Cooperation of Mapbox and GeoThings for Humanitarian ICT
We are pleased to announce our partnership and cooperation with Mapbox, with the formal agreement done in October.
Mapbox is so devoted to humanitarian activity and is the leading company in location-based & space-based technologies with a huge hug to open source/data philosophy.
GeoThings is recently working with Asian Development Bank - ADB to deploy our ICT tools, 究平安 geoBingAn and geoMapTool, for the capacity building in various remote/rural area, where might seriously affected by natural disaster.
For the pre-/in-/post-disaster mapping, survey, and situation report, we see the needs of offline basemap while the data network is down. With Mapbox SDK for both Android and iOS development, it supports up to 4K tiles for offline basemap cache. This size of 4K-tile is about a Taipei city (FYI, for Jerusalem is about 2K, Boston is about 7.5K). It's a great feature indeed, however, for some of the remote/rural area that we focused, it's size usually greater than 4K-tile to be cached for offline.
With the partnership between Mapbox and GeoThings, we are not only be the advocator of Mapbox technologies, but also supported by Mapbox with the extension up to 10K offline tiles for offline. It will greatly benefit our OpenStreetMap community members and local government officers in Armenia, Bangladesh, Philippines, and Fiji to response to emergency situation. We are really looking forward to the cooperation and feeling so great to have a solid partner on the humanitarian way to benefit the world! Let's do it and make it impact, GeoThings <3 Mapbox!
Together with Taipei City Government in response to Typhoon
Typhoon Soudelor hit Taiwan in 2015, over 3000 cases of tree down were reported for Taipei city, but only half of them were resolved after 2 weeks. The amount of work loads to clean up those wiped-out-tree are massive. Even the Taipei City Government worked 24/7, the progress seems slow still. GeoThings was thinking about, it should be resolved together with community, and need to have some mechanism to feedback to the authority.
Last month, Typhoon Nepartak hit and caused quite a lot damage to eastern part of Taiwan. Since geoBingAn has already supported some local governments as situation report platform, now we further collaborate with Taipei city government for EOC (Emergency Operating Center) case update and Parking Information Notification before/during/after typhoon in response to Nepartak.
For the predictable natural disaster, such as typhoon, both central and local government will setup EOC so can response to any emergency in time. During the typhoon affected period, citizen usually call the local government to report the situation in order to get it fixed. Such as tree down, power outage, building damage, and so on. The geoBingAn from GeoThings is not just allowing the citizen to report with geo-tagged photo, but also can make it to be the update/supportive information to reported cases. Via geoBingAn, now the citizen can report what happened near by (geoBingAn Report feature), can know what happened near by (geoBingAn Near By feature), can even feedback what’s fixed near by (simply reply the reports in geoBingAn).
With those valuable information that feedback from citizen, local government doesn’t need to deal with the issue that might be already fixed/handled by community, situation is more up-to-date for both citizen and government agency. The most important thing is, community can really be a part of the response process after disaster. This capacity should be built not just for Taipei, not only for Taiwan, but should be built for all other disaster prone areas.
GeoThings spent the whole night with EOC staff, we now know much better about the work flow of emergency report and its process. Thanks to Department of Information Technology of Taipei City Government for the APIs that connects geoBingAn and EOC system. Also thanks to the hard-working GeoThings team for the quick response to the API integration in a very short time!
重點在於簡報的第83頁!蒐集、處理、利用已公開的個人資料時,在隱私權頁面或其他相應的地方寫上右列資訊,原則上就已經依法作好處置了:「相關資料收集自公開資訊,並已妥善進行去識別化流程,倘若您對於任一筆資料的呈現有個人資料上的疑惑,歡迎透過右列回報連結,將意見回報給資料的管理者。(The related data is collected from information that has been disclosed in public, and has been de-identified in the process of collection as well. However, if you have any concern about Personal Information protection issues, please be kindly submitting that to the data manager via the report link shown here: http://fakelink.data-crawler.net)
After the efforts that contributed by OGC, ITU, and GeoThings staff, we finally make Open GeoSMS to be adopted by ITU and officially printed as ITU publication. We would like to introduce you, ITU Q.3615!
Really appreciated and thanks to you all who contributed to this specification, thank you!!
GeoThings is honored to be invited for “Urban and Climate Resilience and Sustainability” session with GEO (Group on Earth Observation), ITU (International Telecommunication Union), OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium), and the academic experts from Italy, Spain, and Austria.
Last week, GeoThings participated in the national strategy and framework discussion with VP of the highest administrative office in Taiwan. We addressed that not only to prepare and practice the disaster reduction/response/relief in Taiwan, but also to contribute our experiences for other regions that might in need. Taiwan and the south-east Asia suffered from lots of natural disasters,
That the major reason why we are more than happy to be a part of this event in Geospatial World Forum 2015, especially in “Urban and Climate Resilience and Sustainability” session. With the topic “Open Standards, VGI, and ICT for Resilience and Sustainability Building”, we are going to talk about how we leveraged Open GeoSMS (OGC Open GeoSMS and ITU Q.3615), Open Street Map, and mobile applications for the capacity building. See you in Lisbon!
Team members: Slayer Kuo-Yu Chuang, Heather Leson, Francesco
Ciriaci, Fahed Alhaj Mohamed, Stephen Mather
On Saturday afternoon, Union Square, 5 crisismappers conducted a participatory mapping project to capture stories about the potentially affected community. Who are these humans of New York? What are their roles and activities in this beautiful space? We determined our best mapping tool and data collection tool to be our phones, specifically the Geo Things app. Our adventure started with a preliminary site walk through to quietly observe with no data collection. This time was used to provide full context into our plan. All our efforts to stay together was thwarted by a busy crowd. Distracted by a hovering helicopter the team got separated. We realized that we did not create a team emergency contact plan and almost had to default to twitter as a communications channel.
