Can a crowdsourced map of the world help save millions of people from climate disaster?

Crowdsourced mapping movement charts a path for climate resilience in vulnerable communities

A volunteer-driven effort to map uncharted areas of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia aims to improve disaster response in a region hit hardest by climate change.Maddy Crowell reports for Grist.In short:The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is enlisting local volunteers to map underrepresented areas like Gros Islet, St. Lucia, where digital maps are often inaccurate or nonexistent.The initiative emerged from past failures in emergency respon…

Can a crowdsourced map of the world help save millions of people from climate disaster?

The day I was supposed to join a group of young women to map Gros Islet, an old fishing village on the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia, I got lost. Proann Francis, who was helping lead the expedition, had told me to meet everyone at Care Growell School, which Google Maps informed me was some 8,500 miles away, in Uttar Pradesh, India. “Where?” I asked. She instructed me to wait outside my hotel for a ride because it would be impossible to find the …