Torontonians tackle the unmapped world

Volunteers build digital maps of places facing humanitarian crises

A boardroom in Toronto is filled with people working at their laptops.
Volunteers gather for the January mapathon at the Doctors without Borders headquarters in Toronto. Isabel Terrell

A group of Torontonians is helping put a part of Niger State, Nigeria, on the map — literally.

They’re part of an initiative to build digital maps for some of the most vulnerable communities in the world. Sixty of the volunteers gathered recently at the Toronto headquarters of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to work on the project.

The Jan. 16 event, dubbed a mapathon, was held in partnership with Missing Maps, an organization that traces over satellite imagery to create maps for areas of the world where the risk of humanitarian crises is highest. The sessions occur on a monthly basis, with the next one scheduled for Feb. 13.

“This isn’t your regular community event,” said Katie van der Werf, a communications and outreach-engagement intern for MSF, which hosted the mapathon. She explained that the mapping events fulfil a real operational need for the organization, which encourages participants to come back each month as they learn to build better-quality data.

According to van der Werf, MSF has mapped about five per cent of the unmapped world.

As the boardroom filled around 6 p.m., van der Werf started by showing the group how to use OpenStreetMap, an online mapping software, to select their task in Niger State, Nigeria. As they clicked on that task, a message popped up reading, “57 per cent mapped, 10 per cent validated.”

According to the event’s Facebook page, there are two crucial steps after the first set of data is sent from Toronto. The first: experts remotely check if the satellite imagery matches the OpenStreetMap entries. The second: they are sent to local community volunteers who then validate the maps at street level.

Among those in attendance at the January session was Abasifreke James, the developer of Pocet. That’s an app targeted at Nigerian users that pays locals to add geographic details by community consensus, such as fruit vendors, churches and hospitals.

“I realized how many problems there are for groups like Doctors Without Borders to even know where the hospitals are, or the good roads to go through without having to bribe or fight for your life,” James said, half-laughing as he remembered his upbringing. “It’s hard.”

Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières is a non-profit organization founded in Paris by doctors and journalists to deliver medicine to impoverished areas of the world. It now operates worldwide.

“We want to build a community of people who want to help out,” said Laurel Louden, MSF communications and outreach-engagement manager in Toronto.

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Posted: Jan 31 2019 7:06 pm
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