The AAG Mapathon

The upcoming AAG Annual Meeting will provide a first for attendees—a three day Mapathon. Conference attendees can join a community of online mappers to contribute to OpenStreetMap for humanitarian efforts. Using satellite imagery and freely available OpenStreetMap editing platforms, participants will trace, edit, and label key infrastructure (buildings, roads, etc.), environmental features, and other objects for the creation of openly available real data to produce maps that assist humanitarian and community efforts.

With featured speakers and support from the State Department’s Office of the Geographer, the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science at George Mason University, USAID GeoCenter, American Red Cross, Peace Corps, the World Bank, and the AAG, organizers hope to inspire and educate participants about the power of volunteered geographic information for humanitarian response and sustainable development.

The Mapathon will promote themes of shared humanitarian interest, and mapping will be coordinated through the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s Tasking Manager, with imagery services provided by the Office of the Geographer’s Humanitarian Information Unit. The three daily themes are Secondary Cities and Urban Resilience, Disaster Preparedness and Response, and Health and Infectious Disease. Participants will be invited to work on specific mapping assignments during the conference, either in the Mapathon Lounge or anywhere they have a reliable internet connection. Recognizing the power that Mapathons have to educate, engage, and empower the public, the organizers hope that at the end of the conference, participants will have made significant contributions towards improved maps to support humanitarian response and sustainable development efforts.

The Mapathon Lounge will be open Wednesday, March 30 to Friday, April 1, from 11:40-3:00 at the AAG headquarters hotel – the Hilton Union Square. Each day of the Mapathon event will feature a thematic keynote presentation, mapping guidance, and open data creation, and will be preceded and followed by related panel sessions in the same room (check your AAG program). For more information about the Mapathon, please contact Tom Gertin (Email: gertintj@state.gov) or Sven Fuhrmann (Email: sfuhrman@gmu.edu).

Acknowledgement of additional supporters of the AAG Mapathon: Mapzen, Mapbox, Colorado State, University of Colorado, McGill University, George Washington University, West Virginia University, Stamen Design, Texas Tech University, World Bank, and Youth Mappers.