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Wednesday, 15. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

Etiquetas de f4 map

F4 es uno de los pocos visores de OpenStreetMap que ha estado en servicio ofreciendo renderizado en 3D por muchos años. Han habido otros servicios, pero cuando se muestra F4 cualquier persona se descresta. He empezado a mapear en 3D, y muchas de las grandes contribuciones, principalmente en Denver, en este ámbito han sido de chachafish. Lo quise contactar para obtener algunos tipos de un experto

F4 es uno de los pocos visores de OpenStreetMap que ha estado en servicio ofreciendo renderizado en 3D por muchos años. Han habido otros servicios, pero cuando se muestra F4 cualquier persona se descresta. He empezado a mapear en 3D, y muchas de las grandes contribuciones, principalmente en Denver, en este ámbito han sido de chachafish. Lo quise contactar para obtener algunos tipos de un experto, pero dejó de mapear desde 2020 (en plena pandemia :( ), entonces me tocó buscar otras opciones.

En el wiki, en communities, hay información dispersa, pero no muestra todas las posibilidades que tiene esta herramienta. Entonces, decidí indagar en la misma página de F4 map, y encontré 2 páginas muy interesantes: render y changelog. En ellas se describe en cierto desorden todo lo que puede hacer esta herramienta.

Entonces, decidí darle un orden, extraer las etiquetas que usa y ahí tener una mejor idea de cómo debo hacer 3D mapping. Fue ahí cuando recordé Taginfo, y decidí listar este visor en este directorio, por lo que creé una entrada: https://github.com/angoca/f4demo-in-taginfo/blob/main/taginfo.json.

Además de lo anterior, es necesario manejar los colores para que se visualice más cercano a la realidad. Para eso se puede usar esta guía de nombres de colores.

Esperemos que esto sea de ayuda para que más personas se aventuren en el mapeo 3D, sobretodo teniendo un poquito más de documentación.

Yo comencé con un pequeño ejercicio en el norte de Bogotá, y estoy muy contento con el resultado del Centro Comercial Plaza Norte:


Does OSM need any more fonts?

For years, an issue with Kurdish language, Arabic script, and OpenStreetMap tiles has been on my radar. In 2023 I got OSM to update Noto fonts on the tile server, but Google has moved their latest changes to individual repos.

I’m continuing to workshop a PR for that.. but in the meantime, I thought to check if OSM needs more of the language-specific Noto fonts. Back in spring 2019 I did

For years, an issue with Kurdish language, Arabic script, and OpenStreetMap tiles has been on my radar. In 2023 I got OSM to update Noto fonts on the tile server, but Google has moved their latest changes to individual repos.

I’m continuing to workshop a PR for that.. but in the meantime, I thought to check if OSM needs more of the language-specific Noto fonts. Back in spring 2019 I did a mini survey of where Unicode blocks were used around the OSM world.

Today I added Python scripts to check Planet PBF files (specifically name and alt_name tags on nodes) and find usage across Unicode blocks.

There are names with Latin alphabet and frequently associated characters (superscripts and subscripts, dingbats, diacritics, IPA, half-width, old italic, runic, spacing modifiers, punctuation, emoticons/emoji, and symbols from math, music, currency, and maps).

  • Africa has: TIFINAGH, ARABIC (supplements and presentation forms), CYRILLIC, ETHIOPIC, NKO, HEBREW, CJK, HANGUL, and GREEK.

  • Asia has: CYRILLIC, GREEK, HEBREW, ARABIC, SYRIAC, COPTIC, ETHIOPIC, BALINESE, JAVANESE, CJK + YI + BOPOMOFO + KANGXI, HANGUL, MONGOLIAN, TIBETAN, THAI, MYANMAR, LAO, KHMER, ARMENIAN, GEORGIAN, THAANA, SINHALA, TAMIL, ORIYA, BENGALI, GURMUKHI, GUJARATI, DEVANAGARI, KANNADA, MALAYALAM, OL_CHIKI, and TELUGU.

For the Americas, OSM already includes fonts for Cherokee and Canadian Aboriginal Symbols.
Those two scripts and OGHAM, TAGBANWA, and BAMUM were misused in Asia. The instance of TAGALOG script was a little uncertain. I removed an Apple logo because it’s from the Private Use Area.

The current font download script is pretty good, and includes additional fonts (Adlam and Tai Viet) which aren’t actively used.

The one alphabet which I will recommend adding is Glagolitic. Stone letters have appeared in several locations around Baška, Croatia (street view , street view 2), but also get misused on tourist site binoculars (assumedly using Ⰹ to represent its shape) and I’d previously seen it in the Canary Islands.

I am considering setting up a script checking weekly edit downloads for common errors and suspicious Unicode blocks.


Matarangi Beach returns

so the beach town is seeing growth again, after the primary developers went bust in 2007/8. A large amount of blank land between the shops and the harbour has been cleared, and given asphalt roads, concrete footpaths, and brackish ponds for the mosquitoes to grow in! I hope the new holiday home owners like mosquitoes!

My GPS accuracy is not great and my note taking while walking is worse

so the beach town is seeing growth again, after the primary developers went bust in 2007/8. A large amount of blank land between the shops and the harbour has been cleared, and given asphalt roads, concrete footpaths, and brackish ponds for the mosquitoes to grow in! I hope the new holiday home owners like mosquitoes!

My GPS accuracy is not great and my note taking while walking is worse; but I’ve drawn some new ways on the new footpaths; and verified some of the existing paths from Kenwood Drive to Waimarie Ave are still approximately where my GPS says they are. Good fun.

Need to go back with a laptop next summer to add/tweak more. Hopefully LINZ has updated by then to provide even better coverage


The Journary of State of the Map Asia 2024

The State of the Map Asia 2024 conference wasn’t held in a main travelers’ hub like Thailand but rather chose a much, not that well-known country Bangladesh, and its previously unsettled political situation, which ended with the Prime Minster fleeing to India. Summarizing all these factors might discourage most people from visiting this country, ended up most of the attendees are domestic, and p

The State of the Map Asia 2024 conference wasn’t held in a main travelers’ hub like Thailand but rather chose a much, not that well-known country Bangladesh, and its previously unsettled political situation, which ended with the Prime Minster fleeing to India. Summarizing all these factors might discourage most people from visiting this country, ended up most of the attendees are domestic, and plus someone like me who is a foreigner is lucky enough to obtain a VISA to pay a visit.

Bangladesh is a young country, during the conference we saw many attendees were students, who might help those international aid projects to gather map data. We can see teachers bring their students to attend the conference. And there are also various student clubs, like all Youthmappers in Bangladesh, publishing their project results. One day we might see when the country is prosperous, and students grown up, there is a chance that they will map shops and buildings in the city where they live.

I want to write something about the general participant situation here in the Asia Pacific area. In developed countries like Taiwan, there are individuals who launch interest groups to map specific map features or netizens with enough motive to contribute to OpenStreetMap project. There are other countries that rely on aid projects to map local map data, and sometimes there are sone who will map modern map features. I have heard a talk about solar pannels in Dahka.

The State of the Map Asia splits its session into quite strange 10-minute parts. I accidentally submitted two talks, and did not get rejected. I had to give a talk on the first and second day, one I introduced the community in Taiwan, and the other day I introduced some interesting projects hosted by individual mappers.

I almost can’t fly into Dahka due to the immigration office having some questions about my visit. Finally, the host came to the airport to rescue me and took the connecting flight to Cox’s Bazar. Besides the conference, I had a walk every day on the beach, listening to the sound of the waves of the Indian Ocean. When I recalled the memory of my Bangladesh trip, there was a challenge to get a VISA on arrival. I take the chance to visit Bangladesh when attending a conference and add Bangladesh to the list of South Asia countries.


