I’m part of a small volunteer team that runs birding.live, a free site that helps people find birds and green spaces near them. Thought it made sense to introduce how the site leans on OSM data, and to say thanks.

What we do with OSM: geocoding and place search come through Nominatim with an identifying user agent, throttled through our own proxy. Nearby parks, woods and reserves are place queries framed from OSM data, mostly via Geoapify’s OSM-derived layer, and walking trails come from Overpass as named route relations for hiking, foot and walking. Plain paths only ever show up if their OSM tags carry a real signal like difficulty grading or waymarking, so road connectors and farm tracks don’t pretend to be trails.

Who it’s for: the site is a five minute route into birding for beginners. You type a place, see which birds have been reported around it recently from the eBird community, and get a map of parks, reserves and named trails to walk, all credited as OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

Two things we want to improve, honestly: watching how the trail queries behave in areas with patchy tagging, and starting to give corrections back once we’re confident enough to do it properly. If you’ve got pointers on Overpass named-route queries, or you spot one of our pins naming something wrongly, that kind of eye is very welcome.

If you’re curious the site is birding.live and the code is at github.com/chocobar/birding. Thanks for the years of contributor effort behind every pin on our maps.

It occurred to me that some users of OpenStreetMap data cannot read Cyrillic script, so maps lacking name:en variables (or others using Latin letters) may have difficulty reading place names, highway names, and so on. I asked Copilot for help and after a few false starts it produced a PowerShell 7 script that converts Cyrillic script to Latin script.

I downloaded a PBF file for Uzbekistan from Geofabrik, used osmconvert to convert it from PBF to OSM format, then ran the script on it. The OSM file was large (> 3Gb) and the script was done in about 12 minutes. I then used osmconvert to change it back to PBF format and fed it into splitter and mkgmap.

The GMAP folder when viewed in BaseCamp looks perfect, all Cyrillic characters have been changed to Latin characters. My mkgmap style sheets call for name:en in the first instance, if available, then fall back to intl_name, and in the final instance to name. If the name is in Cyrillic it is converted to Latin letters.

I have uploaded the PowerShell 7 script to Github. It should be modifiable for any non-Latin alphabet (next I will experiment with other nearby countries, like Georgia and Armenia).

It occurred to me that some users of OpenStreetMap data cannot read Cyrillic script, so maps lacking name:en variables (or others using Latin letters) may have difficulty reading place names, highway names, and so on. I asked Copilot for help and after a few false starts it produced a PowerShell 7 script that converts Cyrillic script to Latin script.

I downloaded a PBF file for Uzbekistan from Geofabrik, used osmconvert to convert it from PBF to OSM format, then ran the script on it. The OSM file was large (> 3Gb) and the script was done in about 12 minutes. I then used osmconvert to change it back to PBF format and fed it into splitter and mkgmap.

The GMAP folder when viewed in BaseCamp looks perfect, all Cyrillic characters have been changed to Latin characters. My mkgmap style sheets call for name:en in the first instance, if available, then fall back to intl_name, and in the final instance to name. If the name is in Cyrillic it is converted to Latin letters.

I have uploaded the PowerShell 7 script to Github. It should be modifiable for any non-Latin alphabet (next I will experiment with other nearby countries, like Georgia and Armenia).

Usually users add 1500–2000 map notes per day. Yesterday (2026-10-13) one user added 6175 map notes. Yesterday all users added 7717 map notes. So one user added 80% map notes (one user added four times as many notes as all the other users combined).

Over the past months I’ve been building v2 of an idea I’ve had for a while: a way to explore every OpenStreetMap changeset since 2005, see trends over time, and drill down to who did what. (v1 was a prototype built on Datadog; its code is here.

Links links links, show me the thing

➡️ https://osm-monitor.johan.sh ⬅️ ·

Code: https://github.com/johanmorganti/osm-monitor

How does that work?

It ingests OSM’s minutely changeset and diff replication from planet.osm.org, plus the full changeset history: 190 million changesets and 19 billion object changes, from 2005 to a few minutes ago.

