I’m thrilled to have been invited to the first White House Mapathon on June 21 where they featured mapping projects like the Nepal earthquake and included my resiliency mapping project in the Philippines. The Philippines mention below links to my 2014 International Conference of Crisis Mapping talk.
The White House Office of Digital Strategy and the Office of Science and Technology Policy are pleased to invite you to the first White House Mapathon to celebrate and actively participate in Open Mapping on Thursday, May 21, 2015 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM.
Open Mapping, or crowdmapping, is where participants use a wiki-like approach to contribute to maps of the world. Geospatial data has been a key component of the Administration’s Open Data initiatives.
Increasingly, tools like citizen science and crowdsourcing are permitting the public to contribute to government datasets. In some cases, the public is collaborating to create data that never existed before their involvement, such as the OpenStreetMap response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak. Agencies including the Department of State, the Department of Interior, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, and the General Services Administration are working on crowdmapping projects.
Crowdmapping projects and participants are part of a growing innovation movement, transforming the relationship between the government and the public, and supported by United States commitments in the Second Open Government National Action Plan. The White House Mapathon will highlight these successes and engage participants in contributing to the rising efforts in Open Mapping.The Mapathon will start with remarks and lightning talks highlighting the impact of open and crowd-sourced mapping projects. Then we will ask you to choose one of the five mapping projects outlined below and get to work mapping!
Mapathon Projects:MapGive: A public diplomacy program that supports the use of OpenStreetMap in humanitarian response and development. Participants will contribute to three sub-projects, targeting the Nepal earthquake response, public health initiatives in Botswana, and disaster preparedness and development in the Philippines. Power Service Area Mapping: Participants will contribute to a geospatial database under development by the Department of Energy, by researching public outage information so that disaster-impacted residents, tourists, first responders and relief volunteers can easily get to the information they need on scope and estimated restore times for power outages.Every Kid in a Park: The Every Kid in a Park initiative is a multi-agency effort to open our Nation’s lands and waters to all 4th graders for the 2015-2016 school year. This project will coordinate trail and facility mapping activities, further improving facility information within public lands and waters that have educational activities for kids.