How developers are using maps to care for their communities
Over the last few weeks, we’ve fielded dozens of requests for support from projects using maps to understand and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. While visualizations of the virus’s spread are the most common, we also have a front-row seat to new ways that developers are stepping up — connecting vulnerable people with support, making it easier to find essential supplies and services, and promoting local businesses during shutdowns.
Here are a few projects that are inspiring us to think creatively about how maps can help. Many of these are actively seeking contributors and feedback, reach out! And if you are working on your own ideas and projects, let us know.
Mutual Aid Hub by Town Hall Project
“Our organization is dedicated to lifting up the voices of Americans to lawmakers and other people in power. We created Mutual Aid Hub to highlight the incredible work of mutual aid organizers around the country and to facilitate connections and shared strategies in this growing movement of community support. And we made this data openly available so others like AARP could build on this to reach more people.”
TeAjudoME by Bruno Nunes
“I wanted to help my community with my profession… I developed a tool for people to register as a volunteer, so that people can see others in their neighborhood who can help with grocery shopping, going to the pharmacy, or just chatting for people around the world are in quarantine or social isolation. At first the tool was centralized in Brazil but it is growing — and now volunteer psychologists are registering, to give online support to people.”
IHELPYOU.app by IT.focus
“Inspired by the help that people give each other during hard times, we created an application that will allow anyone in need to find help in their daily duties. If you want to offer your help to others — it does not matter whether it is walking a dog, shopping or buying medicines — you can register as a volunteer and wait for contact from someone in need. The application has a special mode designed for people such as the elderly or with bad sight. Currently the application is available in 11 languages, and volunteers are already around the world — including thousands in Poland, where we are based.”
Supplies Map by OurStreets
“We launched OurStreets Supplies because we wanted to help people take control and make empowered choices during such an uncertain time. Already, people in nearly 40 states have used OurStreets to share more than 1,600 reports about what’s in stock in their community. Because users can see what’s in stock at neighborhood stores, they make only necessary trips to stores that are well-stocked with essentials, enabling better social distancing and minimizing the risk of exposure for retail workers.”
OurStreets Supplies Map | @OurStreetsApp
Bukas Ba? by Benjamin Intal
“Bukas Ba? is a crowd-sourcing web app that allows you to check if a store offering basic goods & services is OPEN in the Philippines. This is to help limit the time people spend outside their homes, and to help community businesses thrive during the Community Quarantine due to Covid-19. In its first 2 days it was visited 8,000 times and gathered 700 contributions from the Filipino people.”
Mask Map Thai by Eggyothin Pila
“At this time, our country is having trouble not having enough masks. After I published this project to the public, everyone was satisfied and used this project to solve their problems finding a mask. There have already been over 900,000,000 map loads! This is a non-profit project — I do it for the benefit of the world that is fighting this crisis.”
Support Your Local by Per Johansson and Stefan Nolte
“We launched Support Your Local as a pro bono initiative to help small businesses in Germany during the Coronavirus crisis. As you might know, all cafés, bars, restaurants and non-essential shops in the country are forced to close. The project has already raised more than 30,000 euros in just a few days through voucher payments and the trend is increasing. Six more people from five different countries have also joined the initiative which is very encouraging. We believe this is the time for individuals and society to step up, together we are strong.”
Support Local Map by Daniel Edge, Friends of Gipsy Hill
“Our volunteer community group has created a new “people powered” map to crowdsource information about our local shops and services operating during COVID-19 times. With stronger social distancing requirements, many local businesses needed to adapt their operating model and offer alternative services such as no-contact deliveries. Various lists were being produced which became quickly out of date. This map gives us a centralised way to provide reliable information. To date, the community has mapped over 80 local businesses and services and we’ve received over 200 map updates!”
Support NYC DTC by Chris Nager, Air.inc
“New York is home to some of the world’s most beloved brands. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has threatened the future for many of these businesses, which in turn threatens the culture of NYC and the lives of artists, entrepreneurs, marketers, and developers that make this city so special. We created an interactive map of direct-to-consumer brands based in NYC to illustrate the true creative energy of the city, the way it was before coronavirus and the way it will return soon.”
Support Local Wine by True Wine
“We are always about drinking local wine. But right now it is absolutely crucial to support local shops — and the people behind them — so that they are still there on the other side of this time of quarantine. We hope people will use the map to add and support favorite local wine bars & shops. We will all get through this together.”
What new ways can maps support our response to COVID-19? Please build and share your ideas. The Mapbox Community team (as well as many other people across Mapbox) is helping teams of all sizes to build tools to aid in COVID-19 response. If you are working on a project that needs support, reach out to us.
Marena Brinkhurst - Community Team Program Manager - Mapbox | LinkedIn
The Mapbox Community Team provides tools and resources to individuals and organizations using maps for positive impact. Learn more about Mapbox Community and get in touch with our team.
Maps feature data from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap and their data partners.
Creativity and compassion in COVID-19 was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.