Everything is public data :)

Tabs

• Overview: changeset volume over time, top editors, imagery, countries, a density map
• Objects: what was created, modified and deleted, by feature type, and you can drill down into a spike to see who made it and which changesets
• Editors: how editing apps have evolved and who uses them

Everything is aggregated, and everything can be filtered:

• Use filters to arrow by date, country, editor, imagery or contributor.
• Click on a time graph to see the details
• Click a bar to filter on it

A few things to try

• All of OSM history in one chart: https://osm-monitor.johan.sh/?start_date=2005-01-01&end_date=2026-10-13
• How editors changed : in 2010 the top editors were JOSM, Potlatch and Merkaartor. In 2026 so far it’s iD (6.2M changesets), StreetComplete (3.1M) and JOSM (2.7M). https://osm-monitor.johan.sh/editors/?start_date=2010-01-01&end_date=2026-10-13
• Your own country: e.g. France last year: https://osm-monitor.johan.sh/?country=FR&start_date=2025-01-01&end_date=2025-12-31 (just change the country code)
• Investigating a spike in object changes : https://osm-monitor.johan.sh/objects/?start_date=2026-10-07&end_date=2026-10-12
  • This spike does not appears in changesets

• Good to know (as you saw above) : URLs have all the context (API parameters, date range, filters etc…). To show someone what you’re looking at, just send them the link.

How it differs from existing tools

Tools like OSMCha are great for reviewing individual changesets. OSM Monitor answers different questions: trends and aggregates over the whole history, which you can then narrow down to specific editors, countries or people. It only uses public changeset metadata and diffs that anyone can download from planet.osm.org.

Public API (and MCP)

Every chart on the site is powered by a public JSON API (fully open for now) Docs: https://osm-monitor.johan.sh/api/docs/

• Build your own dashboards, alerts or analyses on top of it
• An MCP server is also available, if you want an AI assistant to answer questions about changeset history

Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL.

Next steps

Right now this runs on a laptop at my place, so expect the occasional downtime. I’ll see how much interest there is over the next few weeks and move to a proper server if people find it useful.

Feedback is very welcome: bugs, ideas, charts you’d like to see. Open an issue on the GitHub repo or reach me on any of the socials on my profile. Looking forward to hearing what you think!

October 11–17

October 13

• Added Brice Road Park, which opened in early 2026. (Park has a Reynoldsburg address, although it is located within Columbus boundaries. 10-year partnership between Reynoldsburg Parks and Recreation Department and Columbus Recreation and Parks Department.)

October 14

• Fixing my error about Little Jordan Run. It continues east and ends just south of Eastwood Street in the new developments. The stream that continues north is NOT Little Jordan Run, and is instead an unnamed tributary.

I have uploaded updates to Github of my personal scripts and style sheets for making Garmin-compatible IMG files out of OSM-origin PBF files (thank you, Geofabrik!), both for Central Asia (all five countries) and for the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation style sheets render names of highways and POIs in both English and Russian to ease searching on a GPS unit, wherever a name:en variable is available. Both sets of style sheets render foreign diplomatic missions as well as various other POIs that for whatever reason other providers of IMG files omit.

I found that generating individual IMG files, each with its own family-id=* number in the mkgmap script, then merging them into a single file using GMapTool, allows the Garmin nüvi to list each map individually in MyMaps, which means they can be selected and deselected individually. Since the gmapsupp.img files can be quite large and thus slow to load (and for the nüvi processor to process, especially for older models) this is very handy. The Russia map is well over 2 gigabytes, and the Central Asia map is about 370 megabytes.

My Wintel desktop has 32Gb of RAM and runs on a 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K at 3.20 GHz. It processed the Central Asia maps in about 3 minutes start to finish, and the Russian Federation maps in about 20 minutes. In the script I set splitter to use 4Gb of RAM and mkgmap to use 16Gb. If your box has less RAM you will have to adjust those settings and your scripts will run longer.

I asked Copilot to rate nüvi models for compatibility with mkgmap-generated IMG files. This is the table Copilot returned:

I have been building an interactive 3D map of Yas Island, Abu Dhabi: uaemaps.com. It is a free, non-commercial side project.

Every road, building footprint, park and shoreline comes from OpenStreetMap, with building outlines from Overture and Microsoft’s open footprints and greenery from Copernicus Sentinel and ESA WorldCover. On top of that the landmarks are modelled by hand from photos: Ferrari World, Yas Waterworld, the Etihad Arena, the F1 circuit and its tunnels.

The map follows the real sun over Yas, lights up at night by OSM’s lit and use tags, and runs traffic on the real road graph, including bridges and tunnels from OSM’s bridge, tunnel and layer tags. Each place has its own page with opening hours and links.

