DigitalGlobe has openly licensed the first high-resolution post-earthquake imagery of Nepal. While the imagery collected over the past two days is very cloudy, a gap exists that allows us to see a portion of the city of Kathmandu. We processed this imagery last night and have made it available for tracing through the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.
Despite clouds, we are able to gather enough information to trace roads and buildings in some areas of Kathmandu with imagery captured on Sunday by DigitalGlobe’s constellation.
DigitalGlobe is continuing to task their constellation in order to collect the most useful, up-to-date imagery possible for the earthquake affected region. We will continue to process imagery and make it available for tracing as it comes in.
You can use this imagery for mapping by adding the following URL to your OpenStreetMap editor. For the web editor iD add the URL via “background settings”, for the desktop editor JOSM add the URL via imagery preferences.
https://{switch:a,b,c,d}.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/mapbox.satellite-humanitarian/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.jpg?access_token=pk.eyJ1Ijoib3BlbnN0cmVldG1hcCIsImEiOiJhNVlHd29ZIn0.ti6wATGDWOmCnCYen-Ip7Q
To learn how you can help map Nepal after the earthquake head over to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team wiki.