Going viral in the pandemic
2021-09-29, 11:30–12:00, Puerto Madryn

How to build a map website in one afternoon? How to get 1 million visits in less than 24 hours? How to technically survive to an unexpectedly high traffic without spending a huge amount of money? A story about a small GIS company that developed a website that helped millions in a very difficult moment. A tale of collaboration, generosity, open source software and luck. The ‘Keep it simple’ motto to the highest extent. Starring Geomatico, Mapbox, COVID-19, Github, Amazon, Alejandro Sanz and Nicolás Maduro.


On March the 23rd, after five weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, president Sanchez announced that Spain will begin easing restrictions. In this first attempt at loosening measures across the country, children under the age of 14 would be allowed to go outside of their homes for one hour a day, accompanied by an adult. The measure limits travel to no further than 1 kilometer from home. But just how far is 1 kilometer? To help navigate these new rules, Geomatico, a Spanish GIS company, developed a non-profit web application using Open Source tools and donated services from Mapbox that allows adults and children to visualize a 1 kilometer radius around their home.

In ten days, 1km.geomatico.es became a reference for individuals and families throughout Spain looking to safely leave their house for the first time in over a month. Thanks in part to Mapbox’s support, the team has been able to deliver this mapping service for free to over 7 million users in multiple languages


Authors and Affiliations

Micho García
Oscar Fonts
Francisco Pérez
Martí Pericay

Track

Use cases & applications

Topic

FOSS4G implementations in strategic application domains: land management, crisis/disaster response, smart cities, population mapping, climate change, ocean and marine monitoring, etc.

Level

1 - Principiants. No required specific knowledge is needed.

Language of the Presentation

English

GIS developer and analyst. In 2015 he joined Geomatico to work on web project development and training in open source geospatial technologies.