Participatory Mapping in OpenStreetMap and Open Data for Humanitarian Action in LATAM
This post was originally published in the Periodismo Ciudadano website in Spanish.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a global organization dedicated to humanitarian action through the use of participatory mapping and open data. They support a global community of thousands of volunteer supporters creating and using open citizen data for humanitarian response and the Sustainable Development Goals.
In 2022 they opened a regional office for Latin America that has just completed one year of operation, which is why we took the opportunity to speak with Celine Jacquin, a French geographer based in Mexico and responsible for the project.
P.C.- What is the reason for the opening of the open mapping Hub in Latin America by HOT?
C.J. -This responds to a localization strategy developed by HOT for the last three years, which consists of having local teams that know their country and neighboring countries very well in terms of open mapping and related communities. This has been channeled through the physical or virtual opening of regional offices. It started in Southeast Asia/Asia Pacific, then in Africa: the north-western part and the south-eastern part, and finally in Latin America and the Caribbean.
HOT’s localization strategy comes from its understanding of the dialogue it has had for several years with open mapping communities around the world, and its stance to change the colonialist vision that is sometimes attributed to international humanitarian organizations. HOT has wanted to transform itself and act from the local towards the communities, with local people — who are also activists and participants in open source and Openstreetmap communities — as part of their work teams.
We started in the region with an experimental phase and a very community-based dynamic that allowed HOT to develop its lines of action completely in line with what our allies need, that is, any type of community, organization, government, and OpenStreetMap community.
P.C.- What does this Open Mapping Hub offer to the different communities?
C.J.- We want to work with communities focused on solutions to a problem that has an impact on reality, on issues such as sustainable cities, disaster management and resilience, health, gender equality and migration or displacement of populations. The idea is to make available methodological knowledge, technical skills, tools and also support through linking with more communities and funding, to exhaustively map certain areas and certain themes or make data visualizations.
For example, by having better maps or visualizing their information through cartography, they can help their communities to better navigate the city, to better access the services they need, to transmit information to unconnected populations, to defend causes before authorities, to promote changes in laws, to improve their funding searches to broaden their scope, to do digital education with youth, etcetera etcetera.
P.C.- What challenges have arisen in this first year of activities?
C.J.- A challenge has been to find the balance between bringing communities together with their own themes, and the desire of the organization to also develop new themes where we do not necessarily have networks. This then has required developing networks from scratch, for example in countries like those of Central America around the issue of migration. It has represented some effort to form initial working groups that allow the approach to communities that can then define how they want to use the maps to increase their impacts with migrant populations.
Where there is no initial network, it is more difficult to dialogue around open mapping as an instrument that contributes to social causes. It is required to create this knowledge first, demonstrate its usefulness.
P.C.- And at the level of achievements, what could you point out?
C.J.- Our experimental phase was an achievement in itself, its objective was to be able to test all the possible configurations of collaboration with the most diverse actors, and for activities or projects of a wide variety, being like a preparation for what would be the future of the Hub and manage to collaborate in the fairest and most expected way with the actors and communities. This is what was desired for the year 2022 and certain projects have been successful but others have not turned out or have been transformed along the way, or have required more time and that is exactly what allows us to understand how to continue. The aim was to learn how to collaborate and at the same time achieve the formation of an initial network.
On the other hand, a great achievement has been the collaborations with student groups in various universities to achieve a real impact on certain projects. One of the Hub’s long-term goals is to develop an ambitious educational strategy around open mapping, making data quality a central criterion. And well, during 2022 we have invited students who have been trained in depth to participate in wide-ranging projects and who are now also capable of training others, forming a positive chain. The experience has allowed us to fine-tune the strategy that we will continue to develop by empowering many young people in many places, linking them with the public policy sector and official cartography, and positively improving the Openstreetmap map.
Of the countries that are rarely mapped in the region, the different projects with local actors have made it possible to contribute a lot to the map, especially in Central America and the Andes.
P.C.- How would you summarize the state of open mapping in the region?
C.J.- The Openstreetmap map is developed by communities that have existed in the region for many years, but unevenly. There have been very active communities, for example, in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina or Mexico, and countries with much less community participation, such as Central America. In these countries, the map has deficiencies and has depended on specific interests of people in certain periods, or companies that have promoted the mapping of certain infrastructures. In general, the mapping of rural areas should be improved, and the exhaustiveness of the mapping of infrastructures sought (particularly road network, towns and buildings afterwards).
P.C.- You are co-founder of Geochicas -a group of women mappers- what is the current role of women in the Latin American mapping community? Are there many of them mapping?
C.J.- GeoChicas was formed as a network when the few women of Openstreetmap Latam realized our low proportional participation. This is not only a statistical concern, but we realized that by wanting to participate in organizing events or leading mapping actions in particular, it was difficult for us to interact with men who tend to have a rude and sometimes disrespectful relational mode, and that this relational mode, while some women could deal with it, it discouraged most of us from participating in mapping communities.
Proof of the need for a separate space, where there is greater confidence to have a pleasant relationship, ask questions, train, dialogue, is that this network has maintained permanent and very rapid growth, starting with 6 people at the end of the State of the Map of Sao Paulo in 2016, and now having more than 300 members.
The role of women in the open mapping community, like the role of many other minorities, is absolutely key to producing a map that represents diversity. In practical terms, it means that the map must show elements and offer information for all categories of population, in terms of equipment, services, types of objects for sale, ways of moving around in the cities and the territory, etc. It is a matter of social justice, since the map is a tool for making politics, and of daily use.
GeoChicas has actively worked to represent on the map the type of information that women need to find. For example, detailing the information on hospital services so that women can find data to care for their female, child and geriatric health (it has been proven that women are the ones who care most about these other population groups). It also develops data science projects with a gender perspective, and promotes the training of women and girls in geospatial sciences.
P.C.- Since we are talking about data, what is the hub’s data use policy and how are you making that data available to the regional open data community?
C.J.- The data mapped on the Openstreetmap platform is available to everyone since this platform is open. So the projects we support participate in strentghening the map for any other use. For actors who do not have enough technical level to download Openstreetmap data directly, we also give them guidance for more direct access. (For example, there is the Humanitarian Data Exchange platform).
When the projects supported by the hub generate more private data, these are closed on a case-by-case basis. It could be the case, for example, of information about migrants, which could represent a risk and danger for them to make them open. But in general, we dialogue with the actors so that the data that does not represent a danger or does not put privacy at risk is shared on open platforms with adequate licenses.
P.C.- What plans does the Hub have for 2023?
C.J.- In 2023 the team will strengthen its structure. In the year 2022, we have worked in a way that was an open listening to what the communities, organizations and governments wanted and needed from open mapping. Now, based on these lessons, the forms and lines of work must be strengthened.
Secondly, the team is going to strengthen its financing capacity, in order to be able to finance the work of the communities and their accompaniment. And finally, a third important line will be to invest in data quality, developing a whole team focused on it.
P.C.- How can they contact you or learn more about the hub?
C.J.- You can visit the hub page and contact us from there. And follow us on social networks, where we try to publish a lot, especially on Twitter and Instagram, oh and we are in the fediverse too.
This post is translated and published from the original under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons license.
