14-15 September, Ottawa: HOT Summit 2017

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Summit http://summit.hotosm.org/

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Worth a look: https://www.hotosm.org/annual_report

[Daniel-Mietchen]

The program sits at http://summit.hotosm.org/program/ and I was following the tweet stream via hotosm OR hotsummit OR mapping4good OR hotsummit2017 OR hotsummit17 .

Relevant lists:

• https://twitter.com/EvoMRI/lists/disasterwatch
• https://twitter.com/EvoMRI/lists/sustainable-development

My main points of interest in this event:

• zooming in on the temporal aspect of data sharing — the FAIR principles do not mention it but it features prominently in our Principles for Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies, which is mentioned in the current draft of the FAIR Data EG report but could perhaps be detailed a bit more
  • issues of standards and data integration in humanitarian contexts in general, both to see how much overlap there is with the respective needs during the disease outbreaks I am familiar with, and to learn about geo-focused approaches to the matter
  • exchanges with classical on-the-ground responders to see what their digital activities/ needs/ wishes etc. are
  • discussing possible interactions of the HOT OSM and Wikimedia communities around humanitarian activities

[Daniel-Mietchen]

General remarks: WiFi was not always reliable, and I initially had trouble finding power outlets near seating, so tried to economize battery and did not take notes.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to have made their slides available in time for their talk (but all plenary sessions have been recorded and will be shared later on).

Once I did find power outlets, I continued not to take notes, mostly because stuff that was new for me came up all the time, so I opened lots of browser windows and tabs as reminders for me to follow up on later, which is what I am doing while I am writing these notes now.

But let's try to go chronologically...

09:30 - 09:45 | Welcome Address + Keynote | The Foundry

• Tyler Radford, HOT Executive Director
• Jackey Mayda, Director, International Co-operation and Corporate Statistical Methods Division, Statistics Canada

The key thing from Jackey's talk was that Statistics Canada was collaborating with OSM, especially in flooding contexts. An interesting detail was that they systematically map their data to SDGs and indicators, much like we do in RIO.

• Some background:
  • https://www.hilltimes.com/2017/07/17/time-canada-report-following-global-sustainable-development-goals/113994
  • http://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/about/dp/2017-2018/s07

As an aside, the speaker's profiles at http://summit.hotosm.org/speakers/ had so little detail they were of very limited use.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

09:45 - 10:15 | Community Lightning talks | The Foundry

• StatsCan: SDG indicators and reporting Cara Williams, StatCan

  • she zoomed in on how Statistics Canada map - and guide - their activities relative to the SDGs, subgoals and indicators.

• Civic participation: cooperative mapping with, and by immigrants Violaine Doutreleau, CartONG

  • on how twin city relationships and immigrant communities can be leveraged to map corresponding areas in other countries (the example given was from Mali)
  • https://twitter.com/assocCartONG

• HOT Microgrant: mapping coastal wetlands and fishing livelihoods in Northern Colombia Isamar Alvarez, Universidad de Antioquia (YouthMapper)

  • covered fishing grounds and mangroves, among other things - fits with my interest in mapping biodiversity.
  • https://twitter.com/youthmappers

• State of the CrisisMapping communities in Japan TaiChi, CrisisMappers Japan/Aoyama Gakuin University

  • This talk simply did not take place, and I did not notice any announcement as to why this would be. He came in the next day via YouTube, however.
  • https://twitter.com/CrisisMappers
  • mentioned something like "drone bird" that sounds interesting but did not make sense to me, nor after googling around a bit

• OSM and SDG 8: mapping for job opportunities Jake Dancyger, Accenture

  • discussed an app (beta and not open source, but hopefully in the future) they built that mapped locations of job offers, so as to help job seekers.
  • sent email to Jake for beta testing the app

[Daniel-Mietchen]

10:15 - 11:15 | Breakout Session 1 | W101B

• Crowdsourcing with Statistics Canada: lessons learned when using OSM for the purpose of national statistics | Alessandro Alasia, Statistics Canada

  • Out of the 6 talks so far, this was the third by someone from Statistics Canada. I find this an odd arrangement, but still, the talks managed to have little overlap and highlighted different aspects of the collaboration between them and OSM. Here, the goal of mapping all ca. 12 million buildings in Canada was outlined, with 2 million already done when they started.

