By: Mikel Maron
Mapbox’s work on humanitarian and development projects pre-dates our founding as a company and spans the entirety of our work. Working with partners like the United Nations, World Bank, and Doctors without Borders, our team mapped clinics in Nigeria, floods in Pakistan, and deforestation in Congo. Where we were working the maps were blank. The demands of working in these environments made it clear we needed better tools to do our job.
This history and mission is the reason so many of us joined the team. To deepen our work with partners taking on the toughest global challenges, we’ve formalized our Community team and charged it with finding new and increasingly meaningful ways of leveraging our platform — from helping cities be open and inclusive; to safeguarding human rights and the environment; to strengthening and growing open data communities.
It’s core to who we take investment from as well. For example, one of our key investors, DBL Partners, is one of the best known impact investors in the venture capital sector. “There is no trade-off, no compromise between building a successful company and being a purpose-driven company set out to change the world,” Mapbox board member Ira Ehrenpreis of DBL Partners said in response to our team’s recent work.
Working in Afghanistan and Haiti, 2009
In the summer of 2009, I met the team that would become Mapbox on a spartan national guard base in central California. At Camp Roberts, we worked around the clock in trailers next to an army landing strip. We met to rapidly prototype a system for monitoring the Afghanistan election and test novel approaches for creating and sharing data for disaster response. Using just released open imagery of Afghanistan and imagery taken by UAV, which literally took days to process back then, we patched together tools for data collection (with paper and SMS) and visualization. Open data, open standards, and open source software powered our work.
The work ultimately changed how we respond to disasters by setting up processes to share fresh satellite imagery following an event and organize volunteer mapping to assist on the ground relief efforts.
Just four months later, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. In a matter of hours we were mapping infrastructure from satellite imagery to support organizations working to distribute aid. That process now drives OpenStreetMap’s current response to the world’s worst disasters.
The maps built for Afghanistan election monitoring contributed to better systems for sharing critical location data in disasters. Ultimately, this laid the foundation for the Mapbox platform, as well as our Humanitarian program that provides direct support to crisis relief efforts.
Helping cities become more open and efficient
Many local governments are figuring out how to use the Internet to make government data more accessible. The goal is to spawn useful web sites and mobile applications — and perhaps even have people think differently about their city and its government.
— The New York Times, in December 2009, profiling an early Mapbox open data project
The community team also continues Mapbox’s legacy of liberating data to improve how local governments operate. Since launching Mapbox Cities a year ago, we’ve worked with cities across the globe providing mentorship on open data visualization and free access to our geospatial tools. Melbourne uses Mapbox to visualize urban mobility and infrastructure and Washington, D.C. is using our traffic data to decrease traffic fatalities.
City officials may sign up for direct support and access to our platform of location and geospatial tools through Mapbox Cities.
Work with us
Our team is working on projects that span the globe. Partners like Direct Relief are creating maps that analyze health data from Uganda. We’re working with a coalition to model risk data in an effort to eradicate malaria. We’re also active in our local communities, organizing mapathons, supporting mapping and tech events like Unhack the Vote and the upcoming Indigenous Mapping Workshop.
As we expand our team and partnerships, our goal is to connect with more organizations working on critical projects. We want to hear about how our location platform can support your efforts for positive social and environmental change. Get in touch or send us a tweet @Mapbox.
Our work with humanitarian, development, and community partners was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.