Volunteers Map Crowdsourced Photos for Disasters Affecting the United States

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 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.