Working with Yas in OSM showed me a few gaps: some new venues and gates were missing or a few hundred metres off. Where I could check them on the ground, I want to fix them in OSM too.

Feedback from mappers in the UAE is very welcome.

Map: uaemaps.com · Sources: uaemaps.com/story/sources

I just updated, as at the beginning of every quarter, the statistics on the wiki here osm.wiki/Stats#Contributor_statistics_reports

(Semi-)Noteworthy is that we passed 2.5 million contributors to the map data in August and that Q3 was an all time high for a quarter. January 2017 was on a monthly base slightly better, but potentially similar to now it was due to one time effects adding up, the initial maps.me inrush and natural disaster mapping in the USA.

But what everybody really wanted to know is how things continued with DeFlock (see this discussion back in July https://en.osm.town/deck/@simon/116931222215984341) and new mapper influx:

So it seems as if peak DeFlock is already past, with the slack taken up by renewed interest in OSM in general*.

My hypothesis is this is mainly driven by the digital sovereignty movement in Europe which the US (just back from a vacation there) seems to be blissfully unaware of, but that will need some more analysis to firm up.

* if you have never seen any OSM contributor statistics before you should be aware that actual contributor retention rate, as in mappers that transition to editing over any longer time frame, is very low, typically a couple of percent for iD and one order of magnitude less or more for navigation apps and similar. As a result blips in new contributors tend to not have a large impact on long term mapper growth.

お久しぶりです。setowalkerです。

最近忙しく、あまり日記を書けていませんでした。

さて、今回書きたいことは2件です。

・尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線のマッピングを進めています。 ・交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？

尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線のマッピングを進めています

尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線（名鉄バス・あさぴー号・N-バス）のマッピングをかなり進めました。 まだ把握しきれていない部分（あさぴー号の経路の一部、名鉄バスのトヨタ博物館前～長久手古戦場駅間の経路など）があるので、順次対応していきたいです。

交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？

交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？なのか、10日前に追加したバスルートが反映されていません。早く解決してほしいです。

OpenStreetMap is a beautiful map, but its biggest problem is its user base. If we compare OpenStreetMap with Google Maps, we’ll notice a significant difference in the places, shops, and restaurants that appear on Google Maps but are missing from OpenStreetMap. This isn’t a flaw in OpenStreetMap, but rather a lack of users to add these places. Nevertheless, I try to contribute to the map as much as I can because it’s owned by a free community, not a monopolistic company—and that’s what these communities deserve.

I was looking at my Google Maps and the amount of view I have to date, 47 million! But there is no contact with people , so looked to the Ferdiverse and found this. No not if they have photo uploads, but I can put my Section Eight and Bisset Collection on a map now. Me and Google have issues.

01/10/2026-07/10/2026

Mapping

• Mateusz Konieczny proposed a mechanical edit that would move info about material from bollard= to material=. It would include editing bollard=concrete/wood/stone/rock/metal/plastic.

• Mappers in the United Kingdom are considering removing the brand:wikipedia tag, which was mostly set from presets from the name suggestion index that no longer include them, two years after the same thing was done in the United States.

Mapping campaigns

• Ballerup Municipality thanked OpenStreetMap Denmark volunteers for a successful September 2026 mapping campaign that significantly increased the mapping of accessible parking spaces.

Community

• While you are enjoying the #31DayOSMChallenge don’t forget that the #30DayMapChallenge will soon be here. This year’s list of themes has been published.

• Aselnigu explained how new data gets onto the OpenStreetMap.de map.

• Rawaz explained how Claude AI can help map complex 3D buildings in OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OpenStreetMap Foundation Local Chapters and Communities Working Group launched the 2026 Community Microgrants, offering a total of EUR 5000 that will be distributed to various OpenStreetMap communities in grants of up to EUR 500. Applications are open from 5 to 25 October for small, concrete, and time-bounded activities that support mapping, data improvement, knowledge sharing, or community growth.

Events

• OSM ENSTP (École Nationale Supérieure des Travaux Publics, Cameroon) organised ► a practical workshop on bridging paper and digital data for local urban planning on 4 October 2026. In collaboration with HeiGIT, the UN Mappers and GeoWakanda, the club brought participants together on campus to explore participatory mapping.

• The FOSSGIS programme committee announced ► that the next FOSSGIS conference will take place in Heidelberg (Germany) from 9 to 13 March 2027.

