May Meetup: Crisis Mapping

The May GeoDC meetup will focus on crisis mapping - techniques to use maps and geo spatial data to help respond, prepare for, and prevent natural disasters, conflicts, and other crises. The following speakers will speak about their work in crisis mapping in quick, five minute lightning talks:

Nicolas Chavent will talk about the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team (http://hot.openstreetmap.org/)'s role in Haiti since the earthquake. What began as a remote effort through volunteers has blossomed into a vibrant OpenStreetMap community today. Learn about the latest work (http://hot.openstreetmap.org/projects/haiti-2) and future plans to expand OpenStreetMap in Haiti. Harry Wood (http://harrywood.co.uk/) will explain how you can help the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team respond to a crisis. Common tasks are processing of imagery, manipulating data, and digitizing. Did you know some fairly simple GIS skills can be used to provide invaluable information to those on the ground? John Crowley will talk about this year's Camp Roberts experiments on how to integrate crisis mapping into official geospatial systems of disaster response institutions. How do we conduct a massive evacuation of non-combatants in the middle of a humanitarian emergency and conflict? How do we share imagery, maps, and social media data in ways that will be more beneficial than harmful? These are some of the questions he's hoping to answer. Schuyler Erle (https://twitter.com/#!/schuyler) will talk about community mapping and citizen reporting work that he has done recently in the jungles of Mexico, touching on why this helps and how to do it. What would it take to map a large city? Kate Chapman (http://maploser.com/) has been involved in an effort over the past two months to gather together village leaders and students to map critical buildings in Jakarta. She will give an overview of the approach and a report on the results of this effort. The meetup will be Wednesday, May 2 starting at 7:00 pm. We'll get things officially started at 7:30 pm with a round of introductions (your name, organization, and three words about you), followed by the lightning talks. Plan to stay after to speak casually with our presenters and other participants over drinks and food.

The meetup will be held at Stetson's - note that this is a bar and requires ID and being 21+ to enter. If this is a problem, contact one of the organizers and we can help.