Ramallah or Bust!

A new group joined the project recently, we met them the last Thursday in Jericho and after been trained and equipped with GPS devices, they started collecting data in the city of Ramallah, the largest city in the West Bank. They start the day by working in the field...err on the streets, collecting track data and waypoints of points-of-interest. Later in the afternoon they return to the computer lab at the Ramallah headquarters of JumpStart to import the data they just collected into the computer and then edit it into a map. The software which is currently used is GPS Babel for importing some of the data from the Garmin GPS units and the Java OpenStreetMap editor (JOSM) is used to draw the maps based on the GPS data. It requires team work and dedication to complete the day's work. The teams are doing well, they’re busy, committed and getting along quite nicely. Most of the teams come everyday from Bethlehem and the presence of Israeli check points often delays their travel for hours.