Disaster Response Checklist

The following checklist aims to provide a starting point and guide to respond to disasters from the lens of improving OSM. It has been used internally by HOT and the Open Mapping Hubs since 2023 (through several adapted versions). Please feel free to use it if you are responding to a disaster. If will be well worth familiarizing yourself with the HOT Activation Protocol before you embark on the outlined steps.

Reminder that the /Working_groups/Activation Wiki has more information about the Activation Working Group, which is a group of HOT staff and volunteers you can go to for support through this process.

1. Complete a Size-up - this is effectively a quick needs assessment, and can be done as soon as you have some basic information about the incident (highly recommended)
2. Establish whether the affected area needs mapping (highly recommended) [see workflow]
3. Check which imagery is most up-to-date or suitable for use (highly recommended) [see workflow]
4. Share completed Size-up to activation@hotosm.org and share in #disaster-mapping channel on HOT's Slack - this will expose your efforts to a group of HOT staff and volunteers who can provide support through this process (highly recommended)
5. Contact local OSM community to determine needs or support and get buy-in for modifying OSM (mandatory - unless you 'are' the community) [see workflow]
6. If you plan to map in a conflict or high risk context, consider using HOT's Ethical Data and Protection tool to identify risks and mitigations (highly recommended depending on location)
7. Establish activation coordinator role and any other support roles (highly recommended)
8. Create Tasking Manager project(s), closely following guidelines (highly recommended) [see workflow]
   1. You will need 'project creator' level access to Tasking Manager to do this. Check this list to see if you community or organization is on Tasking Manager. If it is not then consider completing this form to register your interest in establishing your community/organization in Tasking Manager.
9. Ensure compliance with the Organized Editing Guidelines (mandatory) [see workflow]
   1. Contacting the OSM community (step 5 above) is part of this, but you should also document your activation in a dedicated OSM Wiki page (duplicate this for a template) and ensure your projects have a unique tracking tag such as #2024NigeriaFloods
10. Use the Campaign request form to create a campaign on Tasking manager to contain all projects related to the activation (highly recommended)
11. As the first Tasking Manager project is published announce on #disaster-mapping channel on HOT's Slack (highly recommended)
12. Wrap up the activation with an after action review (AAR), see here for an example of this (highly recommended)