In Sapecho, Bolivia, Indigenous communities, park rangers, and firefighters come together in an open mapping workshop to prevent wildfires and manage their territory with humanitarian technology.
Version en español
In the municipality of Palos Blancos, La Paz, the team from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team traveled to the community of Sapecho—predominantly inhabited by the Tacana people—to conduct a participatory mapping workshop focused on territorial management and wildfire prevention. This effort was made possible thanks to the support of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI).
With the participation of the Indigenous Council of the Tacana People (CIPTA), park rangers, and firefighters, the workshop combined theoretical sessions, field activities, and tools such as drones, Drone Tasking Manager, OpenStreetMap, and ChatMap. The approach integrated technical expertise and local knowledge to generate useful data and empower the community.
Emilio Mariscal, Software Engineering Manager at HOT, directly participated in the activities in Sapecho. From his perspective, mapping was a true exchange of knowledge. For Emilio, impactful tech development cannot happen in isolation or solely from a screen—it must emerge from dialogue with those who protect the land.
Through his words, this story invites us to walk the trails of the Bolivian Amazon, meet those facing forest fires from the ground up, and reflect on how humanitarian technology can—and must—be built collectively.
From Gathering to Action
I write this article from the Southern Hemisphere, on a cold June afternoon. This is the story of a remarkable journey, where technology, the wisdom of nature, and the fight for our own survival intertwine.
Dr. Patricia Llanos and Vicky Ossio, Director and Founder of the Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary
I met Dr. Patricia Llanos in 2022 during a HOT-supported event called “Community-Based Disaster Risk Management and OpenStreetMap” at the National University of San Marcos in Lima. It was the first time I had the chance to talk face-to-face with people from all over Latin America. I met many who are now friends, collaborators, comrades. With the majestic Andes mountains as a backdrop, surrounded by native forests and regional challenges, we connected through shared stories and knowledge from different cultures.
In later gatherings such as Abre LATAM/Con Datos in Montevideo and FOSS4G in Belém, these bonds only grew stronger, sparking new ideas and collaborative opportunities. That’s how this year we traveled to Bolivia—together with two friends and wildfire specialists—to keep strengthening the ties between people, open technologies, and the fight against the climate crisis.
Bolivia, a Land of Knowledge
Saturday at Córdoba’s bus terminal (Argentina), my travel companions are César Dapía, volunteer firefighter and electrician, and Emiliano Pastura, forest brigade member and fire management technician. After over 2000 km by bus and three days ascending from 700 to 4000 meters above sea level, we arrive. La Paz is a vibrant, bustling city.
At the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), we are warmly welcomed by Dr. Patricia Llanos and the university’s Secretary General, Mario Zenteno Benítez, who invites us to breakfast with the firefighters joining us. The university, like the city and its challenges, is vast. Territorial knowledge is key, and prevention is always the best tool. “The best fire is the one that never starts,” says César. And here we are, trying to extinguish the flames before the first spark.
Technology is our ally in this effort, and independence ensures sustainability—free software and open data are essential to keeping our projects alive despite political or economic barriers. In our first workshops, we used a $1000 drone to generate our own aerial imagery, bypassing costly satellite access or elusive cooperation agreements.
Tomorrow we’ll head to Sapecho, a village we only know through photos, maps, and stories. The old road is famously known as the “Death Road” due to its dangerous, winding route. The surrounding forest is wild, challenging for rescuers. Its biodiversity is stunning—but even carnivorous ants can make things complicated.
In La Paz, we better understand the challenges of emergency access and response in a densely populated city, with labyrinthine roads and thousands living in precarious structures. The air is thin here, oxygen is scarce, and we learn that altitude also affects drone performance by shortening battery life.
Our transport arrives, and we depart with students, technicians, firefighters, and professors. Before descending into the jungle, we reach La Cumbre, a town above 4000 meters, home to a small outpost staffed by three or four firefighters.
As we descend, the landscape shifts. We enter Los Yungas, a region of Andean cloud forest stretching from northern Peru across Bolivia to northern Argentina. Rescuers here have countless stories about the difficulties of navigating this terrain—where the jungle reigns and landslides are common.
Small and medium-sized settlements cling to the mountainsides. Everything reminds me of my journey to Nepal. The bus seems to balance precariously on the road. After a few hours, we stop to eat. The food is nourishing, flavorful, and spicy—again I’m reminded of the Himalayas, and how similar mountain communities are across the world. I tell my companions that the open-source tools we’ll use in the Amazon were partly created by young Nepali developers. We live in a connected world.
Sapecho: A Convergence of Territories, Technologies, and Knowledge
We finally arrive after eight hours and several stops. The Amazon fills us with energy. Sapecho is a small town near the Beni River (Amazon basin), where agroforestry and high-quality organic cacao cultivation thrive. UMSA has an experimental station here, where we will hold our workshop. We are welcomed by university students, firefighters, park rangers, Indigenous community members, professors, and specialists. After warm introductions, we begin exchanging stories.
