Facing the most severe earthquake for the past decades, Nepal and especially the Kathmandu area show unimagineable devastations.
In order to provide emergency and rescue forces with near real time information concerning infrastructural conditions of roads and buildings the Humaniatrian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T.) as part of the OpenStreetMap Community coordinates the crisis mapping activities for Nepal.
GIScience Heidelberg currently set up a OSM Crisis Map collecting an visualizing latest OSM information:
OpenRouteService Disaster Map: www.openrouteservice.org/
Furthermore, the additional OpenRouteService SOS – route profile currently considers passable and impassable tagged ways and dynamically adjusts the graph weights of OSM streets accordingly.
ORS also provides an Accessibility Analysis Service for a given location, the possibility to export GPS tracks to be used offline in mobile devices and the interactive Avoid Feature Area Tool (in case areas are severely effected by debris and not accesible at all). These features are thus potentially valuable for Search and Rescue (SAR) units.
http://giscienceblog.uni-hd.