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Google announced a partnership with the World Bank today to make Google Map Maker data more accessible to government organizations in disaster scenarios. Google Map Maker is the tool for crowd-sourcing the editing and maintenance of Google's world map. Its user-generated data include locations of hospitals, schools, settlements, water sources and minor roads.

Access to these data will help governments, NGOs, researchers and individuals plan without waiting for the changes to be approved and added to the official maps. World Bank partner organizations, such as government and U.N. agencies, can contact World Bank offices to request access to the data. Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal and Haiti will pilot the project.

Google announced a major redesign of Google Map Maker today. This is the tool that allows anyone to propose edits to the live Google map, so that locals can offer more detail than Google's own teams can provide. The new tools offer simple ways to add and edit places, roads and paths, as well as reviewing the edits of others.

That peer review element is key to Google Maps' new direction. In September, Google rearranged the Map Maker review process, deputizing regional expert reviewers to expand its capacity to handle crowd-sourced edits. Today's new tools take that a step further, allowing anyone to review proposed edits before they're incorporated into the live map.

Google has just announced the latest class of countries to graduate from Google Map Maker and become full-fledged citizens of Google Maps. Map Maker allows "citizen cartographers" to add details like little roads, businesses and geographic features to parts of the world that Google's staff can't easily reach.

Today's announcement incorporates community contributions from a bunch of new countries, territories, and even an entire continents into the live Google map. The graduates are: Afghanistan, Antarctica, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Honduras, Iraq, Norfolk Island, Saint Pierre & Miquelon and Saudi Arabia.

Google is announcing a new contest for local would-be heroes.

The Map Maker Global Competition, which challenges users to add high-quality data on universities, schools, hospitals and medical clinics in Google Map Maker, will run from Dec. 15, 2009 to Jan. 31, 2010. The grand prize for the user who adds the greatest quantity of data is a $50,000 UNICEF donation to the winner's home country.

The Google Maps team just announced the addition of a new feature to Google Maps: the ability to contribute to and edit maps through Google Map Maker. Users can now edit and moderate various map features, including roads, lakes, power lines, and bike trails among others.

While Google already allows users to create and share new map layers through 'My Maps', this is the first time it is actively looking for help in creating maps (almost) from the ground up.