How Mapswipe Helps Users Respond to Disasters

When tragedy strikes in underdeveloped parts of the world, first responders and humanitarian aid workers often have trouble getting to more rural locations due to a lack of satellite map infrastructure. Fortunately, there’s a new app that aims to help increase map coverage — and allows you to help make it happen.

Meet MapSwipe, a groundbreaking new app from Doctors Without Borders and one of the foremost international medical organizations aimed at providing humanitarian medical care to less developed nations. With MapSwipe, you can participate in mapping “missions,” in which you scroll through satellite images and mark areas that look like houses, roads, villages, and other population-indicating landmarks. In doing so, you can help aid workers get to disaster-stricken areas as quickly as possible, rather than aid workers having to scroll through large amounts of raw satellite imagery themselves, wasting time that could be spent on the ground helping people.

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Whether they’re trying to prevent the outbreak of cholera in the Democratic Republic of Congo or they’re helping people after a flood in Sierra Leone, aid workers from Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and others will be able to use MapSwipe to more effectively find the people they’re looking to help. The best part? You can use MapSwipe during your free time, all from the comfort of your own home. You don’t even need prior knowledge of the areas you’re helping map.

MapSwipe is the brainchild of Doctors Without Borders and the Missing Maps project, which allows volunteers the chance to mark satellite maps in the same way the MapSwipe app does. Founded by the American and British Red Cross organizations, Doctors Without Borders, and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Missing Maps first allows remote volunteers to mark raw satellite images, then has community members that live where humanitarian aid is being sent to identity things such as the names of streets and towns. The finished product is sent to aid workers who use the fleshed out maps to deliver aid as quickly as possible.

The beauty of MapSwipe is that users are not only able to help assist aid workers from the comfort of their own homes, but that you’re able to do so on a fun and interesting interface. Some have even called MapSwipe a good alternative to Pokemon Go!

MapSwipe is currently only available for Android and iOS. It’s free to download and is available now in the Google Play store. While you’re downloading the app, make sure you download PSafe PowerPRO to help keep your battery going all day. With your battery running longer you can spend more time on MapSwipe and help more first responders and humanitarian aid workers get to where they need to go.