State of the Map Asia 2024 的奇幻旅程

這改 State of the Map Asia 2024 大會,毋是佇逐家愛去𨑨迌的旅遊勝地泰國舉行,顛倒是佇民風較祕思,國家較封閉的孟加拉舉行。而且佇落尾的時,確實有人簽證問題無法度入境到位會場。閣加添孟加拉政局無穩定,進前總理流亡,共頭前講的原因加加起來,予世界各國的人無想欲來。這个大會會當講是孟加拉人為主,極加加添我這款會當入境的外國人。

孟加拉是少年人的國家,一般看著的參與者是學生,幫贊國際援助計畫累積基礎的地理圖資。閣有參與的老師𤆬學生,有各種的社團,比喻講孟加拉各大學的 YouthMappers 組織攏有參與,發表𪜶參與的計畫。應該是有一工社會發達,一陣學生較有歲,相信下開始畫四箍圍的店頭佮都市的建築。

閣來講起亞太的開放地圖的參與情形,除了社會經濟狀況允準以外,會當有個人發起的興趣小組佮有貢獻動機的網路鄉民以外,足濟是用援助計畫的資源來進

這改 State of the Map Asia 2024 大會,毋是佇逐家愛去𨑨迌的旅遊勝地泰國舉行,顛倒是佇民風較祕思,國家較封閉的孟加拉舉行。而且佇落尾的時,確實有人簽證問題無法度入境到位會場。閣加添孟加拉政局無穩定,進前總理流亡,共頭前講的原因加加起來,予世界各國的人無想欲來。這个大會會當講是孟加拉人為主,極加加添我這款會當入境的外國人。

孟加拉是少年人的國家,一般看著的參與者是學生,幫贊國際援助計畫累積基礎的地理圖資。閣有參與的老師𤆬學生,有各種的社團,比喻講孟加拉各大學的 YouthMappers 組織攏有參與,發表𪜶參與的計畫。應該是有一工社會發達,一陣學生較有歲,相信下開始畫四箍圍的店頭佮都市的建築。

閣來講起亞太的開放地圖的參與情形,除了社會經濟狀況允準以外,會當有個人發起的興趣小組佮有貢獻動機的網路鄉民以外,足濟是用援助計畫的資源來進行基礎圖資的繪製,順紲執行較現代的議題,親像講綠能相關的,比喻講達卡的日頭能枋的分佈。

演講的部份,𪜶用較奇妙的十分鐘為一个單位進行,家己無細膩投兩份演講,著勉強共平常時紹介 OpenStreetMap 的簡報拆做兩份,第一工紹介台灣的社群,進行的計畫佮未來展望,第二天就是講個別台灣社群成員的計畫。

當時欲入境孟加拉拄著挑戰,予移民官擋咧留話,愛主辦單位出面解釋,才予入境。落尾到位 Cox’s Bazar,除了佇會場發表,嘛聽捌人的經驗,體驗孟加拉旅遊勝地,會當講是孟加拉的墾丁𨑨迌踅踅。我逐家會當到海沙埔散步,體驗印度洋的海風佮海波浪。這馬回想一逝旅行,對孟加拉落地簽申請的難題,趁大會佇孟加拉舉辦的機會來到孟加拉,解鎖一个南亞國家的成就。


State of the Map Asia 2024 的奇幻旅程

這次 State of the Map Asia 2024 並非在旅遊聖地泰國舉行,而是比較封閉的孟加拉,光是簽證就很容易搞死人。而在最後關頭,的確是有很多人就無法到場,簽證沒過無法入境。再加上前陣子孟加拉政局動盪,總理流亡,綜合以上種種因素,導致各國的人不大前往參與。孟加拉人為大宗的大會,再加上能有辦法進來的外國人

在會場觀察參者的人好有活力,很多援助計畫在協助積累當地基礎的地理圖資。另外參與的人口年輕,像是老師帶著學生參與,各種年輕團體組團,例如孟加拉各大學的 YouthMapper 組織都有參與,發表相關的計畫。當社會漸漸發達,大家年紀變年長,相信應該會有人轉為畫生活活動範圍的商家與都市地帶的建築。

而回到亞太這邊的開放街圖參與狀況,除了社會經濟情況允許而能以自發的興趣小組與有貢獻動機的網路鄉民之外,很多是用援助計畫的資源從事基礎圖資的繪製,順便去

這次 State of the Map Asia 2024 並非在旅遊聖地泰國舉行,而是比較封閉的孟加拉,光是簽證就很容易搞死人。而在最後關頭,的確是有很多人就無法到場,簽證沒過無法入境。再加上前陣子孟加拉政局動盪,總理流亡,綜合以上種種因素,導致各國的人不大前往參與。孟加拉人為大宗的大會,再加上能有辦法進來的外國人

在會場觀察參者的人好有活力,很多援助計畫在協助積累當地基礎的地理圖資。另外參與的人口年輕,像是老師帶著學生參與,各種年輕團體組團,例如孟加拉各大學的 YouthMapper 組織都有參與,發表相關的計畫。當社會漸漸發達,大家年紀變年長,相信應該會有人轉為畫生活活動範圍的商家與都市地帶的建築。

而回到亞太這邊的開放街圖參與狀況,除了社會經濟情況允許而能以自發的興趣小組與有貢獻動機的網路鄉民之外,很多是用援助計畫的資源從事基礎圖資的繪製,順便去進行比較是近代的議題,像是跟綠能相關的,如達卡的太陽能板分佈的繪製

演講部分,他們用蠻奇特的十分鐘時間為單位進行,而自己不小心投了兩份演講,就硬著頭皮講了兩場,基本上是自己25+5演講拆一半的內容,各自在兩場演講。第一天談台灣社群,進行的計畫與未來展望,而第二天談個別的社群成員常在進行的計畫。

儘管移民官還有機場設施不是那麼友善,但我順利到達 Cox’s Bazar,除了在會場發表還有聽別人的經驗分享之外,也趁機到這個孟加拉的渡假聖地遊覽,每天到沙灘走走,體驗印度洋的浪與風。回想這一切,孟加拉簽證難申請,趁這次大會在孟加拉,解鎖到這一南亞國家遊歷的成就。

Tuesday, 14. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

Revolutionizing Field Mapping (with FMTM): Part 4

See pt1 of this series here.

See pt2 of this series here.

See pt3 of this series here.

How Does This Relate To OSM Again?

If you have been following the articles listed above, you will know the Field Mapping Tasking Manager (FMTM) is a tool developed by HOTOSM to improve the quality of field verified data associated with geometries.

In the OSM world, this means a

See pt1 of this series here.

See pt2 of this series here.

See pt3 of this series here.

How Does This Relate To OSM Again?

If you have been following the articles listed above, you will know the Field Mapping Tasking Manager (FMTM) is a tool developed by HOTOSM to improve the quality of field verified data associated with geometries.

In the OSM world, this means adding and improving tags for OSM geometries.

A key element of this work flow is conflation of newly collected data with existing data in OSM. Some preliminary work was done on this, but for now the team decided to pivot and focus entirely on improving the usability of FMTM from the perspective of mappers.

The conflation work will be continued further down the line.

Currently, Rob Savoye is also continuing some work in parallel for conflation of roads in the USA, with OSMUS’s osm-merge project.

The roadmap for FMTM can be found here.

Easier Field Mapping

Since release 2024.5.0, we have be focusing on what we have dubbed the ‘Mapper Frontend’.

Our primary goals:

  • Mapping should be as intuitive as possible for users, requiring minimal training or existing knowledge (with prompts).

  • The application should be fast and responsive, tailored to field mapping needs.

  • Data should load real-time, significantly improving the collaborative team experience. Joe wants to know where Jim is mapping currently, to avoid overlap.

  • A secondary goal is the potential to package it up in a mobile app wrapper, allowing for easy distribution via mobile app stores.

Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4

Mapped Buildings Should Turn Green

  • This was one of our first feature requests, and most important from the mapper perspective.
  • When a feature is mapped, it should turn green on the map to indicate that it’s done!
  • We have implemented this feature in the new mapper app, with further improvements to real-time sync of mapping status coming in the next release too.

green-buildings

Future Work

So, Sam, when can we use FMTM on iOS devices I hear you cry!

This is long overdue, and an essential feature to increase the reach of FMTM.

Over the next two / three months we are working on this as part of a larger push to integrate ODK Web Forms into FMTM.

Once complete, the requirement to install and switch to the ODK Collect app for survey data collection will no longer be present.

Instead, we will have a full field mapping solution built into a single streamlined web application!

Follow progress here, where this is part of the requirement for an ongoing mapping project of informal settlements in Brazil 🎉

Ongoing Campaigns

A project mapping settlements in the Tokha municipality of Nepal is about to commence!

We have also recently had projects mapping informal settlements in Ghana and Tanzania.

See the FMTM timeline with some additional projects listed here.

timeline

A Question To Our Users

The name ‘Field Mapping Tasking Manager’ (FMTM) was created quickly, showing an obvious link to the Tasking Manager.

However, we realise it’s probably not the most catchy name, and often creates confusion with the FMTM acronym.

Two possible suggestions have been made for a name change:

  • Field-TM (consistent with other tools, e.g. Drone-TM, references TM).
  • FieldTasker (describes the tool better, but does not reference TM).

Please comment with name suggestions, feedback, or other ideas!

Future Posts

I plan to make future posts about developments, technical deep dives, and usage of FMTM’s features.

If you liked this article and want to support the development of FMTM, please read the contributing guide here.

Show some love by adding a ⭐ to the FMTM Git Repo.

See you next time!


Bagged Geirth Mawr today

Had to move the summit as it was in a random place. It’s really cool up there.

Had to move the summit as it was in a random place. It’s really cool up there.


