First, let me tell you how we operate. Ours is a voluntary work. We mobilize national and international volunteers in mapping work. People cannot go to the field to map places at this time of national crisis, especially when the affected areas are large. So our mapping works through a kind of remote control system. About 5,000 national and international volunteers have been doing this job since April 25. They map road networks, camps of internally displaced people, blocked networks, landslides and debris. They take help from satellite images. The mappers put these images at the background while mapping the affected areas. Once they are done with mapping, the map data becomes immediately available to everybody throughwww.openstreetmap.org. People can log on to this website and find maps of anyplace they need. This has become a great help to the officials and troops in rescue and relief operations. The good thing about our maps is that they are free, can be created and used and accessed by anyone in need. This is open source mapping. Anyone can contribute to it.
All mappers may not be professionals. How do you ensure reliability?
That's a genuine concern. But believe me,a lot of people working in Kathmandu Living Labs are professionals. There are people from American Red Cross, including its head of mapping unit. Those working here have fairly good level of mapping skills. There are also those who are not professionals. But there are senior, professional and experienced mappers who look at the quality of their work. There is a team that oversees who is mapping what and whether or not their work iscredible. If there are credibility and quality issues, senior mappers improve on them. If there are serious problems, the seniors even warn the new mappers and remind them to learn the system. Unreliable maps do not get uploaded.
Thousands of people have been killed, millions displaced, andproperties and homes damaged in various places. How do you prioritize your mapping work?
When the Great Earthquake hit on April 25, we all got together, set up a situation room and started mapping. But where to start? In Sindhupalchowk, Gorkha or Kathmandu? That was the question. The good thing was Kathmandu Valley had already been mapped before the earthquake. So we established contact with national and international organizations like Nepal Army and Red Cross who would tell us where the maps were desperately needed.
For example the Red Cross requested us for a map of districts hit by the earthquake. Slowly, Nepal Army and other rescue organizations started to give us more special requirements in the map such as marks of the areas with the shelters of displaced people and so on. We used the satellite images taken after the earthquake and created new maps for Nepal Army. This information proved to be very important for these organizations to decide where to bring food, mobilize logistics and dispatch health teams. About 45,000 volunteers, many of them from abroad, have contributed to this work so far.
There is a group called Humanitarian Open Street Mapping with about two million people involved. Of them a group of people, called Humanitarian Open Street Map Team, uses these maps during humanitarian crisis. It's a loose online group distributed throughout the world. KLL is in close collaboration with this team. We pass out requests to them for building maps and they start working on the same basis. We decide which area to prioritize based on the demands and requests from rescue and relief organizations.
Can you tell us about some organizations that have used your maps in relief operations?
Canadian Army used the map data we produced in their operation. National Defense and Canadian Armed Force has acknowledged us in their report. USAID team also used it. Our maps helped them locate areas awaiting humanitarian assistance, relief and rescue aid. There were groupsof foreign doctors waiting in front of Ministry of Health for help. They wanted to go to the affected districts and provide medical services. But they had only vague idea about location of districts. Our maps worked like mirrors for them. They could get the idea of where they had to go by looking at the maps in Kathmandu itself. Our maps help people to navigate the places. They also give an idea of damaged buildings so that reconstruction and rehabilitation works can be carried out smoothly and relief materials delivered on time.
Your project is entirely internet based. How can those without internetbenefit?
We are lucky that our internet serviceswere operational even during the times of crisis. So we could design maps and upload them on reliefmap.org. In this, we can pull data of a particular affected district, or even a VDC and upload it. We prepare the maps as per the request of service organizations and provide it to them in PDF files which are also uploaded in quakerelief.info. They can download those files and print them before going to affected areas in case there is no internet there. Yes, this is internet driven project but lack of internet access does not always hinder getting the information from us. Anybody who wants to obtain the map can log on to KLL website and ask us through telephone or email. When we prepare the maps we can give them out in print or in soft copy.
In which districts have your maps been most useful for Nepal Army or foreign helpers?
I cannot tell you exactly where they have been very useful. But national and foreign organizations including Nepal Army have made most of it during rescue and relief operation. Nepal Armyhas made good use of it through quakemap.org. This website contains reports that mention things the earthquake victims need most and also mention the location. Nepal Army has used this information in its operations. Thus it would not be right to understand us merely as mappers. We are working as a bridge to connect the victims with rescue and relief organizations.
If you want to identify what people of Dhading want you can access quakemap.org, click Dhading and read the information about what the victims need. Relief and rescue organizations including Nepal Army go through these reports at least every two hours to assess the situations and the needs of the victims. Thus our work has as much to do with relief and rescue operation. We hope to be a partner in reconstruction and recovery efforts as well.
What are the challenges you are facing in this work?
Perhaps the biggest hurdle is lack of space to operate from. Our office building has many cracks. We could not operate from there. We are thankful to Buzz Café for providing us this space. But this is a temporary arrangement and we are going to have to face space problems soon. KLL is a small organization. It was not designed to cope with a big disaster like this. We need to develop it to enable it to meet rising demands. We need to expand our capacity. But our focus at the moment is how to make maps and data available torescue organizations to help people in this time of national crisis.
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