2014 Paraguay floods
2014 Paraguay floods were a potential disaster prompting crisis mapping in back June 2014. The floods affected Paraguay and parts of Brazil
11th June report from reliefweb: "River overflow has been affecting Paraguay, due to heavy rainfall over the country since May and over south-eastern Brazil since the beginning of June. According to the latest estimated figures, 31 837 families have been affected throughout Paraguay; however, the number is expected to rapidly increase in the coming days." read more and see overview maps on reliefweb
Old information
Effected area
Bits of purple on the reliefweb map may be the best indication so far, however effected populations will be the towns/cities along the swollen rivers.
Map data available
OpenStreetMap offers free open licensed map data in the region, which anyone is welcome to use. Those coordinating flood response can use our maps to great effect.
Browse the map to see what we have.
Download the whole of South America from geofabrik in shapefile/osm formats. See also Downloading data
TODO: link other resources
Improving the map
On the whole, the effected area seems very well mapped by local mappers. The city of Asunción for example, has a very active local OpenStreetMap community see the contributor map. The result is evident in the map details already present.
Remote mapping
Some Notes:
Harry spent some time assessing things. Mostly well mapped, but spotted a few things which were logged as "Notes" you could work on. Don't just solve the immediate problem though. Look around for similar omissions around the area:
- river or probably wetland needs tracing here
- missing road needs tracing
- missing road (and bridge) needs tracing
- missing roads needs tracing
- missing river needs tracing
- missing village needs tracing
- missing roads needs tracing
- missing roads needs tracing
- missing roads needs tracing
- missing village needs tracing
- missing river needs tracing
- missing river needs tracing
- missing river needs tracing
- missing river needs tracing
- missing road needs tracing here
- missing road needs tracing here
- missing road needs tracing here
- river or probably wetland needs tracing here
- lake needs tracing from bing
- missing road needs tracing from bing
- missing river needs tracing from bing here (plus surround forest)
- missing road/track needs tracing from bing here
- Missing town here needs tracing from bing
- River needs tracing from bing here (visible as a line of trees at least)
- river needs tracing here
- river needs tracing from bing here
- road needs tracing here
- some missing roads here. needs tracing
- riverbank needs tracing here (also river centreline)
- riverbank needs tracing here
- roads needs tracing here from bing
- road needs tracing from bing here
- Whole town currently missing. Visible in bing. Needs tracing.
- Some missing roads around here visible in bing. Needs tracing
Bigger jobs:
Probably the best candidate for TM job would be mapping an area of rural roads here West of the river, north of Asuncion. Plenty missing there (though all bit rural)
Rio tebicuary here on the map is mapped, but could have riverbank data added.
Rio Parana has more landuse details on the Argentina (East) side than the Paraguay side (West) here on the map. Or at least it seems that way. So we could work to add more landuse to the west to even it out. Mind you the landuse is genuinely different, with more green forest on the east bank.
Mapaction notes
15th June : MapAction are deploying with UNDAC to Paraguay in response and Ed Manley is asking about OSM map data.
The area of interest is around the south of the Paraguay. OSOCC have also reported states of emergency declared in Alto Paraguay and Presidente Hayes departments (http://vosocc.unocha.org/rss/vo_2842cw6o.html). Another report states that the departments of Misiones and Neembucu are particularly badly affected http://floodlist.com/america/160000-floods-paraguay-june-2014.
More accurate information will follow over the coming days once people are in place.
30th June: Mapaction's team have now apparently returned form Paraguay. (They're off to Iraq next!)