OSM

Youth Mappers University of Nairobi chapter

Youth Mappers University of Nairobi chapter

Monday, 13. January 2025

ШТОСМ

Сумерки OpenStreetMap

В середине ноября на глагне добавили ночной режим. Когда браузер считает, что на улице темно, он передаёт это сайту, а тот заменяет белую заливку на чёрную, и в целом пытается не выжечь глаза пользователю. Есть люди, которые живут с тёмной темой день и ночь (чтобы не слишком освещать свой подвал), и для них это изменение оказалось самым заметным за последние годы.

Любое движение на «л

В середине ноября на глагне добавили ночной режим. Когда браузер считает, что на улице темно, он передаёт это сайту, а тот заменяет белую заливку на чёрную, и в целом пытается не выжечь глаза пользователю. Есть люди, которые живут с тёмной темой день и ночь (чтобы не слишком освещать свой подвал), и для них это изменение оказалось самым заметным за последние годы.

Любое движение на «лице проекта», сайте openstreetmap.org, широко обсуждается: ведь каждая кнопка важна, наличие или отсутствие чего-либо описывает наше сообщество лучше, чем очередное интервью со Стивом Костом. Так и тёмная тема: в сентябре её просили, но получив желаемое, ищут способы откатить.

Затенённые тайлы — главная проблема. Именно на них жалуются в тикете github. На reddit делились способами их отключения. Недавно в настройки сайта, всё-таки, добавили отдельный переключатель. Действительно, это довольно странное решение — но разумный компромисс, если подходить к вопросу с точки зрения дизайна. Традиционный способ, инвертировать цвета и повернуть палитру на 180°, работает. Но он не идеален: цвета становятся темнее, чем нужно, и хочется что-то подправить.

Правильным было бы создать палитру с нуля. Каждый оттенок на карте — плод размышления картографа, цвета влияют и взаимодействуют с друг другом, важен контраст, яркость, различимость для слабовидящих. Простое инвертирование забивает на все эти нюансы, делая карту, которая практической цели достигает, но эстетически — будто AI-картинки, на которые невозможно смотреть, если есть какой-то художественный вкус. Поэтому организации отдельно работают над ночным оформлением, и именно это предлагали для стиля osm-carto. К сожалению, у нас нет столько добровольцев, чтобы вместо одного стиля поддерживать два.

Да и остальному интерфейсу глагне помогло бы более кропотливое перекрашивание для ночного режима. Как видно даже на заглавной картинке, яркие значки и кнопки остаются яркими, цвета необычных элементов интерфейса (например, границ пакетов правок) неприятно выделяются на приглушённом фоне. Но — это много работы, и это двойная работа для всех последующих изменений сайта. Поэтому ночные темы в интернете не так распространены. Но хорошо, что наш сайт начал хоть как-то заботиться о наших глазах.

История с ночной темой интересна тремя обстоятельствами, которые мы рассмотрим в трёх следующих разделах. Потому что в прошлом году произошло много чего, ускользнувшего из поля зрения штосма.

Мейнтейнеры

Сам пул-реквест для ночной темы состоит из всего одной строчки ( плюс ещё десяток для починки мелочей, типа кнопки закрытия панели). Он стал возможен благодаря пяти годам непрерывной работы Энди Аллана, переводившего оформление сайта на Bootstrap. Поэтому не пришлось думать над цветами и править компоненты — обо всём уже подумали сотни разработчиков фреймворка.

Написал и помёржил ночной режим новый мейнтейнер сайта, Антон Хорев из Петербурга. О нём мало чего известно вне OSM, но в проекте он делает немало. Прежде всего, он участник рабочей группы по данным с 2019 года, составляет компанию другому русскоязычному участнику, Владимиру «Mavl». В 2018 году он написал четыре восхитительно дотошные статьи про картирование заведений, но и остальные 19 заметок его дневника в OSM так же вдумчивы и полны практических наблюдений. Его смотрелкой заметок пользуются все, кому не безразличны незакрытые заметки в своём городе.

Антон начал валить пул-реквесты в код сайта с лета 2022 года, и до сих пор невероятно плодовит, создаёт их по десятку в неделю. Если заглянуть в историю, там много черновиков, незакрытых реквестов, споров — но Антону всё нипочём, он просто продолжает создавать новые. Тут поменять шрифт, там поправить отображение на телефонах, здесь оптимизировать код. Из 157 открытых сейчас реквестов больше половины — его. Только летом 2024 Энди сообразил, что пора вписать Антона в список мейнтейнеров.

Так что хотя кажется, что сайт OpenStreetMap не меняется годами, внутри происходит постоянное бурление, что-то меняется местами, что-то становится чище или удобнее. В октябре Энди транскрибировал свой рассказ с лондонской конференции про опыт работы над сайтом — из него можно многое узнать про проблемы переводов и безопасного вывода HTML.

Но ощущение, что ничего не происходит, не безосновательно. Как только кто-то (даже мейнтейнер) хочет поменять что-то по-крупному, как Том, бессменный вахтёр сайта с 2007 года, отказывается во всё это вникать и затягивает обсуждения до бесконечности. Ещё во времена maps.me я делал несколько пул-реквестов, но все по тем или иным причинам закрывали. Либо Том вручную переписывал код и коммитил сам — одна из порицаемых практик в открытых проектах. Я забил на сайт, ещё десятки людей ушли точно так же. Остались те, кто вместо качественного осовременивания сайта и ответа на множество вопросов вида «что сайт говорит о сообществе» вылизывают код и исправляют форматирование HTML. Если рефакторинг длится пять лет, а похвастаться нечем, — то зачем вообще?

Надстройки

Куда уходят разработчики? Вернёмся к ночной теме: до ноября сайт затемняли с помощью надстроек браузера. Пользовательские скрипты и расширения браузера, для которых не требуется санкции авторов сайтов, — отличный способ добавить что-то небольшое быстро, без длинных обсуждений, которые рискуют зайти в никуда. Например, участники народной карты Яндекса именно любительским расширением упрощали себе редактирование карты.

Для OSM скриптов немного, но все они подсвечивают недостатки самого сайта. Например, OpenSwitchMaps: добавляет кнопку со ссылками на другие карты, геопорталы, два десятка osm-инструментов и прочее, вплоть до запуска редакторов. Можно ли что-то из этого добавить официальным путём? Ну, редактор Rapid под кнопку «править» пытаются добавить с 2020 года, и как-то не очень. Как я вещал на SotM в Кении, философия OSM предполагает, что всю нужную функциональность воплощают в отдельных проектах, но при этом мейнтейнеры предпочитают не размещать на сайте ссылок ни на что постороннее.

Или помните редактор тегов, который встраивается в страницу объекта на osm.org? Элементарно воплощается в Rails Port и без хаков, потребовавшихся для расширения браузера. Но пройдёт ли такой редактор через забор мейнтейнеров? Опыт участия не даёт даже желания проверять. 119 пользователей в прошлом году, 18 тысяч правок, но только один человек, чьё мнение имеет силу.

Самое впечатляющее расширение последний год пишет Роман Деев. Его better-osm-org добавил пункт «Edit with Rapid» в меню правки, который меня озадачил, и я двадцать минут искал коммит в коде сайта. Он делает списки компактнее, рисует геометрию на странице пакета правок, показывает, какие теги изменились в истории, даже прокидывает лайки из OSMCha. Всё это в картинках описано в дневничке Романа. Сотни мелких улучшений: с этим расширением для картографов появился смысл заходить на глагне!

Можно ли эти мелочи было встраивать сразу в код сайта? Конечно — но пришлось бы не только договариваться (или два года делать пул-реквесты каждый день, чтобы втереться в доверие), но и изучить, для начала, архитектуру проекта на Ruby on Rails. 18 лет назад этот фреймворк был новым и модным, но сейчас разработчиков на нём ещё поискать. Поэтому люди предпочитают более распространённые JavaScript (на котором и пишут браузерные расширения) или Python.

Новое поколение

Альтернативная глагне ночной режим пока не поддерживает, и это единственная строчка в её публичном плане. Кнопка для редактирования в Rapid на ней уже есть.

Секунду, альтернативная? Если вы пропустили, Камиль Монич (тот самый NorthCrab) уже чуть больше года почти в одиночку переписывает весь бэкенд OpenStreetMap на Python. Да. Весь. 50 тысяч строк кода сейчас, демо-сайт откроет со дня на день.

Проект OpenStreetMap NextGen задуман заменить всю нынешнюю гору кода: Rails Port, CGIMap и разрозненные скрипты экспорта-импорта. Если выгорит, для участия в разработке не нужно будет знать минимум три древних языка: достаточно двух самых популярных на планете, Python с известными библиотеками FastAPI и SQLAlchemy, и JavaScript. Казалось бы, как этот банальный стек может сравниться с отточенным за 18 лет кодом, тем более с C++? Камиль парирует — большую часть времени код всё равно ждёт ответа PostgreSQL. И как заметил Пол Норман, Rails Port бы справился без C++, но запросы в Ruby заметно устарели, потому что на них забили в пользу CGIMap.

