OpenStreetMap - New maps for Emergency. Haiti's Earthquake
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project aimed at realizing a free map of the World. Everybody can be an editor and mapmaker of the OSM project. The project is realized by a community of users around the world thanks to the use of open (geographical) data and maps and tracks drawn using GPS receivers and edited into the OSM platform.
OSM works under the same logic of ‘wiki’ or collaborative projects as Wikipedia. It started in the UK and then moved to cover all the world.
A character of OSM is of being constantly in ‘beta version’ and therefore in continuous update.
OSM data are often used in free applications as background maps, often to replace commercially-driven sources (as GoogleMaps or geographical data realized by private companies). The quality varies according to places and can be very detailed and better than official sources in certain locations while very low-quality in other ones.
Among the benefits of OSM projects are the possibility of being rapidly used to map uncovered areas for emergency purposes (i.e., Haiti earthquake in 2010 http://hot.openstreetmap.org/projects/haiti-2) or developing countries where private companies have little interest in spending money to realize a digital cartography (i.e., Bangalore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHKb-SZRh8)
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap
http://hot.openstreetmap.org/projects/haiti-2