Category: Events

Posted on in Events

Next Mapathon! 9th March 2018

Join us in a mapathon to help us put the world’s most vulnerable people on the map. Our next event will take place on Friday 9th March, 2018, 12.30 – 1.30pm in Room K4.32 of the King’s Building.

Across the Global South, many millions of people are vulnerable to natural disasters, health and development issues. Yet many of these towns and villages remain unmapped. This makes it difficult for first responders, governments and NGOs to reach these people and understand the spatial dimensions of problems they face.

We’ve not yet chosen a location or post-disaster region to map in this event. But as you can see from the Humanitarian Open Street Map tasking manager there are multiple tasks ongoing and we might contribute to one of those. But if you have an idea for a region you think is important to map, drop us a line to let us know and maybe we can investigate.

Mapathons are a great way to learn some basic GIS skills whilst catching up with friends. For more advanced mappers, this might give you ideas for research projects based on crowdsourced data or FOSS software. Either way, the KCL Humanitarian Mappers Team are on hand to help! Join us on Friday 9th March, 12.30 – 1.30pm in K4.32. All are welcome.

Posted on in Events, Mapathon Results

Thamesplastic Mapathon, 18/01/2017

Plastic is one of the most notable traces of contemporary society. Its ubiquity in our daily lives, from toothpaste micro-beads to shopping bags, makes it also the culprit of a large portion of environmental pollution.

Given its high buoyancy -among other factors- plastic debris can quickly and easily accumulate in channels and rivers, eventually leading to the sea. Water bodies present in proximity of urban areas are particularly prone to experience such processes, and the Thames river is no exception.

To answer this pressing socio-ecological issue a comprehensive research project Thames Memory & the Exploration of Future Dust is currently being led by King’s College London Departments of Geography, Chemistry, Informatics in tandem with Thames21 and the Thames Estuary Partnership. Such project will result in a large temporary art installation created by artist Maria Arceo with the tide of plastic litter collected from Thames’s shoreline; a concrete testament exposing the magnitude of the problem.

maria

To support Maria’s effort, and in the hope of one day experiencing a cleaner Thames, the KCL Humanitarian Mappers team has gladly hosted an ad hoc mapathon on February the 7th to raise awareness on such issue.

night

During the night of mapping & pizza, more than 40 volunteers traced onto OpenStreetMap the outline of Thames’s tidal shores taken from satellite imagery.
Throughout the evening there have been talks from a range of experts about the creative and scientific aspects of the project, ranging from KCL Geography’s own Dr. Michael Chadwick
to members of partners organisations Thames 21 and the Thames Estuary Partnership.

mikechad

Throughout the event, novel mappers not only have had the chance to strengthen their GIS skills by contributing to an Open-Source initiative (OpenStreetMap); but furthermore have produced a richer map of the Thames beaches that will help KCL artist in residence Maria to identify where she can collect waste plastics in her year long campaign to collect rubbish along the entire tidal Thames. All in all, not a bad result for a single evening of mapping!

And what about you?  The KCL Humanitarian Mappers team is waiting you at the next event. As always, bring a laptop along (and a computer mouse!). We’ll provide pizza and drinks, and a good excuse to map. Beginners most welcome!

Faith, James and Michele

Posted on in Events

First mapathon of the term, 14/10/2016

Join us in a mapathon to help us put the world’s most vulnerable people on the map. Our first event of the autumn term will take place on Friday 14th October, 2016, 1pm – 2pm in the Pyramid Room (K4U.04), King’s Building.

Across the Global South, many millions of people are vulnerable to natural disasters, health and development issues. Yet many of these towns and villages remain unmapped. This makes it difficult for first responders, governments and NGOs to reach these people and understand the spatial dimensions of problems they face.

It’s been a pretty wild week in the world of hazards, with Hurricane Matthew causing major damage across the Caribbean (plus a volcanic eruption in Japan and landslides in Taiwan). Consequently, the digital community of mappers has been very busy working on tasks in the Humanitarian Open Street Map tasking manager – with 1,000 mappers adding 180,000 buildings to Open Street Map in the last few days alone! With this in mind, it’s quite hard to know exactly what we will be mapping on Friday, as new tasks are being created and completed at quite a pace!

If maps of Hurricane Matthew damage in Haiti are still required, we will contribute to this task. However, other hazards are never too far away, so if this task is complete, we will work on mapping to help preparedness in Malawi. Malawi is one of the world’s least developed countries, which also experiences a range of natural hazards (such as earthquakes and floods) and humanitarian issues such as epidemics. By creating richer maps of the roads and buildings in Malawi, this will help humanitarian organisations, governments and scientists better understand and address these issues.

This is a great way to learn some basic GIS skills whilst catching up with friends over coffee and donuts. For more advanced mappers, this might give you ideas for research projects based on crowdsourced data or FOSS software. Either way, the KCL Humanitarian Mappers Team are on hand to help! Join us on Friday 14th October, 1pm – 2pm in the Pyramid Room. Bring your laptop and lunch. All are welcome.