Background

Following the political transition in December 2024, Syria entered a critical and uncertain phase marked by both opportunity and risk. After more than a decade of conflict, communities across the country face widespread infrastructure damage, fragmented governance, and deep social strain. At the same time, there is renewed momentum among Syrians—inside the country and across the diaspora—to contribute to recovery and long‑term resilience.

Reliable, up‑to‑date geospatial data is a foundational requirement for recovery planning. Civil society organizations, local governments, and international partners require accurate information on buildings, roads, critical services, populated places, and damaged or abandoned infrastructure to support sustainable returns, service restoration, and reconstruction. Yet years of conflict have left Syria with severe data gaps and uneven data availability across platforms, making coordination difficult and often forcing actors to rely on outdated or incomplete maps.

To address these challenges, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), with support from the H2H Network, is supporting a coordinated, community‑driven initiative to strengthen OpenStreetMap (OSM) data and build a sustainable OSM Syria community. The project combines large‑scale data improvement with local capacity building, ensuring that recovery efforts are informed by accurate, locally grounded, and openly accessible geospatial data.

Understanding the Geospatial Gaps in Syria

Syria’s conflict‑altered landscape presents acute challenges for geospatial data collection and use:

• Buildings: Large gaps persist across OSM and machine‑learning‑derived datasets. Even the most comprehensive automated sources are estimated to be missing nearly a quarter of buildings nationwide, while OSM coverage remains significantly lower but more precise.
• Roads: Many rural and peri‑urban areas lack complete road networks or critical attributes such as surface type and connectivity, limiting logistics planning and accessibility analysis.
• Populated places: Villages, neighborhoods, and locally used place names are inconsistently represented, particularly in rural Aleppo, Rural Damascus, and northern Syria.

Beyond physical infrastructure, administrative and cultural data gaps—including heritage sites, schools, and community landmarks—further constrain recovery planning. The fragmentation of datasets across institutions and platforms means that actors are often working with different, incompatible versions of reality.

These gaps directly affect humanitarian and recovery outcomes. According to UNHCR, over 1 million people had returned to Syria by September 2025, with many more expected if conditions improve and reconstruction scales up. Without accurate spatial data, efforts to restore housing, education, health services, and livelihoods remain inefficient and uneven.

The Role of the Syrian Diaspora

Syrians living abroad play a critical role in recovery‑oriented mapping. Many possess deep knowledge of local geography, place names, infrastructure histories, and cultural landmarks—knowledge that is often absent from satellite imagery or automated datasets.

Interest in contributing to OSM Syria is strong. More than 100 Syrians have already expressed interest in participating, describing mapping as a way to reconnect with their homeland—sometimes referred to as “nostalgic mapping.” By engaging both Syrians who remained and those in the diaspora, the project helps bridge divided experiences and fosters shared ownership of recovery data.

HOT’s approach connects Syrian mappers with global OSM experts, creating pathways for skills transfer, leadership development, and long‑term community sustainability.

Participatory Mapping to Leverage Local Knowledge

Participatory mapping is central to ensuring that Syria’s maps reflect lived realities. Through HOT’s Tasking Manager, contributors—both remote and local—can focus on priority areas where local knowledge is strongest, such as villages of origin or regions with known damage.

Key mapping activities include:

• Large‑scale digitization of buildings and roads, prioritizing rural Aleppo and Rural Damascus.
• Addition and validation of schools, heritage sites, health facilities, and other critical infrastructure.
• Crowdsourced review and validation of third‑party open datasets for potential integration into OSM.

This approach ensures higher accuracy, preserves culturally relevant information, and reduces reliance on incomplete automated sources.

Innovative Tools for Data Consolidation

To manage complex and evolving data needs, the project leverages a range of open tools:

• HOT Tasking Manager for coordinated, large‑scale mapping campaigns.
• MapSwipe to identify unmapped settlements and prioritize mapping areas.
• iD Editor and JOSM for detailed editing, validation, and attribute enrichment.
• fAIr (HOT’s AI‑assisted tool) for mapping buildings and roads where high‑resolution imagery is available.
• uMap for visualizing priority areas and coordinating activities among partners.

Together, these tools support a hybrid approach that combines automation, human validation, and local expertise.

Building Trust Through Ethical Mapping

Mapping in a post‑conflict context requires strong ethical safeguards. At project onset, HOT and partners conduct a data protection and ethics review to determine what data can be shared openly and what should be restricted or shared through trusted channels.

Key principles include:

• Context‑specific risk assessments
• Careful handling of sensitive locations
• Transparency around data use and limitations

This framework ensures that open data supports recovery without putting communities or contributors at risk.

Data Access and Use

All validated edits are published live in OpenStreetMap and made available through:

• HOT’s Data API
• Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) for country‑level and thematic extracts. For Syria you can find the filtered HDX list or choose from the categories bellow to visit a specific dataset:
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Waterways
  • Railways
  • Health Facilities
  • Financial Services
  • Populated Places
  • Education Facilities
  • Sea Ports
  • Airports
  • Points of Interest

Datasets not suitable for OSM—such as partner damage assessments—are shared via platforms like HDX or ESRI Living Atlas, following agreed data protection protocols.

What’s Next? Upcoming Work and Focus Areas

From January 2026 to May 2026, the project will focus on:

• Scaling mapping campaigns beyond initial focus areas to additional regions of Syria
• Training and supporting OSM Syria Champions through advanced training‑of‑trainers
• Strengthening collaboration with local governments, NGOs, and academic institutions
• Improving coordination and visibility of damage assessments across actors

Lessons learned will inform scalable methods for addressing geospatial data gaps in other conflict‑affected contexts.

Conclusion

Syria’s recovery depends on shared, trusted, and locally informed data. By combining community‑driven mapping, ethical data practices, and open platforms, this initiative lays the groundwork for more effective recovery planning and stronger social cohesion.

OSM Syria represents more than a dataset—it is a growing network of Syrians using open geospatial data to reconnect with place, support reconstruction, and shape a more resilient future.

Cover Photo: View of the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria. By Bernard Gagnon

Get Involved

Whether you are a mapper, researcher, organization, or member of the Syrian community, there are many ways to contribute.

To collaborate, volunteer, or support recovery mapping efforts in Syria or other conflict‑affected contexts, contact info@hotosm.org.

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