Год назад люди — да и я в их числе — были настроены скептично. У нас у всех есть отрицательный опыт, когда приходишь с горчщими глазами и пуленепробиваемой идеей сделать жизнь всех осмеров лучше, а тебя на подлёте сбивает кто-нибудь из «старичков». Начать что-то на стороне безопаснее, потому что никто не закроет пул-реквест. Как сказал Matija Nalis, для нас это сродни получению бесплатной коробки лотерейных билетов: да, шансы выиграть всё равно микроскопические, но коробка-то бесплатна, почему бы не попробовать? Обсуждение вообще получилось неожиданно оптимистичным: не считая пары «старичков», все поддерживают Камиля и ждут результата.

Спустя год и три месяца после анонса, скорость разработки не снижается. Камиль каждый месяц хвастается новыми возможностями движка, которые напоминают то об API 0.7, то о расширении better-osm-org Романа. Roadmap несколько раз переписан, дата публикации демо-сервера откладывалась с прошлого февраля на май, затем позже и позже, и вот теперь как будто осталось доделать ночную тему — и всё. Ух, предвкушение!

Деньги

Первого января фонд NLNet внезапно объявил полсотни получателей грантов NGI Zero, среди них — OpenStreetMap-NG. Никто не знает, на какие деньги Камиль жил весь прошлый год (пожертвования он распределял между остальными разработчиками), но теперь его точно ничто не остановит.

Это означает, что где-то через полгода-год в OSM-NG загрузят все 14 терабайт базы данных (большую часть которой засунут в единственную таблицу). И тогда мы узнаем, реальны ли все эти приросты скорости. Но учитывая запал Камиля, вполне вероятно, что в течение месяцев он всё оптимизирует, и мы встанем перед вопросом, менять ли Тома как главного вахтёра всея осма на Камиля. Зря ли Антон фигачил свои 700 пул-реквестов в Rails Port.

Как ни удивительно, у нас будет человек с мандатом на решение подобных дилемм. Но начать надо с того, что не только OSM-NG получил грант за последний месяц. Сам OSMF удостоился сначала 178 тысяч евро от Meta (2% от их ежегодного членства в Overture Maps), а на следующий день немецкий фонд Sovereign выделил нам вдвое больше, 384 тысячи евро на два года. Так что стоны отдельных участников в мастодоне «зачем давать деньги на тупиковый OSM-NG, когда у нас тут OSM недофинансирован» немного необоснованы.

Разумеется, ни на какие неожиданные радости эти деньги не пойдут. Всё как обычно: конференции и инфраструктура. Необычно то, что второй пункт раскрыли чуть подробнее: «обновление кода по современным стандартам, привлечение разработчиков документацией и тестами, исследования на темы типа вандализма и новых способов работы с данными». И это 1) обнадёживает, хотя и не слишком, вспоминая исследования про модель данных, 2) чудовищно запоздало, 3) один в один цели проекта OSM-NG.

Что в Совете поняли правильно, — сами по себе дела не делаются и нужен человек на зарплате, который будет помогать и направлять разработку. Поэтому на прошлой неделе фонд OSM опубликовал вакансию, первую с 2021 года. До 21 января мы ищем координатора разработки сайта OSM и сопутствующих проектов. Нужен кто-то с опытом управления проектами, кто, в идеале, работал с добровольными участниками, открытым кодом, а то и с сообществом OSM. В идеале. Может, вы знаете кого-нибудь подходящего. Увлекательные задачи и вызовы предоставим.

***

Потянув за ниточку не слишком заметного нововведения на osm.org, мы вытянули историю, которая показывает 2024 год в OpenStreetMap с интересной позиции: оказалось, это был год, когда недовольство руководством центрального сайта OSM вылилось в несколько независимых инициатив по его улучшению в обход обычных пул-реквестов. Надстройка Романа и сайт Камиля не только ломают представление об osm.org как о чём-то неудобном из глубин веков, но и подначивают задуматься: а не будь вахтёры так строги, могли бы мы радоваться новым удобствам сайта и API каждый месяц все эти годы? Стоит ли стабильность сбитых несменяемыми «дедами» разработчиков-осмеров?

Кажется, в этом году мы узнаем, сколько мы потеряли, и какое у сайта OSM будущее по мнению участников и Совета.

Sunday, 12. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

Mapeo de interiores en LatAm

El mapeo de interiores no es muy popular ya que requiere conocimientos de la distribución de los espacios dentro de un edificio. Normalmente esto se hace por medio de un plano, que puede ser el de evacuación. Aunque aquí empieza el problema de permisos de uso de datos para mapear en OpenStreetMap.

En Colombia estamos comenzando esta labor, pero quise listar lo que se ha hecho en Latam, y

El mapeo de interiores no es muy popular ya que requiere conocimientos de la distribución de los espacios dentro de un edificio. Normalmente esto se hace por medio de un plano, que puede ser el de evacuación. Aunque aquí empieza el problema de permisos de uso de datos para mapear en OpenStreetMap.

En Colombia estamos comenzando esta labor, pero quise listar lo que se ha hecho en Latam, y reconocer a los mapeadores:


weeklyOSM

weeklyOSM 755

02/01/2025-08/01/2025 CubeTrek web app for managing and visualising GPS tracks in 3D [1] | © Cube Trek | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors Mapping Requests for comments have been made on these proposals : catenary_mast:*=* to add further specifications on catenary masts, a vertical support structure used in railway electrification systems to hold up the…

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02/01/2025-08/01/2025

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CubeTrek web app for managing and visualising GPS tracks in 3D [1] | © Cube Trek | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

  • Requests for comments have been made on these proposals :
    • catenary_mast:*=* to add further specifications on catenary masts, a vertical support structure used in railway electrification systems to hold up the overhead wires (also known as catenary wires) that supply electric power to trains.
    • pratictioners=* to tag the number and field of professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, or therapists, available at facilities like clinics, legal offices, or wellness centres, aiming to enhance the mapping of professional services.
    • epigraph=* to tag inscriptions or dedications on features such as monuments, buildings, or plaques, allowing for the documentation of text content and cultural significance.
    • sensory:* to tag features providing sensory accessibility, such as tactile paving or audible signals, aimed at improving map usability for people with sensory disabilities.

Community

  • Ciarán Staunton has analysed the current progress of the Ireland OSM community’s #osmIRL_buildings mapping project using the ohsome Dashboard.
  • A post on the OpenStreetMap Community forum discussed efforts to improve mapping in Thailand by reducing the risks of armchair mapping.
  • David Schneider has used OSM points of interest data to identify ’18-hour neighbourhoods’, lively places near rail services that attract foot traffic from around 6 am to midnight.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

  • The OpenStreetMap Foundation is seeking applicants for the role of Core Software Development Facilitator, funded by the Sovereign Tech Fund for two years. The facilitator will coordinate the development of OSM’s core software stack, including communication with the community, maintaining a lightweight roadmap, supporting developers, and overseeing the budget. Applications, including CVs and cover letters, are open until Tuesday 21 January and the position is 100% remote.

Events

  • The FOSSGIS conference team is pleased to announce that registration for FOSSGIS 2025 is now open. Volunteers are needed to help with session management and video recording, since the recordings and livestreams depend on someone operating the camera.
  • Christian Quest revealed that Panoramax will have a booth at FOSDEM 2025 in Brussels, Belgium, taking place on 1 and 2 February, located on the second floor of the K2 building (K2-A-4). There will also be a presentation about Panoramax, a full FLOSS alternative for ground-level imagery sharing, on Saturday at 11:50 CET in room AW1.120. Attendees can expect some goodies at the booth.
  • Geomob Berlin will take place at 18:00 CET on Wednesday 12 February. Volunteer speakers are currently needed.
  • At the 38th Chaos Communication Congress held in Hamburg, the German OpenStreetMap community hosted an assembly within the ‘Bits and Bäume’ area. The team conducted workshops on iD and JOSM editors, facilitated OSM meetups, and held an ‘ask-us-anything’ session on data usage. Using FOSSGIS e.V.’s large-format printer, they created 54 custom A1 maps for participants. Additionally, stickers were distributed, and EUR 453 in donations was collected for OpenStreetMap-related activities.

OSM research

  • Piero Campalani, Massimiliano Pittore, and Kathrin Renner have assessed the quality of the OpenStreetMap roads data in Burundi at a national level, with a view to its fitness-for-use for disaster risk mitigation purposes, which were adopted in the context of a recent multi-hazards risk assessment and mapping exercise on behalf of the International Organisation for Migration.

Humanitarian OSM

  • Contributors can support the OSM France project for Mayotte response via the tasking manager to support the response and recovery efforts in the Island after the passage of cyclone Chido. Only intermediate and advanced OSM users can contribute in this project. The HOT Open Mapping Hub ESA is inviting contributors to map for nearby Mozambique, where mappers of all levels of experience can contribute.

