Open Geodata in Haiti

For the past couple weeks I was in Haiti with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Our project was sponsored by the World Bank and the goal was to continue to build mapping capacity within Haiti. For those unaware OpenStreetMap is a project to create a free map of the entire world, in a method similar to Wikipedia anyone can edit it to add information or correct mistakes. Almost immediately after the January 12th earthquake volunteers from the OpenStreetMap community began digitizing roads from old satellite imagery. Soon after that imagery providers donated new imagery and volunteers continued to improve the map as well as create data products that could be downloaded onto GPS, printed and utilized in GIS systems. Data team members from GeoCommons gathered data from OSM and created overlays in Finder! as well as a dashboard in Map of the News.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team aims to apply the principles of open data and open source to humanitarian response and economic development. So far the team has had three missions to Haiti to facilitate these principles of open data. This has been primarily in the form of training. Following up on two previous missions Nicolas Chavent, Trevor Ellermann, Todd Huffman and I were in Haiti from June 19th – June 29th holding training with a variety of actors all over Haiti. The first week was spent in Port-au-Prince, but then we quickly moved on to Jacmel, Léogâne, Gonaïves and Carrefour.

What struck me most about the trip was how quickly Haitians understood OpenStreetMap and open geo-data. One afternoon Nicolas was explaining OpenStreetMap to a team of community mobilizers from the International Office on Migration (IOM). The community mobilizers are an interface between IOM and those living in the spontaneous settlement sites managed by the Office. I don’t speak any French, but the entire trip I enjoyed watching people’s reactions when learning about OSM. Initially when Nicolas started explaining OSM to them they listened politely, but soon they were listening intently. Everyone leaned in closer and closer and hung on every word. Then it was decided amongst their group that everyone needed to come in on Saturday to be trained in OpenStreetMap, there was no choice. The importance of being able to map where resources are in a rapidly changing environment and for Haitians to do this themselves was clear to the group. I can’t imagine seeing the same intensity for open data in the United States, but I suppose we haven’t had the need to develop the same hunger for it. One of the main questions in Haiti is what happens when International organizations start leaving, who maintains things then? Hopefully through the work of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and our Haitian partners the answer can be the Haitian people.