Environment & Climate

Mapping hope when it matters most.

Discover how OpenStreetMap powers global disaster relief and humanitarian efforts—saving lives through maps made by people like you.

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The Map that Saves Lives

What This Means

When disaster strikes—be it a flood, earthquake, or conflict zone—response teams need accurate, up-to-date maps to reach those in need. OpenStreetMap, with its open data and global community, fills critical mapping gaps in real time. Powered by volunteers and supported by humanitarian organizations, OSM enables aid agencies to navigate chaos with clarity.

How OSM has been contributing to saving lives

A Global Effort to Unleash Local Data: How Open Mapping is Shaping Grassroots Climate Resilience Worldwide

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team uses OSM to support communities in mapping flood-prone areas, tracking deforestation, and building climate resilience. In Malawi in 2022, OSM communities mapped critical infrastructure damaged by Tropical Storm Ana and Cyclone Gombe to guide disaster recovery. In Ecuador in 2023, HOT coordinated with the national Risk Management Secretariat to map high-risk flooding areas ahead of the El Nino climate phenomenon.

Not specified • Source link

CLIMADA + OSM-flex - Multi-Faceted Climate Risk Assessment

Researchers at ETH Zurich developed OSM-flex, a Python tool that extracts features from OSM, including forests, railways, airports, UNESCO heritage sites, and healthcare facilities, and feeds them into the open-source CLIMADA climate risk platform. The tool was used to compute winter storm risk and event impacts from the severe 1999 storm Lothar across Switzerland, solving the challenge that most climate risk models only assess buildings and roads due to lack of open exposure data.

ETH Zurich researchers • Source link

Built Environment Mapping for Urban Heat Island Analysis

OpenStreetMap US launched a 2022 community mapping campaign to improve OSM data on impervious surfaces, including buildings, roads, and parking lots, for climate change analysis and urban heat island assessment in New Orleans, which ranked as the US city with the highest urban heat island index in 2021. The mapped data supports population risk assessments for sea level rise and extreme heat events.

OpenStreetMap US • Source link

Open land cover from OpenStreetMap and remote sensing

Researchers combined OpenStreetMap land-use data with remote sensing to build open land-cover products for environmental analysis. A Heidelberg case study filled OSM data gaps with satellite information, supporting land-use monitoring, ecological assessment, resource management, urban planning, and climate-change research workflows at local and regional scales across landscapes for policy decisions.

Not specified • Source link

Mikel Maron: Crowdsourcing satellite imagery to document deforestation

An investigative article (ExposingTheInvisible) interviews OSM founder Mikel Maron about the Logging Roads project. Volunteers mapped 30,532 logging roads in the Congo Basin using satellite imagery.

Mikel Maron • Source link

Map4Mangrove: Collaborative Mapping for Mangrove Conservation and Climate Action - Indonesia

The Map4Mangrove project. Led by HOT in partnership with local organizations, the project used OpenStreetMap (OSM) as the primary mapping platform to collect and update geospatial data on mangrove rehabilitation sites. Community members, students, and volunteers contributed by mapping coastlines, mangrove areas, waterways, and related infrastructure into OSM.

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) • Source link

Capturing opportunities for OpenStreetMap data to better support Anticipatory Action

In the Philippines, volunteers mapped Butuan City in OSM to create a detailed basemap that mobile teams used to survey vulnerable businesses ahead of floods, enabling pre-positioning of support. OSM data was also used in Uganda to overlay flood extent with infrastructure and settlement maps for impact forecasting. HOT supports local data maintenance and connects response actors to OSM communities.

Sander Houstan, Katharina Lorenz, Carly Redhead, Sarah Lohr • Source link

Mitigating heat stress by reducing solar exposure in pedestrian routing

OpenStreetMap (OSM) was used as a core data source to extract the pedestrian network of Heidelberg, Germany. OSM road and sidewalk data were combined with high-resolution building and vegetation models to calculate solar exposure across the city’s walking paths. The study developed shade-optimized routing that directs pedestrians along routes with less sun exposure, reducing heat stress.

HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) • Source link

Off the grid: utilizing OpenStreetMap for early warning and early action in conflict settings in Sudan

OpenStreetMap (OSM) fill critical geospatial data gaps in conflict-affected Sudan. With limited official infrastructure maps, OSM provides base data for exposure and vulnerability analysis of populations affected by climate hazards. OSM’s crowd-sourced maps are positioned as key tools to identify high-risk areas, improve early action planning, and inform humanitarian decision-making.

Cornelia Scholz, Catalina Jaime, Emmanuel Raju, Erin Coughlan De Perez, Maarten van Aalst • Source link

How you can contribute

You don't need a cape or a degree to save lives—just a mouse and a little heart .❤️

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Join the HOT Tasking Manager

Help map areas in crisis and support real-time response.

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Learn mapping with LearnOSM

Step-by-step guides for beginner to expert.

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Donate to Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT)

Support mapping for disaster response worldwide.

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