This weekend Heidelberg was the host city of this semesters geography “BuFaTa” (Bundesfachschaftentagung). During this four day event student associations from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and their members came together to discuss, learn and spend time together. The event was organized by an excellent student team from Heidelberg.
We as disastermappers Heidelberg contributed to the BuFaTa by organising a Missing Maps mapathon as one of the plenty working group activities. During three hours we presented an overview on mapping activities to support disaster management and humanitarian aid. Furthermore, the participants became active themselves by contributing data to MapSwipe and/or OpenStreetMap. By spreading the word about the work of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross organisations and our local team at the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, we hope to help to establish more mapathons in other German cities organized by local student groups.
A group of motivated students during the mapathon (Foto: Daniel Wagner)
Everyone insterested in organising mapathons at his/her home town is welcome to contact us. We’re happy to share our experiences we gained on the long journey we started already in 2013 during the mapping efforts after Typhoon Haiyan. Just write an email to disastermappers@posteo.de or contact us via Twitter or Facebook.
For the ones, who can’t wait to learn more: We already have a list of tutorials and workshop material available under the tutorials section of this blog.
Again, thank you for the great attendance and let’s stay in contact! We can’t wait to pack our things and come to your universities! 🙂
Mapping Settlements using the MapSwipe app (Foto: Daniel Wagner)
disastermappers heidelberg 