Our goal is not simply to showcase the tools we work on at HOT’s Global Tech Team. First, we must understand the problems—shared and unique—and explore how open technologies can help. It’s an exchange—we learn from one another. There’s no other way. Impactful technology cannot be built in isolation, behind a screen. It requires face-to-face connection, shared experiences, and collective struggles.
UMSA’s experimental station in Sapecho.
In addition to being a software developer, I volunteer in forest firefighting—just like my travel companions César and Emiliano. Emi, the most experienced among us, is part of a volunteer brigade with over 20 years of history, Defensa Verde. He knows Argentina’s major fires firsthand. He wonders, “How can such a green, water-filled forest catch fire?” Wildfire issues are increasingly relevant across Latin America, especially as the climate crisis deepens.
Last year, in 2024, Bolivia’s Amazon experienced unprecedented fires. “We didn’t know what to do—it was new to us,” says Carmen, a cacao producer practicing agroforestry that protects soil and ecosystems without burning vegetation. As we talk with Marvel, firefighter and nature protector, she shares how she got lost in the jungle during those devastating fires.
Firefighters almost always arrive later than expected. Even as we start using drones and digital maps, reaching remote areas still takes time. I suggest Carmen download Organic Maps and always carry a fully charged phone and power bank. Marvel adds that marking the way back—like Hansel and Gretel—is something they do too, using string or colored tape.
Later we fly drones with Franz, another firefighter from La Paz, who brought his own. We’ll use the images to produce the final map from this workshop.
Flying Drone Tasking Manager missions with Franz, Marvel, and Carmen.
One of the biggest challenges I constantly observe in the use of technology is accessibility. The cognitive load required to learn many different things at once is often overlooked by the industry I’ve worked in for over 20 years—software development. Learning about geospatial information systems is not typically on the radar of people with different professions and occupations, especially when they are also trying to protect their homes, forests, and lives. I’m convinced we need to create solutions that are much easier to use.
In these workshops here in Bolivia, we made use of a new field mapping tool called ChatMap, which enables the creation of maps through instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. Back in Argentina, while watching the webinar “Participatory Mapping for a Sustainable Amazon,” I was amazed to see a young Indigenous Bolivian explaining how he learned to use ChatMap in Sapecho and his plans to map illegal mining in the Amazon. I call this kind of use case “organic,” because it wasn’t driven by a formal project or campaign—it simply came from someone finding the tool useful and easy to use. I find this deeply compelling.
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Before returning to the city, we stopped at a magical place: the Senda Verde Animal Sanctuary. Once a residence, it is now a refuge where Vicky Ossio and volunteers care for rescued wild animals, most of which will never be able to return to the wild where they truly belong.
The tour they prepared for us began with pollinators. We saw caterpillars—future butterflies—and learned about the importance of so many species of insects, but also animals and fungi, without which many plants and fruits could not exist. The balance is incredibly delicate. “Butterflies may not survive the climate crisis,” Vicky told us, while also explaining the importance of bats. These animals can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes per hour! Do we really need pesticides, plastic nets, or genetically modified mosquitoes? I believe that if we destroy nature, there will be no technology that can save us. Restoring the natural environment is also humanitarian work.
This trip has not only been a meeting between people, but also a reconnection with nature, which offers us its own ancient solutions.
We spoke briefly with Patricia, Vicky, and Marvel about how to continue working together. It’s important for the animal sanctuary to have a map. Technology can support the process of rewilding rescued animals, and the work of environmental protection and restoration is vital. “We can no longer talk about conservation,” Vicky told us, “because conservation is for what’s still healthy—and nature is sick. That’s why we must restore it.” That night, we arrived back in La Paz, returning to the city.
We extended our stay a few more days to share learnings with firefighter colleagues. On Saturday, we gave a workshop at the Institute for Research in Chemical Processes (IIDEPROQ), where we presented our experience in Sapecho to participants from academia and the industrial safety sector, including firefighters.
On the way back, thanks to Yves Reynaga, we visited the Santa Bárbara Volunteer Fire Station, led by Carmiña Paz—Bolivia’s first female fire chief and a volunteer. There, our training session turned into a dialogue about the use of free software and open data for emergency response, with examples of how we use OpenStreetMap in disasters.
On Monday, we visited the Bolivian Police Firefighters in Antofagasta, reconnecting with participants from the workshops. We closed with a talk, breakfast with salteñas, and one final mapping exercise using drones and field data collection with Professor William Llanos Torrico.
On Humanitarian Technology
How can we develop software for humanitarian use without understanding people? For those of us who work on technology products with humanitarian purposes, it’s essential to understand how people actually use the software. And to better understand, it’s important to share lived experiences that help us imagine possible solutions to the immense variety of challenges people face every day. Maps and numbers are representations of reality—but they are not reality itself. Technology is a tool, and as such, it must be adapted to how people use it—not the other way around. If we expect people to adapt to the technology, then we are not developing humanitarian technology.
Tools used in this initiative
Explore the Tech Suite here. These were the tools used specifically:
Explore the maps created
This work was carried out with support from the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) Seed Grant, Tropical Forests in the Americas: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Transformations, SG-TF-2024.