“Before 2011, if you asked most cartography professionals, they’d say OpenStreetMap was a toy. The turning point for me was a photo of a firefighter from a search and rescue team using a handheld GPS device—they used OSM maps to coordinate efforts after the Haiti earthquake.”

“During natural disasters like Haiti in 2011, nearby countries send search and rescue teams, and organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross deploy. They requested a map to set up a field hospital. The Haitian government was basically like, “What? How?” So you go to Google Maps, right? Like anyone would. But there was nothing—Haiti had no commercial map coverage at the time. Even if there had been, it was likely destroyed. Then we showed up—just four OSM geeks—because nobody else cared about geographic data. With the help of 500 volunteers with iPhones, we mapped the entire street network of Port-au-Prince in a week. That map allowed NGOs to move through the city and save lives. It was a turning point—after that, the World Health Organization started listening to us.”

Flyers (April 3, 2025) “Expertos en cartografía: OpenStreetMap es la Wikipedia de los mapas” Medio Multimedia

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“So we talked to him about the state of mapping in India. It sounds like it’s progressing well with lively communities in the cities, although sometimes struggling to build formal organisations, partly because it’s a little bit illegal there, so has to remain a bit underground. That’s mostly because of tensions around showing of borders. I wonder whether vector tiles will soon allow us to do the same slight-of-hand trick that other map providers do, showing different border positions depending on your IP address location. It’s kind of comical how well that trick seems to work to take the heat off. Another thing which is daft, is that there’s no official openly published data on the border position which officially must be shown on maps of India. That would be a basic way of helping assert a particular desired border position. But no.”

Harry Wood (April 11th, 2025) “Jack Horner pub last Tuesday. India, Apps & Notes” OpenStreetMap