Maps

  • Andrea Abuín has updated the Map of Mithraea using OpenStreetMap and Leaflet.
  • Andy Townsend tooted that he has made another map style to explore OSMF’s experimental on-the-fly-updated vector tiles. He said he created this because he wasn’t a fan of the demo map style previously used.

OSM in action

  • Data Guy has analysed OpenStreetMap road network data in various global cities to find the most ‘complex’. They examined road network graphs from 79 of the world’s largest cities, assessing factors such as the number of nodes, the number of edges, graph density, and average node degree.

Open Data

  • Mapscaping is offering a global elevation data download tool that allows users to easily access free elevation datasets. The tool supports datasets including SRTM, ALOS, and Copernicus DSM, providing resolutions from 30 m to 500 m. Users can select areas via a map interface and download data in GeoTIFF or ASCII Grid format, making it suitable for geospatial analysis or GIS projects.

Software

  • [1] CubeTrek is an open-source web app for managing and visualising GPS tracks in 3D, tailored for outdoor activities like hiking, skiing, and trail running. It offers features such as replay mode using Google Earth data, advanced statistics, calendar heatmaps, activity matching, and integration with Garmin Connect and Polar Flow. Tracks can be imported via GPX or FIT files, and the platform allows users to explore topography interactively.
  • Carlos Felipe Castillo has provided an overview of OSMnx, a Python package for downloading, analysing, and visualising geospatial data from OpenStreetMap (we reported earlier). The article demonstrated its capabilities, such as generating street networks, visualising edge centrality, calculating routes with travel times, and extracting features like buildings and rail networks.
  • running-routes.com is a new website that helps generate interesting running routes tailored to your location and target distance while prioritising privacy. It downloads OpenStreetMap data locally, processes it into a graph, and uses a genetic algorithm to create routes with minimal backtracking. All computations occur on your device, ensuring your location and data remain private, with no third-party APIs or external services involved.
  • Mapscaping’s OpenStreetMap Category Viewer is an interactive tool for exploring and downloading OSM data. Users can select specific categories, for example amenities, highways, or natural features, and fetch data for a defined area.
  • The WhoDidIt tool has been brought back online after being taken offline due to problems with its database. Following troubleshooting and community engagement, the tool is back, allowing OpenStreetMap contributors to view and analyse recent changesets.
  • GeoDownloader is a pay-for-use service that simplifies downloading OpenStreetMap data through a user-friendly interface, enabling users to visually select areas, filter by tags or geometry types, and export data in GeoJSON, GeoPackage, or Shapefile format. Designed for small-scale projects, the tool avoids complex Overpass queries and costly external services, hosting indexed OSM data locally. The service is free for up to 100 features and offers a low-cost option for larger datasets, with plans to expand filtering and file format support.

Programming

  • overtureR is an R library to work with Overture Open Data. An alpha version is available on GitHub.
  • Minh Nguyễn shared new examples of topological queries using QLever, a tool enhancing spatial analysis on OpenStreetMap data. Demonstrations include retrieving all the street intersections in Chicago, calculating compactness of city boundaries in Oklahoma, and identifying the longest straight trunk road segments in California. These examples showcase QLever’s scalability, allowing analysis from urban areas to national scales, and its potential to complement Overpass API for unique queries.

Releases

  • Jochen Topf gave an update on taginfo, introducing new features such as displaying a tag’s status from the OSM wiki on key pages, highlighting inconsistencies, and a report for ‘discardable’ tags, such as those used by editors like iD and JOSM. Additional improvements include a CSV export option for tables, enhanced tools for wiki maintainers, and an interactive keyboard shortcut guide for experienced users.

Did you know that …

  • … that there are several browser add-ons that can enhance your OSM mapping experience?
  • … that Jason Davies, one of the contributors to the D3 graphics package, has created a webpage demonstrating several dozen map projections of the Earth with smooth transitions between each?
  • … that GPX traces uploaded to OpenStreetMap with their visibility set to private are not displayed in the Public GPS Traces layer, even if the permissions are later changed to public? Marcos Dione tooted that the current system only processes newly uploaded traces for display.
  • … that OSMyBiz is an OpenStreetMap-based platform that allows small businesses to manage and update their business information on the map? It makes it easy to edit OSM listings and provides tools to verify and promote local businesses.

OSM in the media

  • An article in Le Monde has spotlighted the role of open-source software and digital commons in modern technology, mentioning OpenStreetMap as an exemplary community-driven project. The piece emphasised the critical importance of resources such as OSM for public services and sovereignty initiatives, including France’s national geographic agency using OSM for digital twins of territories.

Other “geo” things

  • MundoGEO noted the publication of Proceedings of the VII Jornada de Geotecnologias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – (JGEOTEC) 2024 (we reported earlier), which is available for free download and includes research in various areas, with emphasis on multitemporal analysis, the use of drones and other equipment to acquire high-resolution images, as well as real-time data collection.
  • The Indus River Basin is highly exposed to the impact of riverine floods. A group from HeiGIT travelled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to strengthen local capacity in disaster risk management and geospatial analysis.
  • Miguel García Álvarez announced the Cartographer’s Tale weekly newsletter, in which he will share his fondness for maps. Already available in Spanish, he will now be publishing it in English.
  • Cesium for Unreal supports importing Photorealistic 3D Tiles from the Google Maps Platform using Cesium ion. This tutorial walks you through adding these tiles to Unreal Engine projects, using the CesiumGeoreference component to accurately position scenes on a global scale.
  • Carlos Felipe Castillo revisited John Snow’s historic 1854 cholera outbreak analysis in London, considered the first geospatial analysis in history. Using modern tools including uMap and digitised datasets, Carlos recreates Snow’s identification of the Broad Street water pump as the outbreak’s source.
  • Since 2021 the United Nations Human Settlements Programme has been working with local leaders in the Juiz de Fora municipality (Brazil) to advance inclusive and transformative solutions to urban challenges. Using KoboToolbox, their collaborative ‘Territories of Citizenship’ project aims to leverage up-to-date and accurate data to inform policies and improve service delivery for urban communities.
  • Gregory Marler shared his excitement about seeing the next-stop display on an Xplore Dundee bus in GPS debug mode. The short video captured the screen revealing raw GPS data instead of the usual route information, offering a rare glimpse into the system’s backend operations.
  • The YouTube video The Wrong Map of Syria No One Noticed highlighted a cartographic error where multiple maps inaccurately represented the border between Syria and Jordan. The video delves into the origins of this mistake, its widespread presence in digital and physical maps, and the lack of scrutiny it received despite being publicly accessible for years.
  • Barbara Petchenik was the first woman to serve as Vice President of the International Cartographic Association (ICA). She was committed to designing maps in such a way that they could be understood by a broad target group, especially children and people without specialised knowledge. The ICA organises a competition for children and young people every two years and the theme for 2025 is ‘Maps in everyday life’.

Upcoming Events

Where What Online When Country
OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting 2025-01-10
Bangalore South OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party 2025-01-11 flag
Model Town Tehsil 13th OSM Delhi Mapping Party 2025-01-12 flag
København OSMmapperCPH 2025-01-12 flag
Chambéry Mapathon en ligne saison 24/25 CartONG 2025-01-13 flag
Richmond MapRVA Meetup with OSM US 2025-01-14 flag
Grenoble Atelier de janvier du groupe local de Grenoble 2025-01-13 flag
中正區 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #72 2025-01-13 flag
München Münchner OSM-Treffen 2025-01-14 flag
Zaragoza Asamblea extraordinaria de la Asociación OpenStreetMap España (Online) 2025-01-14 flag
[Online] Map-py Wednesday 2025-01-15
Karlsruhe Stammtisch Karlsruhe 2025-01-15 flag
[Online] Map-py Wednesday 2025-01-16
Utrecht Nieuwjaarsborrel OSGeo.nl, OSM.nl en QGIS Gebruikersvereniging Nederland 2025-01-19 flag
Panoramax monthly international meeting 2025-01-20
Hannover OSM-Stammtisch Hannover 2025-01-20 flag
Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng] 2025-01-21
Lyon Réunion du groupe local de Lyon 2025-01-21 flag
Bonn 184. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn 2025-01-21 flag
San Jose South Bay Map Night 2025-01-22 flag
Lüneburg Lüneburger Mappertreffen 2025-01-21 flag
Lübeck 149. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung 2025-01-23 flag
OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting 2025-01-24
Chambéry Mapathon en ligne saison 24/25 CartONG 2025-01-27 flag
Stadtgebiet Bremen Bremer Mappertreffen 2025-01-27 flag

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, Raquel Dezidério Souto, SeverinGeo, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, derFred, mavimsii, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Saturday, 11. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

한국의 place 태그 개선안

  • 들어가기에 앞서, LuxuryCoop님의 기존 제안을 보고 영감을 얻어 새로 올린 글입니다. 아래 글을 읽어보기에 앞서, 해당 글을 먼저 읽어보시는 것을 추천드립니다.

