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News — 03 June, 2016

Ecuador Earthquake: Assessing the Extent of Damaged Buildings

Efforts are still going strong 7 weeks after the initial earthquake struck Ecuador on the 16th April close to the towns of Muisne and Pedernales, with HOT transitioning from the 1st stage of mapping focused on pre-event data to the 2nd stage, a pilot project aimed at mapping building damage and temporary shelters.

Efforts are still going strong 7 weeks after the initial earthquake struck Ecuador on the 16th April close to the towns of Muisne and Pedernales. The National Secretary of Planning & Development of Ecuador has kindly opened their data to be used in OpenStreetMap which has initiated the data import process, with HOT transitioning from the 1st stage of mapping focused on pre-event data to the 2nd stage, a pilot project aimed at mapping building damage and temporary shelters. Please follow the complete progress on the dedicated Ecuador Earthquake wiki page.

#MappingEcuador has organised multiple mapathons focusing on the 1st stage, which has successfully completed a number of Tasking Manager projects, but #1882 and #1842 are still in need of mappers. Only 7% of task #1882 has been validated, while task #1842 is at 21%. Both of these projects are opened to mappers of all levels, so please lend a hand if you can to help us pass the finish line. See the encouraging diary entry by Blake Girardot on how mappers that are just starting out can still lend a hand to validation efforts.

Project #1924 has been setup for the post-event mapping in the Tasking Manager, which requests the assistance of experienced mappers. Please take a moment or two to explore the task and detailed instructions even if you don’t feel qualified enough to contribute in this instance as it is a great example of how damage assessment is carried out via remote mapping. Also browse some of the validated squares to get used to being able to identify damaged buildings and temporary shelters from a bird’s eye view.

Relief efforts on the ground are going strong as Alexandra Escobar, a project coordinator of #MappingEcuador is assisting the reconstruction phase by capturing imagery of damaged buildings from street view to help validate data. This information will then be used by the Ecuadorian government and Red Cross, with whom #MappingEcuador have partnered with in the response efforts following the earthquake. Please see the recent PBS story detailing the above work.