Dozens of students worked together in Leavey Library today to digitally map buildings in desolate communities to aid rescue efforts in the event of natural disasters or negative environmental impacts-- and of course to out-map the Bruins.
Since the annual event’s debut three years ago, participants have used OpenStreetMap to assist in humanitarian projects around the world by digitally marking homes in isolated areas, as larger companies often overlook them. The winner is determined by whichever school outlines the most homes on the map. This year’s mapathon challenge specifically targeted areas that are likely to be impacted by climate change.
Before the competition officially began, some students were invited to discuss their personal achievements with mapping and humanitarian issues. USC junior Young Kyung Kim spoke about the importance of using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to aid in the work students do in the USC Spatial Lab. In 2017, there was little geographic information about the Rohingya genocide, so her team used spatial science and geographic mapping systems to determine the cause of destructions for many buildings.
“For high-resolution images like this we only have a couple of them because these areas are so remote they’re of any interest to those commercial companies taking pictures for the US government and for companies that can pay a lot of money,” Kim said. “We only have images like this once or twice a month.”
USC librarian Andy Rutkowski facilitated the competition at USC while UCLA and other schools were on video conference. Although the mapathon event is a competition with UCLA, Rutkowski said the ultimate goal is to help smaller countries and communities.
“All these sorts of decisions that we almost take for granted because we know where everything is, but in a lot of other places the data’s just not there. And that’s what we’re doing. So we’re contributing locally to things all over the place,” Rutkowski said.
Participating students were enthused about the event, ready to seize a chance to beat the Bruins and help disadvantaged areas. USC junior Mia Danholm said she appreciated the event for bringing students to work together for a greater good.
“I think it’s really cool that we can make these changes and it really helps with disaster relief,” Danholm said. “It’s going to help potentially save people’s lives and have a very serious impact. We’re having a fun day…but also it has a bigger weight.”
While there aren’t very many events where USC students willingly collaborate with their rivals, Rutkowski said he believes that working together on the project will ultimately benefit many people around the world.
“[The students] can see how they can connect and impact people not only here in LA but in different countries by just doing a very simple thing. We’re just doing building outlines," he said. "But that data and just everybody doing this today are going to have such a huge impact for these other communities elsewhere.”