본 게시글에서는 지역의 label 태그를 위계별로 어떻게 사용하여야 할 지에 대하여 특히 주목하여 작성해 보았습니다. 기본적으로 OSM Wiki에 명시된 대로 각각의 place 태그에 대한 원론적인 위계에 주목하여 한국의 행정 구역 라벨 위계를 새로이 구성해 보았습니다.

공식 행정구역 광역자치단체
  • place=province - 도(道), 특별시, 광역시, 특별자치도, 특별자치시에 사용

해당 태그는 일반적으로 주나 도

  • 들어가기에 앞서, LuxuryCoop님의 기존 제안을 보고 영감을 얻어 새로 올린 글입니다. 아래 글을 읽어보기에 앞서, 해당 글을 먼저 읽어보시는 것을 추천드립니다.

본 게시글에서는 지역의 label 태그를 위계별로 어떻게 사용하여야 할 지에 대하여 특히 주목하여 작성해 보았습니다. 기본적으로 OSM Wiki에 명시된 대로 각각의 place 태그에 대한 원론적인 위계에 주목하여 한국의 행정 구역 라벨 위계를 새로이 구성해 보았습니다.

공식 행정구역

광역자치단체

  • place=province - 도(道), 특별시, 광역시, 특별자치도, 특별자치시에 사용

해당 태그는 일반적으로 주나 도 등 국가의 1차 행정구역을 나타낼 때 사용되며, 언급한 자치단체 모두 동일하게 대한민국의 1차 행정구역을 나타내므로 모두 ‘province’로 동일하게 표현하였습니다.

기초자치단체

  • place=city - 시(市)
  • place=county - 군(郡)

시와 군의 경우는 현행 유지되는 태그를 그대로 사용하였습니다.

  • place=district - 특별시, 광역시 등의 자치구
  • place=borough - 자치구가 아닌 구; 일반구

자치구의 경우 시, 군과 동등한 위계에 있는 기초자치단체로써, 지방 정부에 의해 자치적으로 운영되는 행정 구역이라는, OSM Wiki에 설명되어 있는 district과 그 사용례를 같이 한다는 점에 착안하여 district로 제안해 보았습니다.

일반구의 경우, 자치구와 마찬가지로 구(區)라는 명칭을 공유한다는 점은 존재하지만, 자치구와 달리 별도의 자치권이 없는 시(市) 내부의 하위 행정구역이라는 점을 고려할 때, 자치구와는 다른 태그를 이용하여 이를 표현해야 할 필요성이 있다고 생각하였습니다. 이러한 점을 고려할 때, 일반적으로 도시 ‘내부’의 구역임을 나타내는 ‘borough’ 태그를 사용하여 달리 표기하는 것을 제안하는 바입니다.

  • place=subdistrict - 행정동

현행에서는 place=quarter가 동을 표현하는 데 사용되고 있지만, 해당 태그는 행정 구역을 명시한다기보다 도시 내 특정 구역을 태그하는 데 이용되는 점을 고려해보면, 거주 규모와는 별개로 행정구역임을 명확히 명시하는 subdistrict 태그를 이용하여 행정동을 표현하는 것이 좀 더 합리적이지 않을까 제안합니다. district와 연계하는 경우 구와 동의 계층이 명확해진다는 점도 존재합니다.

  • ? - 법정동

‘법정동’의 경우는 일부 명칭을 제외하고는 지적 사무 외 행정적 사무와 실생활에서는 거의 쓰이지 않는다는 점을 고려할 때 지역적으로 잘 알려진 몇 법정동명을 제외하고는 법정동 relation의 name으로만 존치하고 label은 삭제합니다. 또한, 잘 알려진 몇 법정동명의 경우에는 규모에 따라suburb/quarter/neighbourhood로 구분하여 남기는 것을 제안합니다.

사실 법정동의 경우에는, 제가 제안하는 위계 구조 상에서 명확히 처리하기에는 애매한 바가 있어서, 혹시 이와 관련하여 좋은 의견 있으면 남겨주시면 감사하겠습니다.

  • place=town - 읍(邑)/면(面)

기존 방식대로 읍, 면의 경우는 town으로 태그합니다. 소규모 면의 경우도 town으로 묶여 과대표기될 수 있다는 우려가 존재하기는 하나, 읍과 면 둘 다 동일한 행정 위계를 갖는다는 점을 고려하여 town으로 동일하게 태그합니다.

  • place=village - 법정리(里)
  • place=hamlet - 행정리/자연부락

현행대로 법정리의 경우 village로 표기하고, 법정리에서 행정 편의 상 더 잘게 쪼개진 행정리 혹은 자연부락의 경우 hamlet으로 표기합니다.

공식적인 행정구역이 아닌 지명

공식적인 행정구역에는 포함되지 않으나, 국지적 혹은 전국적으로 통용되는 지명에 대해서는 다음과 같은 태그 방법을 제안합니다. 각 place 태그 별 예시는 이해를 돕기 위한 단순 예시에 불과하다는 점 참고하시면 되겠습니다.

  • place=suburb - 신도시, 신시가지, 혹은 택지지구 등의 대생활권 (예: 분당, 일산, 목동, 동탄 등)
  • place=quarter - 중간 규모의 잘 알려진 상권, 혹은 중생활권 (예: 홍대, 성수, 서면 등)
  • place=neighbourhood - 단일 거리 단위 상권, 근린 단위의 소생활권 등 (예: 목동 로데오거리, 해방촌 등)

도시의 내부 구역, 특히 생활권을 구분하는 데 있어 suburb>quarter>neighbourhood의 삼분법이 널리 활용된다는 점과, 행정동과는 무방하게 지역적 지명을 자유롭게 표기할 수 있다는 점에서 이 방식을 제안하였습니다.

  • place=locality - 단순 자연지명 등

일반적인 거주 지역과는 외따로 떨어진 지역이나 단순 지명만 남은 지역 등을 표기할 때 사용합니다. 한두 가구 등을 표현할 때 place=isloated_dwelling을 사용할 수도 있겠지만, 한국에서 한두 가구 외따로 떨어진 지역의 지명을 일반적으로는 따로 부여하지 않는다는 점을 고려할 때는 굳이 이용할 필요가 있나? 싶긴 합니다.

해당 제안에 대한 다양한 의견, 피드백 환영합니다. 긴 글 읽어주셔서 감사합니다.


Мое мнение о панорамах

Нам нужно больше пользоваться сервисами для панорам, такими как Panoramax.

Яндекс это конечно отличный сервис, но он все же не самый дружелюбный к OSM’у, и права на его панорамы могут отозвать в любой момент. Призываю всех неравнодушных людей у которых есть файлы уличных панорам (или даже фотографии уличных объектов) зайти на panoramax.openstreetmap.fr/upload и загрузить их туда. У iD есть отде

Нам нужно больше пользоваться сервисами для панорам, такими как Panoramax.

Яндекс это конечно отличный сервис, но он все же не самый дружелюбный к OSM’у, и права на его панорамы могут отозвать в любой момент. Призываю всех неравнодушных людей у которых есть файлы уличных панорам (или даже фотографии уличных объектов) зайти на https://panoramax.openstreetmap.fr/upload и загрузить их туда. У iD есть отдельный слой для панорам с этого сайта, и у людей которые картируют с него будет больше открытых данных с которых можно будет удобнее брать информацию.

Thursday, 09. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

Testing data upload

Hey hey. We at the Yerevan Tree Map project were pulling to our database new nodes tagged as natural=tree for a while now, without actually pushing changes back. Now we are starting to do so. The OSM API is not quite straightforward, so we’re learning on the go. We have some 4k plus trees to push, we’ll be adding them in small batches. Later we’ll start pushing updates to exist

Hey hey. We at the Yerevan Tree Map project were pulling to our database new nodes tagged as natural=tree for a while now, without actually pushing changes back. Now we are starting to do so. The OSM API is not quite straightforward, so we’re learning on the go. We have some 4k plus trees to push, we’ll be adding them in small batches. Later we’ll start pushing updates to existing tree nodes (e.g. when someone measures the tree or updates its state).


OSM data in English, but also in French, accessible in IFL for French-speaking countries in the South

(English below, thanks to Deepl.com)

Ce post a été initialement publié ici.

Des données OSM en anglais, mais aussi en français, accessibles dans l’IFL pour les pays francophones du Sud

Des données OSM téléchargeables avec des attributs dans une langue autre que l’anglais, non pas avec un service web, mais une plateforme dédiée au partage de données et métadonnées géographiques,

(English below, thanks to Deepl.com)

Ce post a été initialement publié ici.

