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Overview
The #PhotoMappers project is in its 11th year of providing situational awareness to federal, state, and local emergency managers through crowdsourced photo geolocation during disasters.
As in past years, #PhotoMappers continues to be a collaboration between GISCorps and NAPSG Foundation. NAPSG Foundation hosts the #PhotoMappers applications and serves as the principal point of contact for emergency managers at the federal, state and local levels. NAPSG staff field activation requests and remain in frequent communication with emergency responders throughout each activation, passing along areas of focus and concern to the #PhotoMappers team. GISCorps, in turn, fields and manages a large team of mapping volunteers. These volunteers scour social media for relevant photos of on-the-ground conditions, geolocate each photo as precisely as possible, and upload it to the map using a Survey123 form embedded in a custom Volunteer Portal built in Experience Builder. The GISCorps Admin Team vets each photo for locational accuracy and adds a primary lifeline and a preliminary building damage score where appropriate. Each GISCorps #PhotoMappers activation is managed by members of the GISCorps Disaster Response Subcommittee.
Emergency managers and first responders can view and filter the vetted photos on interactive maps and dashboards, getting an at-a-glance sense of each storm’s impacts to the communities they serve. These applications, as well as the raw data, are publicly available on NAPSG’s PhotoMappers Hub Site.
Activations
Typhoon Bavi
Almost immediately following the closeout of the Venezuela earthquakes mission, the #PhotoMappers team transitioned to providing support for Category 5 Super Typhoon Bavi impacts. On July 5, 2026, FEMA worked with the NAPSG Foundation to request #PhotoMappers activation in support of the islands of Guam and the Commonwealth of Marianas Islands (CNMI). The #PhotoMappers Admin team took the first day to stock the photo queue in preparation for opening up the mission to all #PhotoMappers volunteers the following day.
Just a few months ago, in April, Guam and the CNMI were hit by Category 3 Super Typhoon Sinlaku. This added an additional consideration to the mapping and vetting processes since all damage photos had to be compared to previously mapped Sinlaku photos. During the 5-day mission, 15 volunteers mapped 109 photos across Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan. The team worked together to overcome limited street views that complicated some location verifications and shared numerous resources outside of normal go-to workflows.
Venezuela Earthquakes
On July 3, 2026, GISCorps activated the #PhotoMappers Admin Team in support of relief operations stemming from the earthquakes that struck Venezuela in late June. The request was the result of coordination between the NAPSG Foundation and nonprofit organization CrisisVenezuela.org. The goal was to help direct resources to where they were needed most.
This activation was unique because CrisisVenezuela already had a robust process and web application in place to auto-locate and display publicly available photos, so the usual #PhotoMappers process was not used. Instead, CrisisVenezuela mirrored the #PhotoMappers data schema and provided a batch of image links and possible locations. The images provided required careful manual validation due to low confidence in the initial coordinates generated.
Over the 3-day activation 35 photos were mapped. This was a complex mission due to major changes to the built environment as well as some language barriers but valuable lessons were learned during this non-traditional mission. The #PhotoMappers team will take those lessons into future activations.
Typhoon Sinlaku
In April 2026, Category 4 Super Typhoon Sinlaku struck the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Guam with 150 mph winds and catastrophic storm surges. To bridge critical information gaps, GISCorps activated its #PhotoMappers team in partnership with the NAPSG Foundation, providing emergency managers with geolocated “ground-truth” imagery during the disaster’s first 120 hours.
The remote geography of the Marianas and post-storm cloud cover prevented immediate satellite or aerial damage assessments. Over five days (14-18 April, 2026), 20 #PhotoMappers volunteers were able to geolocate 184 photos while Admin Team members vetted each photo. The sourced and vetted photos provided a vital layer of situational awareness that was otherwise unavailable.
Hawaii Flooding
On Friday, March 27, 2026, USGS requested #PhotoMappers activate in response to recent flooding in Hawaii. Not only was this the first USGS request for #PM support, the request parameters were also unique. The #PM Admin Team was tasked with finding social media photos of floodwaters taken during the peak flows of the recent storms, March 20-23, 2026. They were also asked to look for photos of high-water mark evidence like debris and mud lines from March 20 onward.
Over the next 6 days, 43 photos were mapped that met USGS-provided parameters. Mapping volunteers for this mission included #PhotoMappers Admin Team members Jennifer Pramuk, Keith Johnson, Monicque Lee, Monika Halmo, and Peg Gronemeyer. The mission was led by Erin Arkison and Hannah Gonzales-Bridges with additional support from Emma Montague.
Related Missions