• The State of the Map Latam 2026 will take place from 27 to 29 October at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City. Those who wish to attend in person can register now.

Education

• Hans van der Kwast gave a workshop, ‘Hydrological Analysis in QGIS’, at the QGIS User Conference in Laax, Switzerland. They explored the new native QGIS 4.4 tools for flow direction visualisation, stream extraction and catchment delineation, and a diverse range of tools for conducting comprehensive hydrological analysis. Materials are available at @gisocw.

Maps

• nicofr77 has developed Tisseur de Voies, a website that calculates bike loops with a return journey by train. The cycle routes come from OpenStreetMap and the national cycle-route database (France), while the basemap comes from OpenStreetMap. Journey times come from open-data timetables published by SNCF, Île-de-France Mobilités, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, and the Corsican Railways.

• Yury Kosharovskiy has created Star Ninja, a free web map for planning a night of stargazing. It shows sky darkness, cloud forecasts, and moon visibility for any spot on Earth, using OpenStreetMap data through Nominatim (place search) and MapLibre GL JS with OpenFreeMap tiles.

OSM in action

• Home Assistant 2026.10 has introduced a redesigned map built on the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s vector tile service, marking a significant milestone for its adoption by major open-source projects. The new maps features smoother rendering, dark-mode styling, improved markers, and clustering. Home Assistant proxies and caches tiles locally, reducing the load on OSMF infrastructure. The release credits Guillaume Rischard for initiating and leading the OSMF vector tile project, Paul Norman for developing the tile infrastructure, and the MapLibre, Shortbread, and VersaTiles communities.

• Sebastian Mietzner has made KAIJUMIETZ, a browser game that builds any neighbourhood on Earth from OSM data and lets a giant cat destroy it in two minutes.

• VivaMap, a free quality-of-life map built partly on OpenStreetMap data, now also covers the Netherlands. Four of its nine Swiss dimensions (schools, restaurants and nightlife, healthcare, and part of nature) are computed from OSM points of interest and building footprints, weighted by type and distance on an H3 hexagon grid. The aggregate scores are published as CSV under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Software

• Stadia Maps shows how to build a custom map style in about 30 minutes by forking a MapLibre style, recoloring it in Maputnik, and hosting the JSON yourself, including authentication setup and common styling problems.

• Stadia Maps has rebuilt its boundary processing pipeline so that each boundary retains the same disputed status at every zoom level, resulting in smaller tiles.

• Heikki Kalliokoski has developed copilot.travel, a free web planner for road trips in Europe powered by OpenStreetMap data. It routes drives with self-hosted Valhalla and describes sights using linked Wikipedia/Wikidata entries or their OSM tags.

• After two years of development Alexandr Lovkov has shared his web app RouteCycle, for creating convenient and engaging cycling routes. The app supports displaying landmark photos from Wikimedia Commons and Strava integration for tracking unexplored roads and landmarks.

• The Wikimedia Enterprise team published an article about how CoMaps downloads Wikipedia articles to link them to OpenStreetMap data to provide offline access.

• Erick de Oliveira is bringing back the OSM Smart Menu as an open-source extension for Chrome and Firefox. With a single click, it opens your current location at the same zoom level on other maps, in mapping tools such as iD, JOSM, or OSMCha, and also in Wikipedia articles containing coordinates without the need to enter any data.

• Rua de Cima is a free tool for house hunters in mainland Portugal. It uses official statistics to compare ► a home’s asking price with nearby sale prices and shows walking and driving times to schools, health care, public transport, shops, and beaches. Place and road data come from OpenStreetMap, routes are calculated using Valhalla, and the basemap uses Protomaps.

Releases

• GraphHopper has released version 11.1, fixing a remote code execution issue.

• Nearly two months since the last report, we received a new recap of changes to openstreetmap.org. Some of these include a new version of iD (with updated tagging schema), tweaks to notes, and a new effort to track and help fix errors that were invisible to the team. But the spotlight is on the changes to visibility settings for uploaded GPX traces. These were announced back in May (we reported earlier), and have now landed for the general public, including a page that mappers can use to update their past traces in bulk in order to bring them up to the new spec.

• HeiGIT announced a major release of openrouteservice with version 10.0.0, also known as Amalthea. This release focused mostly on the technical foundation of the engine. It upgraded Java and Spring Boot, reduced the set of release artefacts to a fat jar and Docker images, and moved the slim Docker image to a hardened distroless base.

