Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU)
Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) of the U.S. Department of State
The MapGive campaign
https://state-hiu.github.io/ and https://github.com/state-hiu
- Most of the servers and websites are no longer accessible.
- This page summarizes the information regarding copyright and licenses that was still available in Nov. 2025 and serves to archive this information for past OSM and HOT projects or mapping activities.
- Imagery to the Crowd Initiative (ITTC)
- https://github.com/state-hiu/cybergis-licenses (2025-11-14)
- Imagery to the Crowd
The Humanitarian Information Unit through the Imagery to the Crowd initiative provides high-resolution commercial satellite imagery services for humanitarian purposes. Additionally, HIU is working to grow the base of the volunteers contributing open data to OpenStreetMap through the MapGive campagin.
- Licenses
- All
- NextView, MIT, Public Domain
- Code
- MIT, Public Domain
- Data
- Public Domain
- Imagery
- NextView
- NextView
- Description
- The NextView license allows the Humanitarian Information Unit to support the creation of open data for humanitarian purposes with high-resolution commercial satellite imagery services with some restrictions.
- Links
- Raw, HOT
- Used for
- High-Resolution Commercial Satellite Imagery Services for the Imagery to the Crowd Initiative (ITTC).
- HOT
- https://github.com/state-hiu/cybergis-licenses/blob/master/licenses/NEXTVIEW-LICENSE-HOT.txt (2025-11-14)
This data is licensed for use by the US Government (USG) under the NextView (NV) license and copyrighted by Digital Globe or GeoEye. The NV license allows the USG to share the imagery and Literal Imagery Derived Products (LIDP) with entities outside the USG when that entity is working directly with the USG, for the USG, or in a manner that is directly beneficial to the USG. The party receiving the data can only use the imagery or LIDP for the original purpose or only as otherwise agreed to by the USG. The party receiving the data cannot share the imagery or LIDP with a third party without express permission from the USG. At no time should this imagery or LIDP be used for other than USG-related purposes and must not be used for commercial gain. The copyright information should be maintained at all times. Your acceptance of these license terms is implied by your use.
In other words, you may only use NextView imagery linked from this site for digitizing OpenStreetMap data for humanitarian purposes.