Humanitarian Response Interactive Map Package, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

In context of humanitarian crisis, United Nations Agencies call for help the online volunteer mapping community. These NGO's contribute to a rapid response and relief. Crisis management of vital infrastructures is essential and requires tools adapted to the context of intervention. This map provides interaction between the Humanitarian volunteers and local communities that contribute to update a Registry of infrastructures. Various CrisisMapper NGO's collaborate and monitor georeferenced data from the Registry. Crowsourcing by Local communities may contribute to a rapid evaluation of the state of various infrastructures.

In december 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) has asked the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and the Stand By Task Force (SBTF) and GISCorps to activate to map health facilities in Libya.

Collaborative work was centered on a Google Doc Spreadsheet (GDoc) acting as a Master Registry where many collaborators could gather information simultaneously, validate, correct it. Collaborative work and phonetic translations from arabic language caused duplicates in the Registry. In this context, discussions in the group contributed to define and improve the content of the Interactive Map. This first version (based on the Openlayers Platform) has been designed with the objective to interact with the GDoc Spreadsheet. The Map shows progress in real time, with Popup markers describing facilities that are already georeferenced. Crowdsourcing is also assured from the Interactive Map, collecting georeferenced information and adding it to the Registry.

The flux of information who circulates between the GDoc and the Interactive Map assures both a continuous update of the Registry and monitoring of this information in the Interactive Map. This Data Model gives to the Team the flexibility to simultaneously receive Crowdsource Data, manage the GDoc Registry and monitor georeferenced data on the Interactive Map. And finally, Crowsourcing is managed efficiently by letting people view the content of the Registry geolocated on the Map. Popup Markers describes information gathered relatively to a specific Health Facility.

Data Flux from GDoc to Map overlays

To monitor the georeferenced information in the GDocs, data is translated into GeoRSS Xml feed. This Data format becomes a de-facto standard for exchange of georeferenced information and can be easily integrated into Openlayers. The CSV-to-GeoRSS translator is a PHP Parser script that translates CSV export files from GDoc to GeoRSS Xml format. This assures a continuous update of the Map Overlays. Two Overlays correspond to these GeoRSS feeds.

Various Overlays show the content of the registry :

1. Master Health Registry;
2. Inputs just added (Crowsdourcing from people in Libya).

These Overlays are received live from the Gdoc through the CSV-to-GeoRSS translator. In the Map API, GEORSS Overlays control the addition of Popup markers over the Map. To facillitate collaborative work, inputs can be split in various Google Doc sheets and showed separately on the map. We also plan to use a Category variable to split information contained in one file.

Crowsdsourcing

Georefenced information is collected through the Interactive Map by the collaboration of people with the knowledge of Libya health facilities. They have the possibility to view what is already in the Registry before adding any information. The process of adding information is very simple. A button toggle between Navigation and Edit Mode. In Edit mode, we simply click on the Map at a location to georeference. This opens a Popup window that contains a GDoc Input Form where latitude and longitude coordinates are pre-populated from the Map API. We add descriptive information about the Health Facility and click to send automatically the information to the GDoc Spreadsheet. Information received via an email is added manually in the GDoc by the Team. Once a record is added to the GDoc, either through the Interactive Map or manually, it is monitored on the InteractiveMap through the GeoRSS live Feed.

Contacts

• Interactive Map Package : Contact Pierre Béland, pierzenh@yahoo.fr
• Libya Health Registry content and project objective : Contact Robert Colombo, colombor@who.int

About this package

The Interactive Map is based on Openlayers Interface (Javascript) and the CSV-to-GeoRSS translator is a PHP Script. A simple programming approach is used and there is no database to maintain other than the GDoc's. This Package is simple to maintain and adapt. We think that the scripts contained in this Package could be easily adapted for other humanitarain response efforts where Collaborative Teams needs some kind of crowsourcing and monitoring of georeferenced information. For this reason, we invite people to use and adapt these scripts for other situations. We would appreciate to have some feedback from your experience with such tools.

Flexibility in management of the Registry is obtained by the use of Google Doc spreadsheets where the various collaborators can edit simultaneously. This way, the registry is managed simply and efficiently. In this context, the Interactive Map plays an important role of monitoring the informtion and adding crowsourcing possibilities.

This project is still under development and new features are planned to be added as our experience with this interactive tool and crowsourcing progresses. Any comments are welcomed.

Script sources