Projects
Ongoing Projects
UndercoverEisAgenten
The project UndercoverEisAgenten allows citizen scientists (particularly students) to make a meaningful contribution to the detection of permafrost degradation in the Arctic and, thus, to actively participate in climate change research. To this end, they are provided with the appropriate tools to examine and classify images of the surface of the Earth. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministery of Education and Research and implemented in cooperation between HeiGIT, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
HEAL
The HEAL Project is a transdisciplinary cooperation between HeiGIT, the GIScience Research Group of Heidelberg University, and the TdLab Geography of Heidelberg University, funded by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation as part of the research programme “Innovations for Adaptation to Climate Change”. The HEAL project focuses on the development of adaptation strategies to support and protect at-risk groups during hot weather conditions. This is accomplished by involving stakeholders and target groups in the research process and by integrating public smart city data into a routing system.
Missing Maps
HeiGIT and the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University are supporting the Missing Maps project since 2015. The HeiGIT team supports Missing Maps in monitoring and visualizing its achievements and impact using information from the HOT Tasking Manager and our ohsome framework. We advance current research about OSM and it’s application in disaster risk reduction and disaster management and make this available to the wider public through joint publications, presentations and partnerships.
Cooperation Projects with HeiGIT Support
BKG openrouteservice
In collaboration with the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) and GIScience, various extensions of openrouteservice are developed, among others the calculation of Europe-wide Isochrones in a split second, routing enhanced with statistical traffic data or routing profiles for wheelchair navigation. Together with the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, openrouteservice exceeds the limits of conventional routing in a new and promising way and delivers outstanding and powerful performance with reliable results.
Completed Projects
LOKI
The aim of the LOKI project, a collaboration of GIScience, HeiGIT and further project partners working in disaster related fields, funded by BMBF, is to develop an interdisciplinary system that enables fast and reliable airborne situation assessments following an earthquake. A central focus is the timely overview and detailed recording of the damage to critical infrastructures, such as lifelines (bridges and roads), health care facilities and public institutions (e.g. schools). The objectives will be met by combining existing expertise in earthquake research with a variety of technologies and concepts, including machine learning, crowdsourcing, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and 3D monitoring.
IDEAL VGI
The GIScience project IDEAL VGI (Information Discovery from Big Earth Observation Data Archives by Learning from Volunteered Geographic Information) aims to identify and assess the importance, uncertainty, and quality of different OSM derived features in order to promote relevant semantic OSM content. Furthermore, the integration of supporting complementary VGI data streams, developing machine learning for remote sensing image classification, and automatically refining and assigning OSM tags are important goals. HeiGIT supports this project by providing both its OSHDB technology and technical knowledge.
OSM Landuse Landcover
The GIScience project OSM Landuse Landcover is a WebGIS application exploring landuse and landcover information in the OpenStreetMap database. Missing OSM data (gaps) in Europe are filled (ongoing) using data derived from Sentinel-2 10 m RGB imagery and deep learning methods. The project is supported by HeiGIT and uses the HeiGIT technology ohsome API.
Climate Action California
The GIScience project “Shaping Climate Action in a Sound Way – Case Study Baden-Württemberg/California” is a pilot study within the Heidelberg Center for the Environment’s project “Climate Action Science” supported by HeiGIT. It aims at analyzing the accessibility and quality of geoinformation of greenhouse gases from measuring networks, government data, and citizen science. The project examines the usefulness of OSM data for the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions. OSM tags are analyzed and aggregated according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Emission Factor Database (EFDB). The OSM data extraction uses HeiGITs ohsome API technology.
The OSCAR Project
Timely and accurate data to guide multi-faceted planning and decision-making for public health emergencies, pandemic preparedness, and health systems management is of critical importance. However, in practice, relevant data is often unavailable or largely siloed by the respective data source and operator. OSCAR addresses this gap by providing a common decision support system for the health sector. It aims to massively improve countries’ ability to forecast, prepare for and respond to health intervention needs – both for emergency situations and for routine health systems strengthening. The present project will allow for testing and improvement of OSCAR in real-life deployments in line with three defined User Stories for the initial focus country of Nepal. This engagement relies on close collaboration between KfW, Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH) and the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT gGmbH).
Healthcare Access Analysis
The Healthcare Access Analysis project is a collaboration between openrouteservice and healthsites.io funded by HeiGIT. By analyzing and comparing the accessibility of healthcare facilities around the globe, by assessing data quality, and by detecting potential spatial patterns therein, the best way of transport to facilities can be determined. Healthsites.io provides the input data, which is then analyzed with the help of openrouteservice’s isochrone functionality.
