Crisis mapping (also known as disaster mapping) is the real-time gathering, display and analysis of data during a crisis, usually a natural disaster or social/political conflict (violence, elections, etc.). Crisis mapping projects usually allows large numbers of people, including the public and crisis responders, to contribute information either remotely or from the site of the crisis. One benefit of the crisis mapping method over others is that it can increase
situational awareness
Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status. An alternative definition is tha ...
, since the public can report information and improve data management.
Crisis mappers work with data that comes from diverse sources and can be produced for varying purposes. As such, there is some overlap with big data, international development, and community engagement.
History
One of the first major events to utilize crisis mapping was the
2010 Haiti earthquake
A catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest department, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's c ...
, which killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people and left homes and infrastructure badly damaged. People who wanted to help started mapping the basic infrastructure, especially in OpenStreetMap, and were then able to do more detailed mapping as better resources became available. Crisis mapping in one form or another has been used in many crises since then. Many volunteers have also joined to help with data responses to crises and to build new information-handling tools for both crisis mappers and crisis responders in the field.
Since 2010, crisis mappers have mapped events in Libya (refugees), Japan (crowdsourcing and radiation monitoring for
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six mi ...
), Chile (
Humanitarian response to the 2010 Chile earthquake
The humanitarian response to the 2010 Chile earthquake included national governments, charitable and for-profit organizations from around the world which began coordinating humanitarian aid designed to help the Chilean people.
National governmen ...
), Pakistan (
2010 Pakistan floods
The floods in Pakistan began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and, Balochistan regions of Pakistan, which affected the Indus River basin. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's tot ...
, 2011 floods), Somalia (refugees), Alabama (
2011 Super Outbreak
The 2011 Super Outbreak was the largest, costliest, and one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks ever recorded, taking place in the Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern United States from April 25–28, 2011, leaving catastrophic destruction ...
), and dozens of smaller disasters and events around the world.
Zaatari refugee camp
The Zaatari refugee camp () is a refugee camp in Jordan, located east of Mafraq, which has gradually evolved into a permanent settlement;the war, is being actively mapped on OpenStreetMap by
UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrat ...
Crisis mapping leverage the following tools and methods to power effective early warning for rapid response to complex humanitarian emergencies:
* Mobile and web-based applications,
* Participatory maps and crowdsourced event data,
* Aerial and satellite imagery,
* Geospatial platforms,
* Advanced visualization,
* Live simulation, and
* Computational and statistical models
Crisis mappers are usually volunteers, meaning they contribute non-wage labor. They can be professional mappers, software developers, data analysts, or members of the public. Since it is a new field, crisis mapping engages users' existing skills, rather than field-specific skills. However, new skills are often acquired during "deployments", where a crisis mapping organization and interface is established to begin collecting data.
Instances of crisis mapping usually have a goal to process and/or produce data that would be of value in the crisis. Examples of processing data include geolocating news reports, and classifying or translating text messages. It is common to scrape social media sites for crisis-specific keywords. For instance, crisis mapping can include gathering tweets that have a specific designated hashtag. Examples of producing data are creating geographic data by "tracing" buildings or roads on aerial imagery, identifying refugee camps in aerial imagery.
These activities are usually
crowdsourced
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...
to one degree or another and coordinated via online applications. Dedicated software is often used, for example based on
Ushahidi
Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination o ...
or Sahana. "Mechanical-turk" techniques are sometimes used to break up tasks into tiny chunks that can be completed quickly. Often social technologies are also frequently used, like
Skype
Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...
or Google Drive.
Crisis mapping organizations
Crisis mappers are online teams of people, usually volunteers, who gather and provide data online to people responding to and people affected by disasters. To gather and organize the data, groups have formed to organize volunteers into teams to execute certain tasks. Organizations active in crisis mapping include:
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Crowdmapping Crowdmapping is a subtype of crowdsourcing by which aggregation of crowd-generated inputs such as captured communications and social media feeds are combined with geographic data to create a digital map that is as up-to-date as possible on event ...