CMaP – A Collaborative Mapping Platform for Humanitarian Organizations

Within the EO4HumEn+ project (www.zgis.at/humanitarian-services), a collaborative web mapping platform was created, which not only collects the metadata of individual data sets created and enables searches on them, but also provides the functionalities to jointly create maps and other dynamic geospatial visualizations, and share them in collaborative tasks. The data in the web mapping platform can be accessed by read-only permission from all partners involved, and by full access permission for individuals who are entitled to either upload data or perform creative mapping – the so-called editors. A user manual guides editors through the three main steps of uploading, metadata creation and map production, by documenting the naming conventions and metadata requirements, as well as providing essential advice on data handling and mapping. The portal uses standardized formats, like metadata in ISO (International Organization for Standardization), Dublin or FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee), or external resources like Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS), which offers standardized sharing capabilities via the services already mentioned. The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) product GeoNode was chosen to implement an entry mask for the EO4HumEn+ data portal.