News — 10 May, 2019

#map2020: A campaign to accelerate critical map data collection for humanitarian challenges

Mapillary and HOT are joining forces to accelerate map data collection in undermapped regions. Local mappers are invited to use street-level imagery in mapping projects that address humanitarian or developmental challenges. Two of the projects submitted to the #map2020 campaign will be selected for a fully-funded trip to the HOT Summit in Heidelberg, Germany this September.

This article was also published on Mapillary and GeoAwesomeness

Map data saves lives

There are few places where this is more evident than where street scenes change dramatically as a result of a natural disaster, or where maps are outdated or otherwise lacking in information. Without maps it becomes a lot harder to get medical assistance to those in need, infrastructure planning and maintenance becomes impossible, and disaster resilience efforts are hampered.

Despite this, a significant portion of the world’s population lives in areas lacking detailed and up-to-date maps. The 20º north of the equator and 20º south of the equator are particularly in need of more accurate maps. That’s why Mapillary and HOT are joining forces and launching #map2020, a new campaign for using street-level imagery and computer vision to fill in the missing maps.

#map2020 invites local mappers to submit mapping projects that use street-level imagery and collected map data for humanitarian purposes. By submitting mapping projects, mappers of the two most successful projects will be offered a fully-funded trip to the HOT Summit in Heidelberg, Germany, where they will present their projects and findings to the international humanitarian mapping community.

Building better maps, together

Street-level imagery is an important asset for all mapmakers as it provides a detailed view of the situation on the ground. Map data is easily extracted from street-level images by humans, and when the imagery is uploaded to Mapillary, computer vision takes that to the next level by detecting and extracting map data from the imagery at scale.

With #map2020 we’re inviting local mappers to make street-level imagery an integrated part of their map data collection from the get-go. By capturing imagery with Mapillary, the data will be accessible to anyone who might need it and, as per Mapillary’s commitment to OpenStreetMap, it will remain freely available for editing and improving OpenStreetMap.

At the end of the campaign, we will have a network of mappers with the experience of collecting and using street-level imagery. In addition to this, a number of locations across the world will be densely mapped, with the opportunity to expand this to other locations. To be considered as one of the two successful projects to travel to HOT Summit in September, a project must have uploaded at least 200,000 images to Mapillary by the end of the campaign period and have used the images to address a humanitarian or development challenge.

We’re very excited about #map2020 and we hope you’ll join us in this campaign. Better maps are needed across the world, and there’s no greater way of getting there than by doing it together. By sharing learnings and findings with each other, we’ll all become better mappers as a result.

Here’s to better maps, everywhere.

Rebecca Firth, HOT & Edoardo Neerhut, Mapillary

## Submissions now being accepted

Submissions for organizations that would like to take part in the #map2020 campaign are now being accepted. Read through the project requirements and submit your intention to participate by visiting Mapillary’s website.