• Organic Maps released its September 2026 update with route optimisation, improved alternative routes, individual track hiding, and intermittent water area rendering.

Did you know that …

• … the Earth is getting rounder?

• … you can easily edit OSM public transport relations using OSM Relatify?

Other “geo” things

• Heise reported that the European Space Agency determined a position using Galileo’s future Signal Authentication Service for the first time under real-world conditions. The technology is intended to make various types of GNSS spoofing attacks detectable.

• The Nigeria Postal Service has launched its National Digital Alphanumeric Postcode, a precise, GIS-located address system for every building in Nigeria. To mark the launch, OpenCage shared several geo-trivia facts about Nigeria.

• Sentient Media has published an interactive map of Iowa’s concentrated animal feeding operations that shows nearly 11,000 facilities, 126.4 million animals, estimated manure volumes, and violations since 2003. It uses data from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources alongside Sentient Media’s own estimates; the data and code are available on GitHub.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇨🇭	Bern	SBB Headquarter	Open Transport Community Conference 2026	2026-10-06 - 2026-10-09
🇬🇭		Ghana	Everywhere She Maps workshop 2026	2026-10-07 - 2026-10-08
🇹🇭	กรุงเทพมหานคร	Brighton College Bangkok Mapathon	Missing Maps Mapathon (Beginner) - Bangkok, Thailand	2026-10-08
🇹🇭	กรุงเทพมหานคร	Chulalongkorn University	Fund Geo Class Mapathon, Survey Engineering Chula	2026-10-08
🇧🇪	Bruxelles - Brussel	Galerie Bortier	Brussels meetup - byebye Thierry & Joost	2026-10-08
🇩🇪	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-10-08
🇩🇪	Berlin	Grosse Hamburger Strasse 37, 10115 Berlin	220. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-10-09
🇨🇭	Bern	Restaurant Kairo	OSM-Znacht in Bern	2026-10-09
🇮🇹	Catania	Biblioteche Riunite Civica e A. Ursino Recupero	Modifichiamo Wiki e OSM insieme! - Catania	2026-10-10
🇹🇭	กรุงเทพมหานคร	Public House Hotel Bangkok	OSM Thailand Community & HOT Meet-up	2026-10-10
🇫🇷	Angers	École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers	OpenStreetMap, des cartes à la carte !	2026-10-10
🇭🇺	Salgótarján	Salgótarján - völgyváros gyár	Salgótarján Mapping Party 2026-10-11	2026-10-11
🇩🇰	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-10-11
🇫🇷	Angers	École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers	OpenStreetMap, des cartes à la carte !	2026-10-11
🇧🇪		Espace Public Numérique (EPN) de Neufchâteau	OpenStreetMap	2026-10-12
			Panoramax Nederland - Online Community Meeting #1	2026-10-12
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-10-12
🇳🇱	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	2026 Autumn Maptime	2026-10-12
🇩🇪	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-10-13
🇩🇪	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-10-13
🇩🇪		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-10-13
🇬🇧		Canolfan Cefnfaes	🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 North Wales Mapathon Gogledd Cymru 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿	2026-10-14
🇪🇸	Barcelona	Barcelona	Assemblea d’OpenStreetMap Català	2026-10-14
🇧🇪	Bruxelles - Brussel	Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port 86C - 1000 Brussels	FOSS4G Belgium	2026-10-15
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2026-10-16
🇩🇪	Potsdam	11-line	Potsdamer Mappertreffen	2026-10-16
🇦🇷	Pergamino	Hub de Innovación	Encuentro OSM Argentina 2026	2026-10-17
🇫🇷	Metz	Espace Arob@se - Metz	Atelier OpenStreetMap Metz	2026-10-17
🇮🇳	Noida	Noida	OSM Delhi NCR Mapping Party No.33 (Noida)	2026-10-18
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-10-20
🇫🇷	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-10-20
🇩🇪	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-10-20
🇩🇪	Bonn	Dotty’s	205. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-10-20
🇬🇧	City of Edinburgh	Guildford Arms	Edinburgh Social	2026-10-20 - 2026-10-26
🇩🇪		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-10-20
			Formazione Wikimedia Italia - OpenStreetMap: modifica tramite sito e tramite app	2026-10-21
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Schwarzer Kater	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-10-21
			OSM US Mappy Hour: Mapping Accessible Trails	2026-10-21
🇩🇪	Berlin	Online	EarthPV: Mapping Photovoltaics	2026-10-22
🇩🇪	Berlin	Wikimedia e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24,10963 Berlin	OSM Hackweekend Berlin-Brandenburg 10/2026	2026-10-24 - 2026-10-25
🇸🇪	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-10-25
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-10-26
			Formazione Wikimedia Italia - OpenStreetMap: tasking manager	2026-10-26
🇩🇪	Heidelberg	DEZERNAT#16	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-10-26
🇩🇪	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-10-26