Once we reconnected, it was time for a lunch planning session over noodles.
Vignette 0.5: Noodles
We discussed out observations and decided that we were fascinated by the patterns of movement and the striking presence and character of the occupants of the space. Our plan cemented as a story all about flow points and intersections. The title became NOODLE Map.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5v7-m_Ssc
Stephen created a physical map. We had large goals to also take a time lapse of the whole area but the Mapillary tool GPS was failing. So, we reverted to photos and vignettes.
Vignette 1: Plated with Dee
Vignette 1: Plated with Dee Dee has worked for 3 months at Plated, an online company that delivered uncooked meals to homes with all the supplies.
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Vignette 2: Consumption Occasion
They offered us the red or blue pill, er, red or blue Red Bull to sample. Two marketing students were handing out free samples from the Red Bull backpacks. We needed the caffeine after a heavy lunch.
Awake we moved into the heart of the square
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Vignette 3: Free Union Square Tour
Twenty people standing in a semi-circle is bound to catch your eye. Very quickly their moment of learning became ours as we became acquainted with the history of Union Square circa 18th century.
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Vignette 4: the solar bin
En route to our next stop we spent some time discovering the Big Belly Compactor.
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Vignette 5: Composting in Private
She quietly asked us to not take a picture of her working with the compost bins. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday she collects items for compost and sells bags of fully composted soil.
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Vignette 6: A Cauliflower Romance Story
"I hate cauliflowers. Why would anyone eat something so awful." Said Ron, who surprisingly sells romanceso cauliflowers despite his distain.
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Vignette 7: Painting by Numbers.
The artist has been painting for 17 years and now sells his art I. Union square. Bundled up, he was ready for January, not an early November day.
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Vignette 8: Smells like Baby Powder Art
It started with one girl in a black plastic bag. She poured baby powder all over head. As photographers swarmed, others began pouring baby powder over themselves. The air swirled with powder everywhere.
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Vignette 9: Occupy Outreach
Our last stop after food, caffeine, a tour as well as a compost, art and cauliflower education was some political braining. The champion corner is a reminder of the much larger occupy community that met here a few years ago.
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To sum, Union Square is a vibrant community of various activities, patterns and random flow. With so many people, cross-streets and Intersections /activities of life any incident would be very chaotic, but the community is super friendly and has a natural feel of partnership and solidarity despite their varying park life uses.
GeoThings Grand Opening - Official Press Release (in Traditional Chinese)
工研院首家社會企業新創事業 「究⼼公益科技」正式成立
工研院今(30)日宣布衍生新創事業「究心公益科技」正式成立!這是工研院第一家以社會企業為主所成立的公司,未來將以「ICT for Humanitarian」為宗旨開發資訊救災技術,並營運救災資訊協調平台,讓全球救災能更精準掌握資訊,有效準確分配救災資源與人力。目前這套系統已經持續與慈濟、紅十字會、法鼓山等救災組織合作使用,用工研院的科技讓愛心升級。
Willo, the Micro Volunteers Platform, is one of the latest projects by GeoThings, collaborated with Taiwan Mobile Foundation. We provide a free ICT platform for NPOs in Taiwan and make it easier for them to post and organize the charity events, easier to reach target audience and call for volunteers, manage the participant list, and reduce the efforts of registration process.
With the high penetration rate of smart phone, mobile app is a must for people/volunteer to get information, especially for the young generation. It will cost much for NPO to build their own tool like this, but together with various NPOs, a portal platform will be useful. That makes Taiwan Mobile and GeoThings to build this platform, Willo.
The focus of GeoThings is the coordination of information for disaster response and management. Through Willo, we will stay connected with the volunteers and NPOs. When disaster strikes (we sincerely hope not), crowdsourcing, emergency response, and even disaster relief then can be applied on it.
We love this attached video and we believe humour can break the language barrier. Enjoy and have fun :-)
I work for an NGO in the UK and was trying to find out more information about GeoThings, how you work and company structure. For example are you a charity or commercial concern? Do you organisational structure information? Details or partnership projects with other NGO's charitable organisations. What countries you have worked in? How are you funded?
Hi,
We would more than happy to answer your questions. GeoThings is a public benefit company and works with NGOs, NPOs/Foundations, government agencies, and private sectors. You can take us as a IT service company, for profit, not only for the max profits for our investors but for the public benefit. You may reference the further description here on Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_corporation).
Please feel free to send me an mail to "slayer [at] geothings [dot] tw", we can have further discussion on the questions that you mentioned :-)
Our OSM TW partner, Dong Po, told us about, there are still lots of "red area" (means the satellite image need to be improved) in Philippines. Can we have some better image from NSPO for OSM?
After a quick discussion, NSPO helped to task satellite (Formosat-2) that will further provide image for OSM community to achieve a better mapping. Although we had only the cloudy image currently, we believe the better one will be delivered soon with WMS for OSM community. Thanks to our partners and also thanks to the amazing OSM community. You guys really make the ICT for Humanitarian!
This is an open source project to deliver ICT as tool for the people who is not that convenient to response emergency with their location. Maybe they can't hear, maybe they can't speak, Maybe they can't understand the local language to let others know the address. With some pre-set messages, user can quick report their current situation with location to the police force in Taiwan via SMS. Thanks to the GPS/AGPS feature on smart phone, we encode those retrieved location information with OGC Open GeoSMS standard, which enabled the receiver (emergency responder) can quickly know where to help.
Not just to report self-emergency, iHelp X GeoThings project will also enable people to report status during disaster. To response "Disability is not Inability", we support with this app for the International Day for Disaster Reduction 2013 by UNISDR.