Des données OSM en anglais, mais aussi en français, accessibles dans l’IFL pour les pays francophones du Sud

Des données OSM téléchargeables avec des attributs dans une langue autre que l’anglais, non pas avec un service web, mais une plateforme dédiée au partage de données et métadonnées géographiques, où l’on peut comprendre, voir, interroger, filtrer avant de télécharger : c’est ce que permet cette approche ETL (pour Extract, Transform, Load, soit en français « Extraction, Transformation et Chargement ») dans l’Infrastructure de Données Spatiales des Libres Géographes. Dans ce billet, je reviens sur le contexte et l’historique de ce projet personnel mené sur mon temps libre, avant d’expliquer l’approche technique mise en œuvre et, évidemment, comment accéder à ces données.

Le contexte : sortir du « english fits for all »

Si l’anglais domine l’écosystème OSM et reste la langue de référence du projet, plusieurs initiatives permettent aux non-anglophones de participer au projet et d’en bénéficier : un forum multilingue, la traduction du wiki et de certaines plateformes d’auto-apprentissage, des interfaces utilisateur traduites pour les applications et les éditeurs, y compris les préréglages d’étiquettes OSM.

Mais quelle que soit la technologie ou le service utilisé, les données OSM brutes, une fois téléchargées, restent exclusivement en anglais, et toute recherche ou filtrage des données OSM dans un logiciel SIG ne peut se faire que dans cette langue.

Ayant beaucoup formé à l’utilisation des données OSM en géomatique (notamment QGIS) depuis 2011, j’ai été vite confronté aux difficultés qu’ont pas mal de francophones non anglophones à exploiter les attributs des données OSM. Difficultés d’autant plus frustrantes, dans le cas des pays du Sud, qu’il s’agissait souvent des premières données détaillées disponibles sur leur territoire. Une barrière se levait, mais une autre lui succédait.

Cette contrainte a donc tendance ralentir le processus d’apprentissage pour les contributeurs OSM non anglophones, mais surtout, elle reste un obstacle à l’adoption par des publics extérieurs à la communauté OSM : par exemple, les services publics habitués à créer/distribuer/utiliser des données dans la langue officielle, ou l’une des langues officielles, de leur pays.

De fait, dès mes débuts dans OSM, j’ai toujours eu en tête de permettre l’utilisation des données OSM sans devoir forcément passer par l’anglais.

L’historique : un service qui aurait pu exister dès 2013

Malgré l’engouement né de la réponse communautaire au tremblement de terre à Haïti en janvier 2010, il restait difficile de promouvoir OSM auprès des géomaticiens humanitaires sans service permettant de récupérer la donnée OSM dans les formats SIG les plus courants sans devoir déployer une base PostgreSQL locale. Pour résumer, ces géomaticiens voulaient du shapefile.

Dans le cadre du projet HOT STM020 à Saint-Marc en Haïti financé par l’USAID, co-conçu et mis en œuvre avec Nicolas au printemps 2012, nous avions tenu à inclure dans le budget une ligne pour un « Data download point » qui allait devenir le HOT Exports (alors avec un « s » final), développé par GeoFabrik. L’année suivante, le projet CAP103, cette fois dans le nord et nord-est haïtiens, fut l’occasion de financer l’ajout de capacités de transformations de tags et de traductions au HOT Exports. L’un des rares visuels existants encore de cette v1 en atteste (en bas, dans les Expert functions) :

De fait, dès 2013, il aurait été possible de proposer une traduction des tags OSM en anglais dans une autre langue. Mais personne ne s’en est immédiatement saisi. Pour ma part, j’ai commencé à travailler dessus au printemps 2015 lors d’une résidence volontaire à Dakar et élaboré une première liste d’étiquettes OSM traduites en français et implémentées dans le HOT Exports. Certains étudiants et étudiantes en géomatique au Sénégal ont pu en bénéficier lors de sessions consacrées à l’usage des données OSM dans QGIS. Mais à la mi-2015 est sorti HOT Export v2, totalement réécrit, et toutes les capacités de transformations et traductions de tags y ont été supprimées. À nouveau, pas le choix, l’anglais ou rien.

J’ai repris le projet sur mon temps libre à partir du confinement de 2020, dans le but d’utiliser cette fois comme plateforme l’IFL, l’Infrastructure de Données Spatiales (IDS) Francophone Libre des Libres Géographes basée sur le projet geOrchestra, qui fournissait déjà des couches métiers dans le cadre de certains projets de l’association. J’ai aussi complété la traduction, couvrant désormais 1400 étiquettes liées aux clés OSM les plus courantes identifiées par taginfo, et en utilisant les traductions des Map features du wiki OSM ou des préréglages de JOSM.

La première version provisoire, qui ne concernait que quelques pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest, a été présentée lors du GeoCom (la conférence annuelle geOrchestra) de 2023, le SotM France 2024 et le SotM 2024 à Nairobi. Optimisé suite à des remarques de l’audience lors de ces conférences, le service concerne désormais tous les 28 pays francophones du Sud (ceux listés dans la page Afrique Francophone de Wikipédia + Maurice, le Liban et Haïti) et les mises à jour sont faites en continu, via des réplications minutes. Pourquoi pas tous les pays francophones ? Parce que les données sur la France métropolitaine prendraient trop de place sur l’IFL.

L’approche technique : des couches Planet et thématiques OSM détaillées, en anglais ou français

Classiquement, les données sont hébergées dans des bases pg (PostgreSQL/PostGIS) alimentées par imposm, qui était en 2020 l’outil de transformation des données osm.pbf considéré comme le plus performant. Ce n’est sans doute plus le cas désormais que ses développements et sa maintenance se sont taries, alors qu’osm2pgsql a au contraire été relancé, notamment via un financement de l’OSMF. Lors du SotM 2024 à Nairobi, Jochen Topf m’a d’ailleurs présenté les avantages d’osm2pgsql par rapport à imposm, et peut-être ferai-je la migration un jour, mais en l’état actuel imposm couvre le besoin et la fonction d’update imposm run est bien pratique. Les données OSM sont récupérées depuis les points d’extractions et réplications mises en ligne par l’association OpenStreetMap France, dont le gestionnaire a gentiment accepté d’y rajouter quelques pays qui manquaient.

Concernant les couches, il y a donc pour chaque pays concerné deux jeux de données déjà prêts, l’un dans l’anglais original, l’autre traduite à la volée en français en utilisant un tableau de traduction de référence, publié ici sur GitLab. Les remarques, suggestions ou compléments y sont bienvenus.

Chaque jeu de données contient à la fois des couches thématiques toutes prêtes, mais aussi des couches Planet (c’est-à-dire une couche de points regroupant tous les objets ponctuels dans OSM, et deux autres dédiées respectivement aux objets linéaires et polygonaux) permettant de créer sa propre thématique. En effet, j’ai toujours trouvé dommage que les services existants ne proposent par défaut que des thématiques (Download de Geofabrik ou Bbbike) ou que des couches Planet (HOT Export). Les thématiques disponibles sont : limites administratives, lieux, transports, obstacles, édifices, couverture du sol, hydrographie et points d’intérêts (POI).

Certaines thématiques comportent plusieurs couches, lorsqu’elles sont représentées par des types de géométrie différents (points, lignes ou polygones). Les POI sont disponibles non seulement sous leur forme originelle (points ou polygones), mais aussi dans une couche de synthèse qui comprend les objets ponctuels et les centres des objets polygonaux.

Par ailleurs, chaque couche OSM dans l’IFL permet de retrouver l’ensemble des tags : les clés les plus utilisées dans chaque thématique disposent chacune d’un champ dédié dans la table attributaire, mais il y a également un champ au format jsonb qui contient tous les tags originels de chaque objet. Par ailleurs, si aucune de ces couches ne contient de métadonnées OSM, un champ ajoute_a permet de connaître la date à laquelle chaque objet a été intégré dans la base pg de l’IFL. Il est donc possible d’identifier les derniers objets édités dans OSM, postérieurs à la date de l’extraction utilisée au départ de la création de la base.

Ces couches sont donc accessibles non pas au travers d’un service web, mais d’une IDS. Pourquoi une IDS et pas un site web spécifique ? À la fois pour des raisons pratiques, mais aussi pour prouver qu’une IDS fait cela très bien. Côté pratique, l’IFL étant déjà en place, nul besoin de développer un site web ad hoc. Côté preuve du concept, une IDS libre comme geOrchestra dispose de toutes les fonctionnalités offertes par les standards OGC et les briques logicielles libres comme PostgreSQL/PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoNetwork et MapStore, pour proposer des traitements sur les données, une interface cartographique interrogeable, des métadonnées et des outils de téléchargement. Enfin, la donnée est déjà prête à être téléchargée, sans passer par la création de points de téléchargement personnalisés comme dans le HOT Export, approche qui nécessite ensuite un stockage côté serveur difficile à estimer.