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Rob Yoegel, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

All the buildings in Epworth are mapped and addressed. There are still farms within the bounds of Epworth that can use some attention.

It seems that in fact mkgmap still requires boundary files, even though they are no longer available on the mkgmap website. After puzzling over the problem of the Caspian Sea not rendering correctly for a while I broke down and consulted Copilot, which informed me that they are still needed and to look for them on Thorsten Kukuk’s website. I downloaded sea.zip and bounds.zip, and added the following switches to the mkgmap scripts:

–precomp-sea=sea.zip –bounds=bounds.zip –generate-sea

That seems to have solved the problem.

I have written batch files for the Windows CLI to generate IMG files for Russia and the five Central Asian countries to make updating easier. Other tweaks include setting the maximum nodes per tile in splitter at

–max-nodes=600000

which avoids overloading the Garmin nuvi processor. Maps load faster and navigation no longer involves waiting a long time for the processor to calculate a route.

In the coming days when I have finished debugging and troubleshooting the batch files I will refresh the copies on Github.

1: map marinas ☐

2: finish splitting terraced houses ☐

3: finish mobile home park ☐

☐ not done

✗ done

I am wanting to buy a good handheld GPS that will provide more accurate GPS tracks than my phone. When I look at GPS tracks people have left on trails for example there will be 3-4 completely offset tracks where the trail is totally obscured by canopy so it’s impossible to plot an accurate trail.

I really prefer good open source technology without licensing and all that junk but it seems like GPS inherently requires subscription if you’re looking for accuracy. :’(

So I’m looking into Garmin’s GPSMAPS as a considerable improvement over my phones GPS accuracy. It would also be super interesting to do mapping by hand but I don’t know anything about that!

Also in the future I may be using LIDAR mounted on a drone to get high resolution scans to upload to OSM but I have done no research yet to learn how to. My LIDAR plan is to scan and more accurately map shore lines of lakes and ponds and rivers. We’ll see if that actually happens, yea right right?

OH! And I think it would be helpful to provide up to date street level imagery, I wonder if OSM or one of their partners loan something like that.. Again, yea right.

Algeria Name Language Loophole

Loophole! Because it eats constructive time and efforts.

I know Arabic, English and French. I don’t know Berber. So for sure I will have some bias.

Background

Pushing separation ideas on multiple dimensions, now resurfaces as political, religion, linguistic and many other ideologies skirmishes.

Initially, it was only edit-revert loops between Algerian mappers. Now, it noticeable for see some from outside. It is a free community project anyway.

There were multiple discussions over more than a decade: Help community topics

Studies language in Algeria shifted:

• Pure French.
• Bi-language French+Arabic.
• Arabic+French+English, with French university for science and engineering.
• Arabic+Tamazight(Limited in some regions)+French+English, with French university for science and engineering.
• Arabic+Tamazight(Limited in some regions)+(French+English on equal foot). University still French for science and engineering with couple new branches shifted to English.

Hmm hard moves between generations.

Last Discussion and Results

Last one was a Vote on a Proposal by DWG: [Voting] Official tagging consensus for the name tag in Algeria

Proposal documented here: Naming convention

Personal Point of View

When I joined, most of name are in French. Rest all empty. As long we get more contributors, DWG will deal with a new generation. One pushed for Arabic, a decade ago. Another pushed for Tamazight, these couple years. Expecting English to come next :D.

Well for the agreed proposal:

1. OK for Administrative divisions: composite name.

2. NO for streets and places: composite name.

   Too crowded for villages and town centers POI. Street names are very long. I actually want to shorten them by removing: type prefix (شارع، نهج،..), title prefix (الشهيد، المجاهد، ..), call name (المدعو ..، بن ..،). Using more language just killing it. Specially, for apps using basic view.

