Humanitarian OSM Team/Working groups

HOT's working groups are open to everyone and are where the wider HOT/OSM community can come together or plan and work on projects that have a specific area of interest in support of HOT's wider community. In these groups is where HOTs policy and plans are discussed in a public, collaborative, participatory way. We encourage any member of the HOT/OSM community to join us in our public meetings and hopefully join a working group to do what we all enjoy, supporting HOT and the HOT/OSM community in some way. The working groups are also excellent avenues for more engagement with HOT/OSM partners and people working on the ground, developing skills and real world experience in the working group's area of interest.

Guidelines for HOT working groups

Calendar of meetings (All times in UTC)

Active Working Groups

Activation

This group focuses on developing and proposing procedures, workflows, tools, and other items for management of HOT's disaster and crisis mapping. We collaborate with the goals to increase participation in mapping and activation coordination, supporting local OSM communities during disasters, and connect with the humanitarian stakeholders to better meet their needs and make the data most useful and easy to use. During actual activations this group also serves as a place for those involved to discuss, coordinate and plan. If you want to become more involved in contributing to activations during a crisis, this is the group for you.

Community

This group works to support and build the global HOT community through community developed suggestions and ideas. An improved community is a one which works together better, and which fosters and supports the growth of local groups around the world. Where necessary it may develop policies to be adopted by HOT in pursuit of these goals.

Quality Control and Assurance

The Quality Control and Assurance working group is organized to investigate tools and workflows to improve data quality and mapper experience, in order to develop and recommend solutions to related validation challenges.

Governance

This group is charged with governance aspects of HOT, such as bylaw and HOT policy reviews and revisions.

Tech and Innovation

The HOT Tech and Innovation Working Group is a welcoming and inclusive open space to connect, contribute, collaborate, innovate and share ideas for geospatial tech for humanitarian purposes!

Training

Much of what HOT does involves training others how to contribute to and use OpenStreetMap. The training group organizes and consolidates training materials and helps direct development of them to satisfy the identified audiences.

HOT Summit (Community WG sub-working group)

Each year the HOT community gathers to share about projects, discuss new ideas, and work on improving processes. This working group helps plan and organize the Summit. They meet bi-weekly to cover everything related to organizing a venue, finding sponsors, and planning the program.

[An overview spreadsheet of the original Working Groups, their purpose, status, next steps and the defined responsible board member of each of the WG can be found here. The spreadsheet also sketches a WG Framework and guiding policies around governance of WGs as well as typical communication channels. It is very out of date, but still interesting to read.]

Inactive and closed working groups

Communications

The HOT communications working group developed and managed policies and procedures regarding external communications of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. In March, 2021, it was decided to sunset this working group. People interested in contributing communications skills are encouraged to join the Community Working Group due to the close alignment of their respective missions.

Imagery Coordination (sub-working group)

This working group works to organize how imagery is coordinated to support OpenStreetMap, HOT, and other humanitarian organization activities in times of disaster response and other critical mapping. The group meets on a monthly basis to discuss imagery needs, coordinate the workflow to process and distribute imagery, and provide a place for communication between groups around imagery. Meeting notes can be found on the working group wiki page. Inactive since 2017.

Fundraising

If you would like more experience or to learn how to identify opportunities, develop proposals and complete successful grant applications, this is the group for you. This working group is among the more critical working groups in HOT as it supports the formal organization through helping secure grants and raise funds. This working group seeks out grants for HOT and the wider HOT community, examines if HOT or a local OSM group qualifies for the grant and develops grant proposals. It also works on the application process by doing such things as developing project descriptions and budgets, writing concept papers, letter of interest and full grant proposals.

Security

Security working group was a new group working on security policies and SOPs

Technical

The HOT Technical Working Group discusses the current status, coordination possibilities, and priorities for tool development, and for hosting and operations aspects of HOT tools