A small way to help

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Was wondering if there is anything practical people can do help the fight against ebola. Came across this news article where the American Red cross are looking for volunteers to map affected areas using satellite data on their home computer.

I've not tried it yet I'm supposed to be doing some work but I've signed up to try it later. The project is here

A resource to help. I'm still learning. here

Ok, its fairly easy to use, but set aside some time. It's not a job to pick up and down as you get an allocated amount of time on it to yourself.

If other mners have time then it could be a bit of an mn collaborative project. I've used my mn name so we can spot each other.

That's a fascinating site!

It is :) once you get the hang of it its ever so easy and I've discovered you dont need to do a whole square yourself. Also if its very daunting you can split a square further to make it easier.

Thanks OYBBK. Have signed up and practiced a bit.

The tricky bit is deciding whether something is a building or not but the shadows can be helpful.

Totally agreeing with that. I have big mess in the centre of my square that might be buildings or might not.

It needs a way of marking it so you can say ??? And have someone else check it. Fortunately they do have a checking system.

Yes. Looks like you can lock and unlock it at as you want too so can dip in and out of it. Most of that square was marked already so did what I could see were definitely buildings and a small alleyway and then moved on to another square. There are a couple of other possible buildings on that square that could go either way.

Second square was much easier, as it was a bit less urban.

I think thats the best way to tackle it, there will be people with more experience looking at these things who maybe able to untangle what they can see.

I tried it on my ipad, but I couldnt zoom in enough to be accurate, so I think its a pc/laptop thing.

Gosh, that's brilliant, we can actually do something helpful. Have signed up, I can easily spare time to do that.

:) it's good to be able to do something practical.

I was also wondering if wooly huggers could do something too - I'm not sure of the practicalities, but there are a lot of children being orphaned and of course they will lose much of their belongings if the family becomes infected.

This is great. Going to come back to this later. Thanks!

You're welcome :)

OK, I'm going to have a go. I've read about the openmapping projects a few times and have been meaning to volunteer. Now is the time. :)

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Um.... any easy advice on how to get started?

I'm currently working on a square in job #672

Did you do anything in openmapping first?

Did you need to download any additional editor to work on the maps?

No - I used Edit with Id Editor. It opens a new tab with a map with your square in it.

useful help page for mapping west Africa

Perfect link - thank you!! That saves me debating what to label things as. I was googling aerial image of cocoa plantation earlier to try and figure out if the trees in one area were agricultural or just a forest!

Hows it going YeGods? I hadnt seen your how do I get started question when I posted.