Crossing Boundaries By Tracing Buildings: Mapping Kathmandu From New York City"

Throughout the day you could hear the simple question - 'Is that a building?' -- followed by conversations about shadows, and people, and the construction of a city that seemed so far away from our own.

On Sunday, April 21st -- as part of a 17 city US OSM editathon-- a small group in New York City came together to support ongoing efforts of OSM Nepal to map Kathmandu Valley. Over the course of four hours, we traced building footprints from satellite imagery provided by the US State Department Imagery to the Crowd initiative. These high-fidelity footprints are just one of many datasets needed for better disaster preparation, planning and mitigation in Nepal -- a country that sits atop tectonic plates at high risk of earthquake.