The January flooding in Albania was massive. Torrential rains, melting snow and overflowing artificial lakes resulted in a disaster for a country that is the poorest of Europe.
This map shows the extend of the disaster, the text explains that the road infrastructure is not complete as data from OpenStreetMap has been used. This lack of available information did hamper the relief effort. Maps were made available for the relief effort in Haiti, not in Albania. This has probably everything to do that the Albanian flooding did not get major news attention; even Wikipedia does not know about it.
I had a word with someone involved in the OSM project for Albanian relief, I informed him about translatewiki.net and I am happy with the first localisations in the Gheg Albanian language. It seems so obvious that maps are useful and needed and available when everything is back to normal. The people for whom these maps are important do not necessarily speak English..
Thanks,
GerardM
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