  • Background:

    • http://www.neighbourhoodstudy.ca/how-you-can-help-statcan-test-crowdsourcing-in-mapping-ottawas-buildings/
    • http://ottawacitizen.com/storyline/statcan-wants-your-help-to-test-the-power-of-crowdsourcing-mapping-in-ottawa
    • https://blog.mapbox.com/government-and-citizens-collaborate-to-map-canada-4d24d30d477c

  • Specifically mentioned Wikipedia in the introduction, so in the break afterwards, I spoke to him and Liz Hughes of https://twitter.com/mapaction about Wikimedia activities in this space. Owe them both an email.

    • both emails have now been sent

  • Turning HOT disaster risk management official. The cases of the local governments of Sarapiquí, Costa Rica and Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic Julio May, OSM Central American and Caribbean community

  • https://twitter.com/julio_may

  • Built tools and workflows to address local issues in Costa Rica, which peaked the interest of people in the Dominican Republic, who are now using the open-source tool in their own context.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

11:45 - 12:30 | Breakout Session 3 | The Foundry

• How can we contribute to the international data community? Jenna Slotin, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data Rebecca Firth, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

  • https://twitter.com/jslotin
  • https://twitter.com/RebeccaFirthy
  • Lots of overlap with my interests and activities, e.g. in terms of Wikidata, ECSA's Open Science WG, FAIR data EG, Force 2017. We briefly discussed this in one of the breaks later on; I am to follow up via email.

• OpenStreetMap in Bangladesh: A community approach leading toward sustainable resilience. Ahasanul Hoque, Bangladesh Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Operational Team (BHOOT), OSMBD

  • https://twitter.com/ahasan4u
  • Great presentation, including on mapping slums to "put people on the map" for the first time, with passing mention of ethical issues this may raise. Good stuff. Also a video.
  • Some other slum mapping efforts in Bangladesh:
  • The 2005 census and mapping of slums in Bangladesh: design, select results and application
  • Mapping the Slums of Dhaka from 2006 to 2010
  • I'll send him an email to put him in touch with Wikimedians from Bangladesh.
  • email sent

[Daniel-Mietchen]

In the lunch break, I sat next to

• Trevor Taylor https://twitter.com/ogc_taylor
• Julio May (see above)
• Kuo-Yu slayer Chuang https://twitter.com/darkensiva (HOT OSM Board member)
• Pete Masters https://twitter.com/pedrito1414 (HOT OSM Board member)

The conversation took a number of interesting turns, but most relevant to me was perhaps that http://www.opengeospatial.org/ seems to be doing things in the Geo domain that are similar in spirit to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Principles and the activities of http://www.thesgc.org/ . Will follow up with them via email.

• emails sent, except to Julio, whose I don't have

[Daniel-Mietchen]

13:30 - 14:30 | Breakout Session 6 | The Foundry

• Nepal Earthquake Humanitarian Relief Efforts Denis Carriere, OSM Ottawa

• Disaster Management Mapping for Indonesian Cities Mhairi O'Hara, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Yantisa Akhadi, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Indonesia

[Daniel-Mietchen]

15:15 - 16:00 | Breakout Session 7 | The Foundry

• Humanitarian Mapping Education: A View on Curriculum Tom Mueller, California University of Pennsylvania Patricia Solis, YouthMappers

• Building the OSM Community through Youth Engagement Andrew McKenna, US State Dept HIU / MapGive Chad Blevins, USAID

[Daniel-Mietchen]

16:00 - 17:00	Birds of a Feather Discussions

Session	Topic	Session Lead	Location (general)	Location (zoomed in)	Comments
1	Mapspec - creating a standard for representing visualized data in maps for humanitarian needs.	Matt Berg	Back of Foundry	(Near Catering)	Couldn't find details. Will email him.
2	OSMGeoWeek planning: Nov 12-18	Rachel Levine	Back of Foundry	(Near Door)	See #206
3	la prevention et la gestion des risques des catastrophes	vianney richel Kouba	Front of Foundry	(Near Catering)
4	Community-based 'imports' using the Tasking Manager - how can we do better?	Ben Abelshausen	Front of Foundry	(Near Door)
5	HOT and Education	Tom Mueller	Room W101B	(Front)	That's the BoF session I would have gone to if I hadn't proposed one myself. Will email him.
6	Offset between imagery sources with new providers available (DG...), how to solve it?	Martin Noblecourt	Room W101B	(Back)
7	Building a roadmap for OSM Analytics. We can start with the Financial Inclusion and Malaria project and take it from there!	Alyssa Wright	Cafe high tables		Interested in finding out more about this Malaria project. Will email her.
8	Integration with disaster response efforts by the Wikimedia community	Daniel Mietchen	Boardroom	(Upstairs L203)	https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/HOT_Summit_2017
9	Integration of OSM data, Forms, and Crowdsourcing on Map for Field Survey	Kuo-Yu slayer Chuang	Back of Foundry		Sounds good. Emailed him.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