3. OK for places and businesses: street info rules.

Monitor

Some took decision, and started mass changing name to composite. That when I saw point 2 is bad idea on my town where many street are just 1-3 small blocks and small villages with a title cover it all :D. Breaking point 3, as they started changing schools and some industrial areas.

I reverted some before knowing that there was a vote and agreed decision.

Next to look for

• How is affect address resolving and reverse coding? We need minimum functioning data: French and Arabic that people in business use.
• Are we ready for Phonetic fill up? So All other nation fill up in their language.

I would not open new discussion until with see it through and it effect on functional side.

It seems mkgmap was updated and no longer uses sea-latest.zip or bounds-latest.zip. I had to tweak the splitter and mkgmap scripts to deal with that, and decided to create a separate script for each country in Central Asia. I am still puzzling over how to make the Caspian Sea render properly without using those zip files.

The style sheets for Central Asian countries can be found on Github at https://github.com/allanmustard/mkgmap, file tstan.zip.

Here is what I have now for splitter and mkgmap scripts:

***> In the splitter script, change the file name ending in .pbf to the file name you draw data from.

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Kazakhstan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12340001 Kazakhstan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Kazakhstan” –family-id=1234 –family-name=Kazakhstan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Kazakhstan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Kyrgyzstan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12350001 Kyrgyzstan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Kyrgyzstan” –family-id=1235 –family-name=Kyrgyzstan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Kyrgyzstan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Tajikistan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12360001 Tajikistan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Tajikistan” –family-id=1236 –family-name=Tajikistan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Tajikistan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Turkmenistan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12370001 Turkmenistan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Turkmenistan” –family-id=1237 –family-name=Turkmenistan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Turkmenistan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Uzbekistan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12380001 Uzbekistan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Uzbekistan” –family-id=1238 –family-name=Uzbekistan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Uzbekistan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

N.B. The -Xmx parameter sets the maximum amount of memory the routine may use. The higher this number, the faster the program runs, but the number may not exceed available RAM on the computer. For example, if your computer has 32Gb of RAM, setting -Xmx16384m (about half of total RAM) is appropriate. If your computer has only 16Gb of RAM, use a smaller number, perhaps Xmx8192m.

I also learned the hard way mkgmap .img files will not work in Garmin Drive GPS units. The Garmin Drive GPS navigators require the NTU (new technology unicode) format and refuse to read mkgmap-generated .img files, which seem to be only in the original NT format. It was good news for my daughter, however, who gratefully accepted the Garmin Drive GPS I had bought before discovering it doesn’t like .img files produced by mkgmap.

Heute habe ich einen neuen Point of Interest in der Uhlandstraße 20-25 in Berlin-Charlottenburg (10623) eingetragen. Im Gebäude befinden sich mehrere Büros, und eines davon fehlte bisher auf der Karte.

Was ich hinzugefügt habe

• Name: WirSchreiben
• Tag: office=company
• Adresse: Uhlandstraße 20-25, 10623 Berlin
• Öffnungszeiten: Mo-So 09:00-18:00
• Website und Telefonnummer

WirSchreiben ist eine Agentur für akademische Unterstützung, die unter anderem Lektorat und Korrektorat für Kundinnen und Kunden in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz anbietet.

Hinweise

Adresse und Öffnungszeiten stammen von der offiziellen Website des Unternehmens. Wer vor Ort Ortskenntnis hat und Fehler bei Lage oder Angaben bemerkt, kann sich gerne melden.

Nach langen Jahren der Abwesenheit bin ich wieder als aktiver Unterstützer bei OSM eingestiegen.

Neben der Bearbeitung über den iD-Browser nutze ich jetzt für unterwegs die App “StreetComplete” aus dem F-Droid-Store.

Ich hoffe noch viele weitere Änderungen zur besseren Qualität der OSM-Karte beitragen zu können.

Liebe Grüße

jaltux

On 13 and 14 March 2026, in celebration of Women’s Month and International Women’s Day, I had the honour of leading the “Map Your Campus” Mapillary Campaign at Far Western University (FWU) in Mahendranagar, Kanchanpur, on behalf of WOM-AsiaNavigators (Women in Open Mapping), where I serve as Nepal Lead. I led the campaign with Er. Niruta Neupane and it was the first initiative of its kind in Nepal’s Far Western region.

