Welcome to the course “Disaster Mapping 2.0: Volunteered Geographic Information in Disaster Risk Management and Humanitarian Aid” offered in the Winter Semester 2014/2015 by Prof. João Porto de Albuquerque and Svend-Jonas Schellhorn of the GIScience group of the Institute of Geography at Heidelberg University. In the next following weeks until the end of November 2015 we will discuss the topic with invited blogposts from students, we look forward to your contributions!