A talk on community mapping in OpenStreetMap given at Africa Digital Skills Conference November 2020

1. Introduction to
OpenStreetMap & Youthmappers
How to get your community on the map
Janet Chapman

2. According to Google there is nothing here

3. Whereas OSM shows 1000’s of people live here

5. This is rural Tanzania:
This is Dar es Salaam:

6. OPENSTREETMAP
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is open data: you are free to use it for
any purpose as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its
contributors.
OSM is a collaborative project to create a free editable world
map. http://www.openstreetmap.org

7. HOW OSM WORKS
■ Local knowledge
■ Community driven
■ Inspired by the success of wikipedia
■ Built by a community of mappers that contribute and
maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway
stations, and much more, all over the world.

8. COMMUNITY
Over
4.2 million
users

9. HOW OSM WORKS
OSM can be used for anything. E.g.:
■ Humanitarian
■ Planning / Preparation
■ Communicating Issues / Problems
■ Business

10. HUMANITARIAN
Responding to natural
disasters
E.g.
■ Flooding
■ Earthquakes
■ Hurricanes etc.

11. CREATING AN OSM ACCOUNT
■Go to:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/new
■Fill in email address, username, and
password
■Find the confirmation email, click the link
to confirm
■Log in

13. HUMANITARIAN
www.tasks.hotosm.org

16. Rural Africa
needs
MAPS!

17. We are making them!

18. Slack channel is good for
generating a community, and
for volunteers to ask
questions and get instant
feedback on their 1st
mapping attempts etc.
Join here
https://bit.ly/C2MSlack

22. When you achieve 100% you get a badge.
Currently we have a quizzes for buildings, and roads, with more to come.
https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/JAHNEB

23. Volunteers added clinic locations from
Open Government Data

24. Using water point location data to add
village names.
Also useful for COVID contact tracing.

25. We have trained over 1600 local activists to map their
communities in Tanzania, around 40% female

27. MAPPING ON MAPS.ME
We train field mappers
in rural Tanzania to add
their local knowledge to
the map using
Maps.Me, a free
smartphone app that
works offline.

28. And trained the police
and activists to use the
maps to quickly find and
protect girls at risk.
And also add missing
places to the map.

32. Digital Champions:
We have set up digital champions in all
87 villages in Serengeti, with a
smartphone for the 1st time, linked in a
WhatsApp group.
They help us monitor and protect the
girls in their village, and report any
issues.
We thank USAID for the initial $9000
funding for this through
WomenConnect.

33. New smartphone users
see a map of their village
for the first time.

38. https://crowd2map.org/app/admprint/index.html

41. https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/

45. Janet Chapman
j.chapman@tanzdevtrust.org
@Crowd2Map