Why Far Western Nepal

Sudurpashchim Province is one of Nepal’s most remote and data-sparse regions, and its streets, pathways, institutions and community landmarks are still poorly documented in open map data. Our aim was to start closing this gap by capturing ground-level imagery and contributing it to open platforms.

What We Did

• Day 1: Training and orientation. Introduction to Mapillary and its contribution workflow, app installation and phone setup, division into field teams, route assignment and the first field session.
• Day 2: Field mapping and consolidation. Extended coverage of streets, pathways and institutional areas, quality checks on the Mapillary platform, re-mapping of under-covered areas, a group debrief, and a closing ceremony with certificates and prizes for top contributors.

Challenges and Lessons

Limited internet during uploads, battery drain during capture, consistent image quality, and changing weather and light were the main challenges. They gave us useful lessons for planning future campaigns in remote, resource-constrained regions.

Reflection

Guiding participants as they walked, captured, uploaded and mapped their own roads, schools, health posts and cultural sites showed me how communities can take ownership of their visibility. With just a smartphone, anyone can contribute to the world’s open map, and mentorship is about sparking the confidence and pride to carry this work forward. I hope this campaign becomes a replicable model for campus-based street mapping across Nepal.

Location

Far Western University, Bhimdatta (Mahendranagar), Kanchanpur: approx. 28.917° N, 80.333° E (view on OSM)

Thank You

Sincere thanks to FWU YouthMappers, Rabindra Lekhak and team, Er. Niruta Neupane, all participating students and faculty.

The Far Western Region has been mapped. The journey continues.

I have successfully completed the Autumn Mapping Sprint 2025, a one-month remote mapping initiative organized by the Youth Innovation Lab (YI-Lab) under the RAIN (Resilience, Adaptation and Inclusion in Nepal) Programme, funded by UK International Development. The sprint ran from 5 November to 5 December 2025.

I was assigned to map two rural municipalities on my own:

• Yashodhara Rural Municipality (Kapilvastu District, Lumbini Province)
• Kaudena Rural Municipality (Sarlahi District, Madhesh Province)

About the Sprint

The sprint engaged skilled Advanced OSM mappers to improve geospatial data in 18 priority municipalities across Madhesh and Lumbini provinces. Mappers contributed to the mapping and validation of land use and land cover, buildings, roads, waterways and points of interest, following the standardized OSM guidelines for Nepal. Mapping was done using Esri World Imagery.

The objectives were to:

• Map essential features such as land use and land cover, buildings, roads and waterways
• Engage youth mappers and OpenStreetMap enthusiasts in remote mapping
• Enhance data accuracy, consistency and completeness in municipalities
• Strengthen open-source geospatial data for local resilience

My Contributions

Collectively, the sprint produced 160,870 map edits, 70,666 buildings, 727.04 km of land use and land cover, 245.53 km of waterways and 1,567.59 km of highways. This significantly improved open geospatial coverage in the targeted areas, supporting disaster preparedness, local governance and community resilience.

Location of Mapped Areas

Coordinates are approximate municipality centre points.

Обозначение обособленной велосипедной дорожки:

• highway=cycleway - основной тег линии, который указывает, что путь предназначен для движения на велосипедах.
• foot=no - явно запрещает движение пешеходов (если пешеходам запрещено находиться на этой дорожке). Если пешеходы разрешены, но дорожка разделена на зоны, используют foot=yes и segregated=yes/no.

Велосипедная дорожка + тротуар:

Комбинация тэгов для обозначения пешеходного тротуара, совмещённого с выделенной велосипедной дорожкой, которая конструктивно или визуально отделена от пешеходной зоны:

• highway=footway- обозначает, что данный объект является обустроенной дорожкой, предназначенной в первую очередь для пешеходов.
• footway=sidewalk - уточняет тип пешеходной дорожки. Этот тег указывает, что дорожка является тротуаром, то есть идет параллельно автомобильной дороге (обычно повторяя её геометрию).
• bicycle=designated - указывает на официальный юридический статус для велосипедистов. Это значит, что дорожка специально выделена/предназначена для движения на велосипеде (например, установлен соответствующий знак или нанесена разметка), а не просто «разрешена для транзита».
• segregated=yes - означает, что потоки пешеходов и велосипедистов разделены. Это может быть реализовано с помощью сплошной конструктивной разделительной полосы, разметки на асфальте или использования разных типов покрытия (например, плитка для пешеходов и асфальт для велосипедов).