OpenStreetMap data use cases during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic
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At the time of writing most governments around the whole world are prioritising the limiting of the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic through a series of lockdown measures affecting schools, sports, leisure, commercial and travel activities. The gradual reversal of these measures is being carried out individually by countries and regions based on the public health emergency advice and other epidemiological modelling outcomes. As is the case in any humanitarian crisis situation, there is a need for specific, accurate and up-to-date geospatial information to facilitate emergency response, management of the overall response and public information. OpenStreetMap (OSM) has played a pivotal and often leading role in national and international humanitarian and citizen-led responses to crises such as natural disasters over the last decade or so. OSM can take these leading roles for a number of potential reasons, including; geospatial data availability under an open access license, facilitating the development of open services such as mapping, routing, etc. This paper critically assesses and reflects upon this new context and challenge for OpenStreetMap and humanitarian mapping from a number of different positions which are outlined as follows: OpenStreetMap usage as a cartographic basemap in Covid-19 related applications; Applications or services using OpenStreetMap data; Initiatives or applications aimed at the collection of new OSM data immediately relevant to the Covid-19 pandemic response or management; Import of authoritative geospatial data into OpenStreetMap where there are gaps in the OpenStreetMap database for a particular country or region; and, Academic research about the role or usage of OpenStreetMap in the Covid-19 response.
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