Publication date
21/01/2026
Update date
22/01/2026
Description
In 2010, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, hundreds of humanitarian organizations arrived in the country ready to help. They encountered an unexpected obstacle: there were no updated maps. Without reliable geographic information, coordinating resources, locating isolated communities, or planning safe routes was nearly impossible.
That gap marked a turning point: it was the moment when the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community demonstrated its enormous humanitarian potential. More than 600 volunteers from all over the world organized themselves and began mapping Haiti in record time. This gave impetus to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team project.
What is Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team?
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, known by the acronym HOT, is an international non-profit organization dedicated to improving people's lives through accurate and accessible geographic data. Their work is inspired by the principles of OSM, the collaborative project that seeks to create an open, free and editable digital map for anyone.
The difference with OSM is that HOT is specifically aimed at contexts where the lack of data directly affects people's lives: it is about providing data and tools that allow more informed decisions to be made in critical situations. That is, it applies the principles of open software and data to collaborative mapping with social and humanitarian impact.
In this sense, the HOT team not only produces maps, but also facilitates technical capacities and promotes new ways of working tools, the for different actors who need precise spatial data. Their work ranges from immediate response when a disaster strikes to structural programs that strengthen local resilience to challenges such as climate change or urban sprawl.
Four priority geographical areas
While HOT is not limited to a single country or region, it has established priority areas where its mapping efforts have the greatest impact due to significant data gaps or urgent humanitarian needs. It currently works in more than 90 countries and organizes its activities through four Open Mapping Hubs (regional centers) that coordinate initiatives according to local needs:
- Asia-Pacific: challenges range from frequent natural disasters (such as typhoons and earthquakes) to access to remote rural areas with poor map coverage.
- Eastern and Southern Africa: this region faces multiple intertwined crises (droughts, migratory movements, deficiencies in basic infrastructure) so having up-to-date maps is key for health planning, resource management and emergency response.
- West Africa and North Africa: in this area, HOT promotes activities that combine local capacity building with technological projects, promoting the active participation of communities in the creation of useful maps for their environment.
- Latin America and the Caribbean: frequently affected by hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic hazards, this region has seen a growing adoption of collaborative mapping in both emergency response and urban development and climate resilience initiatives.
The choice of these priority areas is not arbitrary: it responds to contexts in which the lack of open data can limit rapid and effective responses, as well as the ability of governments and communities to plan their future with reliable information.
Open source tools developed by HOT
An essential part of HOT's impact lies in the open-source tools and platforms that facilitate collaborative mapping and the use of spatial data in real-world scenarios. To this end, an E2E Value Chain Mapping was developed, which is the core methodology that enables communities to move from image capture and mapping to impact. This value chain supports all of its programs, ensuring that mapping is a transformative process based on open data, education, and community empowerment.
These tools not only support HOT's work, but are available for anyone or community to use, adapt, or expand. Specifically, tools have been developed to create, access, manage, analyse and share open map data. You can explore them in the Learning Center, a training space that offers capacity building, skills strengthening and an accreditation process for interested individuals and organisations. These tools are described below:
It allows drone flights to be planned for up-to-date, high-resolution aerial imagery, which is critical when commercial imagery is too expensive. In this way, anyone with access to a drone – including low-cost and commonly used models – can contribute to a global repository of free and open imagery, democratizing access to geospatial data critical to disaster response, community resilience, and local planning.
The platform coordinates multiple operators and generates automated flight plans to cover areas of interest, making it easy to capture 2D and 3D images accurately and efficiently. In addition, it includes training plans and promotes safety and compliance with local regulations, supporting project management, data visualization and collaborative exchange between pilots and organizations.
Figure 1. Drone Tasking Manager (DroneTM) screenshot. Source: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
It is an open-source platform that offers access to a community library of openly-licensed aerial imagery, obtained from satellites, drones, or other aircraft. It has a simple interface where you can zoom in on a map to search for available images. OAM allows you to both download and contribute new imagery, thus expanding a global repository of visual data that anyone can use and plot in OpenStreetMap.
All imagery hosted on OpenAerialMap is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, which means that they are publicly accessible and can be reused with attribution, facilitating their integration into geospatial analysis applications, emergency response projects, or local planning initiatives. OAM relies on the Open Imagery Network (OIN) to structure and serve these images.