SocialMedia2Traffic
The SocialMedia2Traffic project (BMVI mFUND – Modernity Fund) aims to use geocoded social media data in selected regions to predict the time-dependent traffic state of the road network. The data is to be generated for road sections and made available online. Transferability to other regions will be evaluated. The results will be used in openrouteservice to improve routing and estimate arrival times. HeiGIT is cooperating with the GIScience department of the University of Heidelberg.
25 Mapathons
The project 25 Mapathons, funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, aims to raise internal awareness of the potential of geoinformatics within the DRC and to collect relevant geodata for DRC projects. For this purpose, HeiGIT and the DRK organize events for DRK divisions and the Youth Red Cross in order to give an insight into the international work of the DRK and to collect map data for operational areas. This takes place in the form of jointly organized mapathons, events in which helpers jointly map areas not previously recorded in OSM.
Global Exposure Date for Risk Assessment
The project Global Exposure Data for Risk Assessment, funded by the JRC (Joint Research Center of the EU), aims at developing an API. Based on OSM, this provides a global dataset of infrastructures potentially at risk from natural disasters in accordance with the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The data can be used by various Emergency Response Coordination Centre disaster teams for early response and risk assessment. The extraction of the data is done through the ohsome API. This is another example of the Big Data team’s connection to geospatial information for humanitarian response.
Healthsites Quality
The Healthsites Quality project funded by HeiGIT aims to develop a framework for assessing the quality of health-related data in OSM in terms of completeness, accuracy (temporal & technical), and trustworthiness, and for visualizing the development of OSM health data over time. This is accomplished by comparing OSM health data with health data from other sources (i.e. the WHO, healthsites.io, KEMRI, etc.). By providing critical information on the completeness and reliability of health data on OSM, targeted improvement of humanitarian aspect is accomplished. The project is based on HeiGIT’s ohsome API and supported with knowledge, ideas, and implementation tasks.
COVID-19 Vaccination Centers
Where is the closest Covid-19 vaccination center and what is the best way to get there? A new route planning app helps you answer this questions by suggesting ways to the nearest vaccination center. You can use this route planner now at https://impfzentrum.openrouteservice.org. You only have to enter a starting location or allow the automatic use of the position information on your smartphone and the route to the vaccination center can be displayed. The data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) is used as the data basis for both route planning and also for the vaccination centers. This first prototype version of the app is still under development and will be further improved.
Mapping COVID-19 Research
HeiGIT’s “Map of Hope” provides a geographical overview of planned, ongoing, and completed clinical trials regarding COVID-19. The global scientific and medical communities have immediately responded to the new threat with focused research activities that in turn have led to clinical trials and scientific publications worldwide. This project aims to provide an up-to-date overview of these activities with links to the underlying sources as well as many informative maps to track the spread of the virus. Medical expertise is provided by Prof. Dr. Markus Ries from the Center for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg with support from Dr. Konstantin Mechler and Donna Smith. The data pre-processing and the service deployment is done by HeiGIT and geocoding was accomplished using HeiGIT’s openrouteservice API.
TARDUR – Temporal Access Restrictions for Dynamic Ultra-Flexible Routing
The mFUND project, with support from HeiGIT’s openrouteservice Team, integrated information about temporal road access/restrictions in openrouteservice and GraphHopper with the aim of enabling time-dependent and therefore more accurate routing by developing an algorithm that takes time constraints into account when calculating routes. The algorithm was then implemented in the commercial platform GraphHopper and the HeiGIT openrouteservice technolgy. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure as part of the mFUND initiative.
MapSwipe for WSF Validation and Dump Site Mapping
The World Bank partnered with MapSwipe, HeiGIT, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), and OpenStreetMap Mali on the Africa Cash for Digital Work Program, a pilot project centered on creating new remote employment opportunities for individuals affected by COVID-19 lock downs. Within this project two new project types are developed in MapSwipe to apply crowdsourced micro-tasking to a) solid waste mapping in Bamako (Mali) and b) validation of the World Settlement Footprint data set.
HOT Mapswipe: Adding Comparative Functions to MapSwipe for Change Detection Analysis
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), HeiGIT and the wider MapSwipe Community started this project to work on an MapSwipe extension to monitor changes in satellite imagery. The goal of the project is to extend the app with new functionalities that would allow the users to compare two satellite images (e.g. from before and after) and indicate area, which changed. By crowdsourcing the development of land cover or built-up areas the project will help humanitarian organizations to address the challenges posed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).