Nepal Earthquake Mapping: Telling Your Company's Story

Word is Out!

Status of one Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Task

In the geospatial circles where I travel on Web, the crowdsourced mapping efforts related to the Nepal earthquake are getting lots of digital ink. Based on my experience the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap effort is most mentioned, then Tomnod (DigitalGlobe) then the Kathmandu Cultural Emergency effort.

These efforts are making the rounds outside my geo and tech-focused media orbit in mainstream outlets like Wired, The Atlantic, the New York Times and many local papers where a local school, company or organization is participating.

I'm very happy to see all these stories. The coverage helps people around the world understand the value of maps and offers them a way to help in the recovery and relief efforts. And, it helps raise awareness of projects like OpenStreetMap and tools like CrowdMap (a crowdsourcing tool from the team behind Ushahidi). And, it reinforces the role for profit companies like DigitalGlobe can have in times of crisis.

Why a 3 Minute Video May be Better Than an Interactive Map to Understand the Nepal Earthquake

With each new natural or man-made disaster, technologies companies work hard to share valuable data and visualizations. I'm trained, having been in the GIS media for many years, to expect an e-mail from Esri, for example, that shares a social media map and perhaps another visualization. That e-mail went out this past week related to the Nepal earthquake, as both GIS User and GIS Cafe confirm.

Wood brick temple before the earthquake, as shown
in the video.

I find these and similar maps have begun to "all look the same" to me and rarely help me understand the underlying story, geographically or otherwise. Perhaps that's why when the Columbia Journalism Review suggested I watch a three minute Facebook video to understand the situation, I did. The more embeddable YouTube version is below.