Mapping Together for Humanitarian Action

Missing Maps is an open, collaborative project in which you can help to map areas where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of people who live at risk of disasters and crises.
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How We Work

STEP 1

Remote mapping

Remote volunteers trace satellite imagery into OpenStreetMap.

STEP 2

Field Mapping

Community volunteers add local detail such as neighbordhoods, street names and evacuation centers.

STEP 3

Data usage

Humanitarian organizations and local communities use the maps to plan risk reduction and disaster response.

How to participate?

Start mapping now

Never mapped before? Don’t worry, it doesn’t take long to learn. The best way is at a mapathon, where volunteers get training and map together. Check the Events Calendar for upcoming Missing Maps events!

If you don’t see any events in your language or time, you can still start mapping anytime — visit our Get Involved page and choose a mapping tool. New events are added regularly!

Organise a mapathon

Organising mapathons is a fantastic way to build a community of mappers. It is also a great learning environment, where new mappers can learn from the experiences of others while contributing to a shared goal. Mapathons are organised by groups and individuals all over the world.
Credit: Maria Jimena Henao Salgado, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, taken in Cartagena, Colombia

Map your community

Many organizations are using OSM to inform their programs. OSM is great for collecting field data while empowering communities. If you are interested in creating and using data from open mapping tools in your work, explore the field mapping section.

Learn about our work

Missing Maps is a collective of organizations using and growing open mapping tools to best serve communities all over the world. If you want to read more about our activities, check out the Missing Maps blog.
Read our blog
Missing Maps 2023 annual report & highlights from Cameroon
Jorieke Vyncke and Jana Bauerová
27 February 2024

The State of the Map Africa 2023 provided a space for a hybrid Missing Maps annual meeting on the edges of the conference in Yaoundé, as well as the first-ever Missing Maps annual report with highlights, successes and challenges.

Participatory Mapping taken one step further - The new version of the Sketch Map Tool
Melanie Eckle and Alec Schulze-Eckle
14 July 2023

The Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology team recently launched a new version of the Skecth Map Tool - an easy-to-use tool for participatory sketch mapping through offline data collection, digitization and georeferencing of local spatial knowledge.

Current Projects

Here you can explore the current priority Missing Maps campaigns. Choose the one that matches your skill level and start mapping!
Projects

Contributions

185K+
Total contributors
105M+
Total edits
65M+
Building edits
1.19M
Roads (km)

About us

Missing Maps is made possible thanks to the following organizations.

Founders

Members

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is the volunteer-driven open data mapping platform which makes much of this possible, supported by the not-for-profit OpenStreetMap Foundation.