The earthquake which devastated Haiti nearly six months ago, also
devastated the country's national mapping service (the National
Centre of Geo-Spatial Information (CNIGS), killing the center's
esteemed director Gina Porcena along with the country's most
experienced mapping experts when the headquarters building
collapsed. In the immediate aftermath, IOM's own mapping experts
reached out to their surviving colleagues at CNIGS.

A remarkable story of co-operation ensued which puts Haiti, IOM
and the largely volunteer organization OpenStreetMap.org at the
head of a global movement to use maps and open data to empower
civil society.  OpenStreetMap, which was founded in 2004, was
inspired by sites such as Wikipedia which allow participants to
edit the entries, or in the case of maps to directly draw new
elements.

Modern online mapping techniques are seen by development experts
at the World Bank as a key driver for good governance because of
their ability to empower civil society. The maps become platforms
to 'crowdsource' grassroots information, creating in the process
'the wisdom of crowds'. Thus citizens can notify donors directly
when problems arise with the implementation of projects.

By way of example, if a donor builds a school but instead of 25
employees, only 5 show up for work, an irate mother can quickly
send an anonymous text message that will appear on a map as one of
many 'crowdsourced' dots.  As more people protest, the map
becomes a powerful driver for accountability and transparency.

Following the earthquake, the rescue effort was hampered by a
total absence of detailed maps of Haiti's worst affected streets.
That's when the volunteers at OpenStreetMap – in Haiti as
well as around the world – went into action. The volunteer's
online mapping efforts enabled rescuers to go directly to buildings
where text messages indicated survivors were trapped. As the
following visualization illustrates ( "paragraph-link-no-underline-bold" href="http://vimeo.com/9182869"
target="_blank" title="">http://vimeo.com/9182869 ), in the
space of only eight days some 50,000 people participated online in
turning empty spaces on a map into what is today a highly detailed
rendering of the city and areas surrounding Port-au-Prince.

In the months since the quake, a team of twelve young Haitian
cartographers – funded by the World Bank – has been
working with IOM to continue the mapping exercise started by
volunteers. Two OpenStreetMap trainers, Kate Chapman and Nicholas
Chavent have been in Haiti working with local community activists
and IOM's community mobilizers on the basics of geo-location
mapping.

"We are just providing a toolkit for communities and we make maps
with the people, that's the big difference," said Chavent.

Tools such as the geo-location mapping are seen as key to
assisting displaced communities to communicate their concerns, and
for responding to growing frustrations among the estimated 1.5
million displaced people living in emergency situations. A hotline
is already in place that allows community members to make urgent
calls when worried about security, health or sanitation and these
concerns will be plotted on a community map. 

For more information contact:

Leonard Doyle

IOM Haiti Media and Communications Officer

Tel: + 509 370 25066

E-mail: "mailto:ldoyle@iom.int">ldoyle@iom.int