For the first time, Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), a widely used platform for sharing humanitarian data, is releasing disaster-specific OSM datasets. This has allowed OSM data to be downloaded over 440 times in response to recent disasters in Madagascar and Mozambique including within the disaster affected countries themselves.

This initiative kicked off in early 2026 and has already resulted in two regularly updated and focused HDX-OSM datasets:

• Mozambique Floods, January 2026
• Madagascar, Tropical Cyclone Gezani, February 2026

Although the same data is directly accessible on OSM, being on HDX ensures:

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What are Super Mappers?

Update: This new feature is live on Tasking Manager as of 14 October 2025

HOT’s Tasking Manager is about to undergo the most significant user experience upgrade since 2020. A brand new Super Mapper level will be introduced, one step higher than ‘Advanced’ mappers and much more rigorously assessed.

Entry to this new mapper level will require you to attain a series of new badges, which are automatically allocated to mappers based on the number of objects mapped. Once you have the required badges, a human assessment will then grant access to this most prestigious of mapper levels!

Wait, badges? Yes, badges are also a completely new feature with this upgrade. Users will automatically attain badges once they have made a certain number of edits, for example: mapping more than 1,000km of roads will grant you a highways badge. Once you’ve attained a badge you’ll see it against your public user profile page on Tasking Manager.

This is how the badges and Super Mapper level will appear on your user profile page in Tasking Manager (once you have them!):

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Debrief conducted by Sam Colchester (HOT) partner engagement lead for this activation.

Relevant statistics

In total 171 contributors made over 125,000 edits to OSM including mapping over 96,000 buildings as part of this campaign. (See ohsomeNow Stats page for tracking overall contributions)

Nigeria Floods 2024 daily contributors

Narrative summary

Shortly after the severe flood event in Nigeria on Tuesday 10 September 2024 the director of the Open Mapping Hub - West and Northern Africa requested support from HOT’s central team to respond.

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Missing Maps turned ten years old in November and it may be running a full-blown internship in its tenth year.

Partially to celebrate this tenth birthday Missing Maps member organizations met for two full days in September in Nairobi, Kenya.

Vojtech Rehak (MSF) top left presenting on day one of the gathering, clockwise onwards around the table: Jorieke Vyncke (MSF), Benjamin ‘Benni’ Herfort (HeiGIT), Nash Naufal (MSF), Paul Knight (British Red Cross), Zacharia Muindi (Map Kibera), Rory Nealon (YouthMappers) and Sam Colchester (HOT) taking photo

What we talked about

A Short History of Missing Maps … the Last Ten Years

We reflected on the fact that on 5 November 2014, HOT, American Red Cross, British Red Cross and MSF launched the Missing Maps Project. Originally stating:

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HOT Tasking Manager users with projects using Maxar Imagery - what to do next?

Maxar imagery has been down for all Tasking Manager projects for one week now (and for OSM, iD and JOSM in general). If your projects are set to Maxar imagery they are very unlikely to make any progress unless you switch to an alternative imagery source as soon as you get a chance.

This short guide outlines the steps you can take to switch your Tasking Manager project(s) to alternative imagery sources.

The best alternative imagery is completely dependent upon the location of your project(s):

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