Room: Martinique
Saturday, 17:55
Duration: 20 minutes (plus Q&A)
Language: en
This paper revisits humanitarian mapping in OpenStreetMap from a critical socio-technical perspective. Since the 2010s, initiatives like the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) have mobilized global volunteers for crisis mapping, while raising concerns about epistemic inequalities and the marginalization of local knowledge. Focusing on the HOT Tasking Manager, the study examines how participation is structured through platform design, enabling collaboration but also embedding standardization and governance logics. Drawing on data ethnography and infrastructure studies, it reassesses earlier critiques and their metabolization. The paper argues that humanitarian mapping today oscillates between empowerment and technocratic rationality amid ongoing data inequalities.