Business Week covers Disaster Maps
This morning, Business Week published an article, Making Maps Work When Disaster Strikes:
GeoCommons, OpenStreetMap, and Mapufacture are three online hubs where people can collaboratively map areas, which could help in emergencies
Discussing the recent hurricane in Myanmar, as well as the well-known issues around the power and failure of geodata and maps in response to Katrina in New Orleans and areas - the article gives a quick impression on the utility of the applications we’re all building to be useful in disasters, recovery and response. As Jesse points out, there is still a long way to go. Many have remarked on the great demonstrations that emerge from news of a disaster, and the benefit they have on awareness of events. However the next important step is putting these tools in the hands of responders.
We’ve been fortunate to work with the UNJLC as well as InSTEDD in employing tools that have immediate implications to responders and hope to work with more organizations in the future.
More recently at Mapufacture, we built a map to aid in tracking the progress of the fire and evacuation centers of the Santa Barbara Gap Wildland fire.
