Humanitarians need geospatial data. They use it every day for tasks like analyzing how extreme heat will impact the health of city residents, predicting damage based on the path of a hurricane, or planning relief operations after a disaster. The need for accurate geospatial data is immense, but so is the collective power of everyday people volunteering their time and skills for a positive cause.
In 2014, the American Red Cross and partner organizations launched the Missing Maps project to address gaps in OpenStreetMap data.
We’ve contributed in many ways, and since 2022 our focus has been engaging volunteers and partners on MapSwipe. MapSwipe volunteers participate in a crowdsourcing process and become an essential part of efforts to support critical research, crisis response, and humanitarian decision-making. They have helped humanitarian organizations and partners develop damage assessment maps in Madagascar, identify locations of housing structures with high heat risk in Arizona, find ponds suitable for fish farming initiatives in India, and much more!
