Building mission critical maps in the open

BY IAN SCHULER ON DEC 19, 2017

Today we are launching the DevSeed Data Team, our mapping team for humanitarian response, professional geospatial data management and machine learning.

Maps and location data are critical to address some of the planet’s biggest challenges, like timely response to disasters, addressing climate vulnerability, increasing the effectiveness of economic development, and ensuring fair elections. As our partners increasingly adopt machine learning in their work, it will be critical to collect training data in parts of the world where data is scarce. To better support our partners’ missions, we are closely partnering with Mapbox to expand our mapping capacity. Effective immediately, the Mapbox data team Peru will operate as part of Development Seed and form the core of the DevSeed Data Team.

Development Seed started in Peru in 2003. Our first projects helped NGOs and local government agencies in the Andes town of Ayacucho to connect with citizens online. We are proud that today’s move brings back Development Seed to Ayacucho with a larger team than ever.

Team Peru is collectively responsible for 2 million edits on OpenStreetMap. Over the years, the team has made significant contributions to humanitarian data, from helping map the Nepal Earthquake alongside the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap community to the supporting the Hurricane Harvey response. At the core of its success is an open mapping approach. This is exactly the culture of collaboration we are looking to foster working closely with the open data communities we operate in.

We are excited to bring the DevSeed Data Team online to support humanitarian mapping efforts, validate and improve mapping data for our partners, and scale our machine learning work. The team is now available to map for disaster response, climate change, sustainable development, energy access, or managing urbanization. Drop me a line at [email protected] if you’d like to start a conversation about your next mapping challenge.

The DevSeed Data Team — Ayacucho, Peru.