About the Response

In May 2026, an Ebola outbreak was confirmed in Ituri Province, located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This marks the country’s 17th outbreak, coming just five months after the previous one ended. The virus belongs to the Bundibugyo species, which currently has no proven vaccine or treatment. Consequently, the World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 16, 2026. Imported cases have already been reported in North Kivu Province and Kampala, Uganda. The response faces severe complications due to weak local healthcare infrastructure and ongoing armed conflict.

In response, HOT’s Open Mapping Hub - Eastern and Southern Africa, alongside the volunteer community, launched a coordinated humanitarian mapping initiative focusing on the affected areas of Ituri Province. Under this system, ground responders identify exactly what features they need, volunteers update the map, and the resulting data remains open and accessible to everyone.

In addition, HOT worked with imagery providers, including Satellogic and Vantor, to coordinate and share critical, open imagery captured between June 2025 and May 2026, allowing mappers to properly digitize and improve the base map.

The initiative is being coordinated closely with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) working through its Early Warning and Emergency Operations Centre (EWEOC) alongside the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to identify priority mapping needs and provide essential open geospatial data to support medical routing, supply delivery, and small-scale transmission tracking.

How You Can Support

Map via HOT Tasking Manager

We are seeking volunteer mappers to support activities through the HOT Tasking Manager Campaigns Page. To protect data quality during this emergency, we restrict project permissions based on experience.

Mapping tasks are open to intermediate users (more than 250 changesets), with complex tasks restricted to advanced users (more than 500 changesets). Validation tasks are restricted to intermediate users who are members of official teams, includingValidator Trainees,OMDTZ Validators, HOT Global Validators, and MSF Validators.

Share your data needs.

If you are part of an organization or community involved in the response and have OSM data needs, please reach out to disasterservices@hotosm.org to share your priority locations and/or features for mapping.

Access the Data

Data is available for download through the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), with continuous updates as mapping progresses and new information becomes available:

• DRC & Uganda Ebola Outbreak Dataset – Targeted geographic data on buildings, roads, and settlements from the affected areas of Ituri Province, free to use under the Open Database License and tracked via #EbolaDRC2026.
• Wide Area Downloads – Broad regional datasets covering the wider Humanitarian Data Exchange DRC OSM datasets.

Progress as of September 10, 2026:

Two major HOT Tasking Manager projects remain live to map infrastructure in Bunia Town.

• Roads data in Bunia Town has been 59% mapped and 11% validated.
• Building data in Bunia Town has been 86% mapped and 72% validated.
• The Uganda response work has entered its earliest stage, with operational priorities agreed upon and initial datasets currently in preparation.

The primary dataset on HDX has been downloaded more than 400 times since the first weekly export in May 2026.

The activation team will coordinate with regional hubs, local stakeholders, medical partners, and volunteers to address validation challenges and identify emerging data needs as the outbreak scale develops.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed their time and expertise to the mapping efforts so far.

For the latest updates and complete information about the activation, visit the OpenStreetMap Wiki Activation Page.