The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is based on the principle that “free map data would be a tremendous benefit for humanitarian aid and economic development” (OSM wiki about HOT, visited 26th of March 2015) and one of the main activities is the organization of activations of worldwide volunteers to collaborate all together over the OpenStreetMap platform to raise geographic data for disaster response after natural catastrophes (such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti). This information is then freely available for everybody but in particular to organizations and government working in the field to save people’s lives and improve the situation on the ground.
Photo Credit: Alex Proimos