actors relying on incomplete or outdated information. These gaps directly affect the ability of Syrian stakeholders—already constrained by limited resources—to respond effectively to the needs of returning populations and host communities. At the same time, interest in OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a shared, open, and editable geospatial platform has grown significantly among Syrians both inside the country and in the diaspora. More than 100 Syrians have expressed interest in contributing to an emerging OSM Syria community. OSM’s open standards, global tools, and collaborative model provide a unique opportunity to bring Syrians together around the creation of accurate, up‑to‑date basemaps that reflect current realities on the ground. This initiative aims to support recovery efforts in Syria by promoting coordinated, Syrian-led use and creation of OSM data, with a primary focus on Aleppo Governorate, Damascus, and Rural Damascus. The project invests in building a sustainable OSM Syria community by nurturing local OSM champions through advanced training and training‑of‑trainers approaches, while simultaneously addressing priority data gaps needed for recovery planning.
This project is part of the Humanitarian OSM Team/Program: Conflict & Displacement.
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Contacts
- Coordination: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)
- Community: OSM Syria
If you are part of an organization or community involved in recovery or resilience planning in Syria and have OSM data needs, please reach out to HOT to share your priority locations, features, or datasets and to explore opportunities for coordinated data creation and sharing.
Hashtag
All contributions through OSM and related HOT-supported campaigns are tracked with the hashtag: ##syria-ReMapping-2025
Timeline
- Dec 2024: Political transition in Syria creates new opportunities and data needs for recovery planning
- 2025: Growing requests to HOT from Syrian and international organizations for support in filling geospatial data gaps
- Start, Nov 2025: Formal launch of the Syria Recovery & OSM Community Activation
- Nov 2025 – May 2026: Community building, data creation, validation, and data‑use activities implemented in coordination with OSM Syria and partners
- End: 31 May 2026
Map and Data Services
Accessing OpenStreetMap data
All data created through this activation will be available live in OpenStreetMap and accessible through standard OSM tools and services. Wide‑area extracts will be shared via the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), alongside selected partner datasets that are appropriate for open distribution.
For targeted downloads, users can extract data directly from OSM or via HOT-supported services once priority mapping activities are completed.
Data gaps and basemap development
Current assessments indicate substantial gaps in core geospatial datasets for Syria, particularly for buildings, roads, and populated places. Machine‑learning derived building datasets provide broader coverage but miss a significant proportion of buildings and often lack the precision required for recovery planning. Manual, community‑led OSM mapping remains critical for accurate building counts, spatial modeling, damage analysis, and housing rights considerations.
Planned data initiatives include:
- Basemap mapping: Large‑scale crowdsourced digitization of buildings and roads, prioritizing rural areas around Aleppo and Rural Damascus, and informed by local partners.
- Critical infrastructure mapping: Addition and validation of schools, health facilities, heritage sites, and other key infrastructure needed for recovery.
- Damage and change analysis: Collaborative review of partner‑generated damage and change detection datasets to identify potentially abandoned or newly built areas, with careful attention to data protection and responsible sharing.
- Data awareness and analysis: Training and outreach to local stakeholders on accessing, using, and interpreting open spatial datasets for planning and decision‑making.
Geographic focus
Based on known damage patterns and strong community and partner connections, initial activities will focus on rural areas surrounding Aleppo and Damascus, with secondary attention to the cities themselves and northern Syria. Lessons learned and methodologies developed during this phase will support future expansion of mapping efforts nationwide.
Data protection and responsible sharing
Given the sensitive and rapidly changing context in Syria, a data protection framework will be developed at the onset of the project in collaboration with local stakeholders and partners. This framework will guide decisions on what data can be shared openly through OSM and HDX, and what data should be shared through controlled or secure channels with trusted actors.
About This Activation
About HOT
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a global nonprofit organization that supports humanitarian action and community development through open mapping. HOT works with local communities, civil society organizations, governments, and international agencies to create and use open geospatial data for decision‑making.
Data Quality
Validation
Data quality assurance will follow standard HOT and OSM practices. Validation activities will prioritize local knowledge and involve trained validators and OSM champions. Collaborative reviews with partners will be conducted where third‑party or remote‑sensing datasets are considered for integration or comparison.
For Mappers
How You Can Contribute
Learn to Map
New contributors are encouraged to visit [[1](http://learnosm.org) LearnOSM.org] to get started with OpenStreetMap.
Mapping priorities
- Buildings and roads in priority recovery areas
- Schools, health facilities, heritage sites, and other critical infrastructure
- Populated place names and boundaries
Community activities
- Virtual and in‑person mapathons (as context allows)
- Training‑of‑trainers and advanced OSM editing workshops
- Workshops with data users on accessing and applying OSM data for recovery and resilience planning