The United Nations Foundation, the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and others have recognized the
crucial role played by OpenStreetMap in relief efforts in Haiti and
elsewhere.
Quoting from the UN Foundation Disaster Relief 2.0 Fast Facts
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a community of approximately
150,000 mappers dedicated to building a free and open map of the
world. OSM mobilized more than 640 volunteers around the world, who
scanned and rectified old atlases and maps and traced Haitian roads,
bridges, and buildings into the OpenStreetMap geospatial wiki using
tools that only required a simple web browser and time. In the
process, this community turned a blank spot on the map into one of the
most accurately mapped countries in the world—creating a map far
better than any available to the UN. By mid-March, OpenStreetMap had
become the de facto source for Haiti map data within most UN agencies
and the EC Humanitarian Unit. MapAction credits OpenStreetMap with
providing an essential service and for building a street map of Haiti
from scratch in about two weeks, a project that should have taken
about a year.
