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

Thank you. I'll be able to get my buildings square now.

:) I've got as far as adding lots of buildings, but it won't let me save my square because it says I haven't tagged them.

How do I tag? I've been highlighting the building, clicking 'building' on the menu on left. doesn't seem to be enough. what am I missing?

Ah...It let me once I deleted my comment in the comment box. lol

Thats odd! Mind you I've not tried commenting.

My new tactic to make sure I'm doing this, is that while Im listening to the news (which is predominantly ebola) I crack on and get a bit done.

How are people working out which areas are swamp? I cant ell swamp from grassland.

I haven't really done any rural stuff. Mostly identifying buildings in towns and cities, so I can't help there.

Swamp sounds a bit advanced. I'm sticking to just adding buildings for now.

Its not in the briefing for my task so I was wondering why swamp is tagged everywhere. Rural is easier to outline buildings, but boy are the paths/tracks complicated.

Buildings is the most important bit though, along with roads so they can see how to get to them!

Just signed up to do this. Hope it helps in a small way. Feel a bit nervous.

I know what you mean! It took me ages to get around to doing any squares, and I kept looking at what a lot of others were like before trying it. They do have experienced mappers who know what tgey are doing checling them, so that should give us an idea of whether we are on the right track.

It does get easier I think. My first attempt was a bit rubbish!

I'm having a go at this today. I opted to just be assigned a square, it's mostly rural with some small villages.

How do people differentiate between a track and a path? I know anything which a 4x4 can't be driven down should be labelled a path but I'm struggling to judge how big the tracks/paths I want to map are.

YeGods link helps a bit with that if you look at the pictures. The paths are more meandering and you can often see several cutting across fields in different directions and what not. If it leads to buildings I've generally assumed its a track unless it's really obvious it's not.

Yes, there were loads of them meadering around buildings and through fields, so picked out the main ones, put nodes at every junction (I wish the people who put the main roads in would have done that) and I labelled then as paths. They can always complain so they get relabelled as tracks if that is what they want. Safer to upgrade than downgrade I think.

I think so - you don't want them trying to get through in a 4x4 and getting stuck half way down it!

I've been labelling anything between two points (e.g. building to road) which is clear and has a reasonably consistent dirt surface as a track. Anything which is more meandering and not consistently clear I've gone with a path.

DH is going to be sharing the links at work, hopefully some of his colleagues will join in.

That's great Groot!

DD is interested, and DH might have a go in rhe week when he has his laptop. It's good to see the work on the maps are getting done. Lots more had been covered when I logged on today. :)