Isaac Mustapha and Leticia Makafui made an informative presentation introducing OpenStreetMap (OSM) at Linux Accra User Group's regular Saturday meeting. The presentation walked through its features, an overview of mapping along with hands-on activities. OpenStreetMap is a community-driven project that actively provides and updates map data. This data is open and is used in numerous devices and applications all over the world. The process of adding or contributing this data is known as mapping. A variety of complementary tools like Mapillary, JOSM, GPS tools were also shown, which applied depending on the context of the mapping activity to be done. The attendees then also explored these tools on their own computers or shared computers where necessary and tried different features of OSM and the JOSM tool.  

                     Some mapping activities involved identifying buildings in a given municipality by outlining the boundaries of the structure on the map then assigning various labels to that mapped item and submitted. When this is done for a town or city especially with the local knowledge of that town, the updated map presents more information on the given location. In areas where natural disasters such as floods have occurred, various building and roads may have been washed away or covered with water making it difficult to plan rescue efforts. The power of mapping and open data comes into play providing the needed local context ahead of time, to better inform how rescue should be done. Aside Natural Disaster Management, in different parts of Africa some satellite images of certain locations remain outdated. Mapping plays a powerful role in providing an updated view of those locations making it easier to identify where important buildings such as community hospitals, police stations and similar are located for health and security purposes.   After such an immersive experience, attendees were excited about the knowledge sharing and tools introduced and it is likely to inspire further related projects and presentations in the near future. If so, the meeting will be added to our Meetings page on our website and the related blog entry will be published.   Thank you for making the time to read this, enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great week ahead!