In humanitarian crises, rapidly changing conditions such as damaged infrastructure, weather hazards, or security threats significantly impact the efficiency and safety of aid delivery and logistics. Standard static routing methods, even those leveraging regularly updated OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, often fail to quickly adapt when a critical bridge collapses overnight or a newly flooded road blocks previously safe routes. Thus, lacking the flexibility to integrate rapidly evolving, mission-critical information from humanitarian organizations and local communities. Our approach addresses this gap by dynamically incorporating real-time, external operational data directly into mobility analysis.

OpenStreetMap provides a foundational role in disaster response, empowering local and remote volunteers to rapidly update map features like road accessibility, infrastructure status, and community resources. Active OSM mapping efforts, such as those coordinated by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), continuously enhance the accuracy and timeliness of geographic information available to humanitarian responders. Community-led mapping initiatives ensure that routes, landmarks, and hazard areas are promptly updated, directly benefiting routing decisions during crisis operations.

In this talk, you will learn about multiple aspects:

• How does your mapping in OSM directly influence humanitarian mobility analysis, and what can you do to enhance this during mapping.
• How do we close the gap between OSM data, which is updated at a slower but steady pace during disasters, and the need for current mission-critical ground truth within the mobility analysis.

The approach we are exploring allows integrating additional critical information such as precise flood extents, infrastructure damage assessments, or security conditions provided by humanitarian responders, satellites, or other data sources. This closes the gap between steady OSM changes and information that may not be suitable for OSM or just too temporary. The unique strength of our system lies in incorporating these external data sources into routing decisions in near real time, significantly improving the relevance and timeliness of route planning. You will discover how our innovative streaming method updates routing graphs rapidly, maintaining high performance and dynamically adapting to changing conditions without the need to do time expensive routing graph rebuilds.

Implemented within the open-source Openrouteservice (ORS) platform, this solution leverages a robust API that can be publicly accessed or self-hosted, ensuring broad interoperability and no technology lock-in. The development is in preview and access is still provided for humanitarian actors on demand only. This allows us to slowly roll out this functionality by still providing enough resources specifically for crisis-affected areas.

The practical humanitarian benefits are substantial. During major disasters such as Cyclone Idai in Mozambique (2019), and the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, which destroyed critical infrastructure impacting access for millions, responders urgently required flexible routing reflecting rapidly changing ground realities. Our dynamic routing system enables humanitarian organizations to adapt quickly, improving response speed, safety, and efficiency, thus optimizing limited resources.

Looking forward, the integration of predictive analytics based on accumulated operational data can further enhance humanitarian logistics. Such advancements could proactively identify routes at risk, enabling a shift from reactive to anticipatory routing.
This talk presents the state-of-the-art integration of dynamic mission-critical data and active OSM mapping efforts into humanitarian routing, highlighting its current implementation, practical impact, and future potential for proactive, resilient humanitarian logistics.