REGION: SOUTH ASIA
FOCUS: RISK IDENTIFICATION
COUNTRY: NEPAL
RESULTS:
• The Open Cities Kathmandu project helped create base maps of the Kathmandu Valley by digitizing building footprints, mapping road networks, and collecting information on other major points of interest. The project surveyed nearly 3,000 schools and 350 health facilities in the Kathmandu Valley in two years;
• In response to the 2015 earthquakes, over 6,000 volunteers participated in adding data to OpenStreetMap (OSM), mapping over 80% of the earthquake-hit zones. The information collected was used by the Nepal military, the Red Cross, and many other organizations to provide on-the-ground assistance;
• Organizations like USAID now incorporate the data collected through OSM Kathmandu into disaster preparedness planning exercises.
Additionally, the American Red Cross remains engaged through technical contributions to OSM
Kathmandu is the world’s most seismically at-risk urban area. As a result, beginning in November 2012, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the World Bank launched the Open Cities Kathmandu Project. Through this project, university students, volunteers, and government officials were trained to digitally map their communities using the open-source OpenStreetMap (OSM) platform.
When two high-magnitude earthquakes with an epicenter near Kathmandu struck Nepal in April and May 2015, killing nearly 9,000 people and destroying over a half a million homes, information gathered from this project proved crucial and helped inform response and recovery efforts.