17:00 - 20:00	Mapathon and Reception Canadian Red Cross

Here, I went to the newbies group, where experienced mappers were around to provide demos and intros. Learned things like that buildings have to be squared, and overall felt encouraged to try things out more than I had done so far.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

09:15 - 10:00 | Community Lightning Talks | The Foundry

• Ramani Huria: Impacting the local community for and beyond Flood Resilience Innocent Maholi, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

• HOT Community Mapping for Economic Development and Decentralization in Liberia David Luswata, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

• Using OSM data to understand internal displacement context Maria Teresa Miranda, Int'l Displacement Monitoring Centre

• Making OSM Data work for humanitarians David Megginson, Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)

  • see also https://github.com/Daniel-Mietchen/ideas/issues/451 .

• Crowdsourcing post-earthquake building damage: comparing building-level vs area-based damage estimation Melanie Eckle, Heidelberg University

Apparently not on the program but still quite interesting was a presentation — given by Rupert Allan? — on the West Africa Motorcycle Mapping project:

• https://africamotorcyclemapping.org/

• OUR VISION is putting all of humanity on a public map. This means that the lowest income places in the world have to be visited. Without representation, people are without voice, vulnerable to Cholera or Ebola outbreaks, and invisible to crisis interventionists like Red Cross and MSF (Doctors Without Borders). Resources commonly end-up in the wrong place, or are of the wrong type. As part of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, WAMM 2017 is radically turning this problem around.

• OUR MISSION is to visit the villages of two billion people worldwide—the bottom quarter of income—to deliver monitoring technology to health care providers. This will enable them to make a critical feedback loop, and improve resilience BEFORE disaster strikes.

• OUR TWO MONTH PILOT PROJECT is on the ground in Sierra Leone now, in the summer of 2017. Already we’ve achieved incredible results:

[Daniel-Mietchen]

10:00 - 11:10 | Facilitated Discussion |W101B

• Health & OpenStreetMap | Dale Kunce, American Red Cross

Parallel sessions:

• New Tech & Machine Learning in HOT Workflows | Ian Schuler, Development Seed
  • some background in https://developmentseed.org/blog/2017/09/15/power-mapping-with-machine-learning/
• Mapping Through an Ethical Lens | Pete Masters, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Jorieke Vyncke, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

[Daniel-Mietchen]

11:30 - 12:40 | Facilitated Discussion | W101B

• HDM, Health, and Thematic Tagging| Mhairi O'Hara, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Violaine Doutreleau, CartONG
• Background in Google doc
• https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Tags/Humanitarian_Data_Model
• https://www.hotosm.org/updates/2013-06-07_humanitarian_data_model_redux
• https://github.com/hotosm/presets/
• HXL (Humanitarian Exchangel Language) came up a few times in the discussion. Background:
  • http://hxlstandard.org/
  • http://hxlstandard.org/standard/1_0final/
  • http://hxlstandard.org/questions/

[Daniel-Mietchen]

13:45 - 14:45 | Working Group Discussion | The Foundry

• Activation Working Group| Russell Deffner, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Pete Masters, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

• http://hotosm.org/sites/default/files/HOTActivationProtocol.pdf

• https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/HOT_activation

• https://www.hotosm.org/working-groups/activation

[Daniel-Mietchen]

15:00 - 16:00 | Training Session 2 | W101B

• A Crisis Simulation using the Ushahidi Platform | Angela Oduor Lungati, Ushahidi

  • https://uchaguzi.or.ke/views/map
  • https://greenterror.ushahidi.io/views/map

[Daniel-Mietchen]

16:00 - 17:00 | Training Session 3 | The Foundry

• Organized, distributed OpenStreetMap field mapping with Field Campaigner | Paul Uithol, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Christian Christelis, Kartoza

• https://github.com/hotosm/field-campaigner

• http://campaigns-dev.hotosm.org/

• http://campaigns-dev.hotosm.org/about

• http://campaigns-dev.hotosm.org/how-it-works

• https://www.hotosm.org/updates/2017-05-24_organized_distributed_openstreetmap_field_mapping

[Daniel-Mietchen]

18:30 - 00:00 | Closing Session & after conference social Red Lion Public House

While it is kind of normal for conferences to have some social event at the end, it was rather odd that the conference itself did not have a formal closing or organized transition to the social event, which happened several kilometres away and wasn't attended by all those who were still there for the final session.