It facilitates collaborative mapping in OpenStreetMap. Its main purpose is to coordinate thousands of volunteers from all over the world to aggregate geographic data in an organized and efficient way. To do this, it breaks down a large mapping project into small "tasks" that can be completed quickly by people working remotely.
The way it works is simple: projects are subdivided into grids, each assignable to a volunteer in order to map out elements such as streets, buildings, or points of interest in OSM. Each task is validated by experienced mappers to ensure data quality. The platform clearly shows which areas still need mapping or review, avoiding duplication and improving the efficiency of collaborative work.
Figure 2. Tasking Manager screenshot. Source: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
It uses artificial intelligence to assist the mapping process in OpenStreetMap for humanitarian purposes. Through computer vision models, fAIr analyzes satellite or aerial images and suggests the detection of geographical elements such as buildings, roads, watercourses or vegetation from free images such as those of OpenAerialMap. The idea is that volunteers can use these predictions as an aid to map faster and more accurately, without performing automated mass imports, always integrating human judgment into the validation of each element.
One of the most outstanding features of fAIr is that the creation and training of AI models is in the hands of the mapping communities themselves: users can generate their own training sets adjusted to their region or context, which helps reduce biases of standard models and makes predictions more relevant to local needs.
It is a mobile and web application that facilitates the coordination of mapping campaigns directly in the field. Field-TM is used in conjunction with OpenDataKit (ODK), a data collection platform on Android that allows information to be entered in the field using mobile devices themselves. Thanks to it, volunteers can enter geospatial information verified by local observation, such as the purpose of each building (whether it is a store, a hospital, etc.).
The app provides an interface to assign tasks, track progress, and ensure data consistency. Its main purpose is to improve the efficiency, organization and quality of fieldwork by enriching it with local information, as well as to reduce duplications, avoid uncovered areas and allow clear monitoring of the progress of each collaborator in a mapping campaign.
Transform conversations from instant messaging apps (like WhatsApp) into interactive maps. In many communities, especially in disaster-prone or low-tech literacy areas, people are already using chat apps to communicate and share their location. ChatMap leverages those exported messages, extracts location data along with texts, photos, and videos, and automatically renders them on a map, without the need for complex installations or advanced technical knowledge.
This solution works even in conditions of limited or offline connectivity, relying on the phone's GPS signal to record locations and store them until the information can be uploaded.
Figure 3. ChatMap screenshot. Source: OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Team (HOT).
Facilitate access to and download of up-to-date geospatial data from OpenStreetMap in useful formats for analysis and projects. Through this web platform, you can select an area of interest on the map, choose what data you want (such as roads, buildings, or services), and download that data in multiple formats, such as GeoJSON, Shapefile, GeoPackage, KML, or CSV. This allows the information to be used in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software or integrated directly into custom applications. You can also export all the data for a zone or download data associated with a specific project from the Tasking Manager.
The tool is designed to be accessible to both technical analysts and non-GIS experts: in a matter of minutes, custom OSM extracts can be generated without the need to install specialized software. It also offers an API and data quality metrics.
It is an open-source interactive map creation platform that allows anyone to easily visualize, customize, and share geospatial data. Based on OpenStreetMap maps, uMap allows you to add custom layers, markers, lines and polygons, manage colors and icons, import data in common formats (such as GeoJSON, GPX or KML) and choose licenses for the data, without the need to install specialized software. The maps created can be embedded in websites or shared using links.
The tool offers templates and integration options with other HOT tools, such as ChatMap and OpenAerialMap, to enrich the data on the map.
Figure 4. HOT open source tools for mapping with social impact. Source: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
All of these tools are available to local communities around the world. HOT also offers training to promote its use and improve the impact of open data in humanitarian responses.
How can you join HOT's impact?
HOT is built alongside a global community that drives the use of open data to strengthen decision-making and save lives. If you represent an organization, university, collective, public agency, or community initiative and have a project idea or interest in an alliance, the HOT team is open to exploring collaborations. You can write to partnerships@hotosm.org.
When communities have access to accurate data, open tools, and the knowledge to generate geospatial information on an ongoing basis, they become informed agents, ready to make decisions in any situation. They are better equipped to identify climate risks, respond to emergencies, solve local problems, and mobilize support. Open mapping, therefore, does not only represent territories: it empowers people to transform their reality with data that can save lives.