L’accès aux données : via des fiches de métadonnées ou des applications cartographiques par pays

Il y a deux entrées possibles depuis l’IFL pour accéder aux données OSM sur les pays francophones du Sud : via des fiches de métadonnées ou des applications cartographiques.

Les métadonnées comprennent :

Des applications cartographiques de visualisation, interrogation, filtrage et téléchargement, sont dévolues à chacun des pays. Il est possible, grâce aux fonctionnalités de MapStore, de télécharger une thématique sur un pays entier, mais aussi de filtrer sur les attributs, sur une zone dessinée à la main ou la zone d’une autre couche, par exemple les limites administratives. Il est donc tout à fait possible, à partir de la couche de POI, de récupérer les hôpitaux, cliniques et pharmacies d’une région ou d’un district urbain, comme ci-dessous dans la Communauté urbaine de Yaoundé :

Des vidéos en ligne ou téléchargeables montrent ces différents accès :

Voilà pour cette longue présentation. Pour conclure, je dirais qu’à une période où les annonces de méga jeux de données mixant plusieurs sources ou issus de l’IA, cet ETL montre qu’il y a encore moyen de faire des choses fines, porteuses de sens et adaptées à des contextes locaux avec OpenStreetMap.

This post was originally published here.

OSM data in English, but also in French, accessible in IFL for French-speaking countries in the South

Downloadable OSM data with attributes in a language other than English, not with a web service, but with a platform dedicated to sharing geographic data and metadata, where you can understand, view, query and filter before downloading: that’s what this ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) approach in the Libres Géographes Spatial Data Infrastructure makes possible. In this post, I’ll go back over the background and history of this personal project carried out in my spare time, before explaining the technical approach implemented and, of course, how to access this data.

The context: moving away from “English fits for all”

While English dominates the OSM ecosystem and remains the project’s reference language, several initiatives allow non-English speakers to participate in and benefit from the project: a multilingual forum, translation of the wiki and certain self-learning platforms, translated user interfaces for applications and editors, including OSM tag presets.

But regardless of the technology or service used, the raw OSM data, once downloaded, remains exclusively in English, and any searching or filtering of OSM data in GIS software can only be done in that language

Having trained extensively in the use of OSM data in geomatics (particularly QGIS) since 2011, I was quickly confronted with the difficulties many non-English speakers have in exploiting the attributes of OSM data. These difficulties were even more frustrating in the case of developing countries, as this was often the first detailed data available for their territory. One barrier was removed, but another followed.

This limitation therefore tends to slow down the learning process for non-English speaking OSM contributors, but more importantly, it remains an obstacle to adoption by audiences outside the OSM community: for example, public services accustomed to creating/distributing/using data in the official language, or one of the official languages, of their country.

In fact, from the beginning of my involvement with OSM, I have always had the idea of making it possible to use OSM data without necessarily having to use English.

Background: a service that could have been here in 2013

Despite the enthusiasm generated by the community response to the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, it remained difficult to promote OSM to humanitarian geomaticians without a service that allowed them to retrieve OSM data in the most common GIS formats without having to deploy a local PostgreSQL database. In short, these geomaticians wanted shapefiles.

As part of the USAID-funded HOT STM020 project in Saint-Marc, Haiti, designed and implemented with Nicolas in the spring of 2012, we were eager to include in the budget a line for a “data download point” that would become HOT Exports (then with a final “s”), developed by GeoFabrik. The following year, the CAP103 project, this time in northern and northeastern Haiti, was an opportunity to fund the addition of tag transformation and translation capabilities to HOT Exports. One of the few surviving visualizations of this v1 testifies to this (below, in Expert Functions):

In fact, it would have been possible to offer a translation of OSM’s English tags into another language as early as 2013. But no one took it up immediately. For my part, I started working on it in the spring of 2015 during a volunteer stay in Dakar and made a first list of OSM tags translated into French and implemented in HOT Exports. Some geomatics students in Senegal were able to benefit from this during sessions dedicated to the use of OSM data in QGIS. But in mid-2015, HOT Export v2 was released, completely rewritten, and all tag transformation and translation capabilities were removed. Again, no choice, English or nothing.

I took over the project in my spare time from the 2020 confinement, this time with the aim of using as a platform IFL, the Spatial Data Infrastructure (IDS) Francophone Libre of the Libres Géographes (based on the geOrchestra project), which was already providing custom layers for some of the association’s projects. I’ve also completed the translation, which now covers 1400 tags linked to the most common OSM keys identified by taginfo, and using translations of OSM wiki Map features or JOSM presets.

The first provisional version, covering only a few West African countries, was presented at GeoCom 2023 (the annual geOrchestra conference), SotM France 2024 and global SotM 2024 in Nairobi. Optimized in response to audience feedback at these conferences, the service now covers all 28 French-speaking countries in the South (those listed here in Wikipédia + Mauritius, Lebanon and Haiti), with continuous updates via minute replications. Why not all the French-speaking countries? Because data for metropolitan France would take up too much space on the IFL.

The Technical Approach: Detailed Planet and Thematic OSM Layers, in English or French

Typically, data is hosted in pg databases (PostgreSQL/PostGIS) fed by imposm, which was considered the most efficient osm.pbf data transformation tool in 2020. This is probably no longer the case, as its development and maintenance have dried up, while osm2pgsql has been relaunched, largely thanks to funding from OSMF. At SotM 2024 in Nairobi, Jochen Topf explained to me the advantages of osm2pgsql over imposm, and maybe I’ll make the switch someday, but for now imposm covers the need, and the imposm run update feature comes in very handy. The OSM data is taken from extraction points and minute replications put online by the association OpenStreetMap France, whose manager has kindly agreed to add a few missing countries.

As for the layers, there are two ready-made datasets for each country concerned, one in the original English, the other translated on the fly into French using a reference translation table published here on GitLab. Comments, suggestions and additions are welcome.

Each dataset contains both ready-made thematic layers and planet layers (i.e. a point layer that groups all point objects in OSM, and two others dedicated to linear and polygonal objects, respectively), allowing you to create your own thematic layers. In fact, I’ve always found it a bit unfortunate that existing services offer only thematic layers by default (download from Geofabrik or Bbbike) or only planet layers (HOT Export). The themes available are: administrative boundaries, places, transportation, obstacles, buildings, land cover, hydrography, and points of interest (POI).

Some themes include several layers if they are represented by different types of geometry (points, lines or polygons). POIs are available not only in their original form (points or polygons), but also in a synthesis layer that includes point objects and the centers of polygonal objects.

In addition, each OSM layer in the IFL can be used to retrieve all tags: the most commonly used keys in each theme each have a dedicated field in the attribute table, but there is also a field in jsonb format that contains all the original tags for each object. Furthermore, if none of these layers contains OSM metadata, an added_at field provides the date when each object was integrated into the IFL pg database. This makes it possible to identify the most recently edited objects in OSM after the extraction date used to create the database.

These layers are therefore not accessible via a web service, but via an IDS. Why an IDS and not a specific web site? Both for practical reasons, but also to prove that an IDS does this very well. On the practical side, the IFL already exists, so there’s no need to develop an ad hoc web site. On the proof of concept side, an open source IDS like geOrchestra has all the functionality provided by OGC standards and open source software building blocks like PostgreSQL/PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoNetwork and MapStore to provide data processing, a searchable map interface, metadata and download tools. In the end, the data is ready to download without the need to create custom download points as with HOT Export, which requires server-side storage that is difficult to estimate.

Accessing the data: via metadata sheets or country-specific mapping applications

There are two ways to access OSM data on French-speaking countries in the South from the IFL: via metadata sheets or map applications.

Metadata includes :

  • Metadata sheets dedicated to the presentation of each theme available;
  • Metadata sheets dedicated to each French-speaking country covered, with an integrated download link via drop-down menus and a link to a cartographic application dedicated to each country;
  • A parent metadata sheet describing the ETL in detail and linking the metadata sheets.

Map applications for viewing, querying, filtering and downloading are dedicated to each country. Thanks to MapStore’s functionality, it is possible to download a theme for an entire country, but also to filter on attributes, on a hand-drawn area, or on the area of another layer, such as administrative boundaries. It is therefore perfectly possible to retrieve, from the POI layer, the hospitals, clinics and pharmacies of a region or urban district, as shown below in the Yaoundé Urban Community:

Online or downloadable videos show these different access points:

So much for this long presentation. In conclusion, I’d like to say that at a time when announcements of mega datasets that mix multiple sources or come from AI, this ETL shows that there are still ways to do smaller, but still fine, meaningful things with OpenStreetMap that are adapted to local contexts.

Wednesday, 08. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

I posted about tile-attribution to gather support for OpenStreetMap!

I just discovered github.com/openstreetmap/tile-attribution And it seems like a great way to get involved with openstreetmap via GitHub - It doesn’t require any coding ability, one would need an active GitHub acount to add an issue to the issue tracker but basically find a site using your favourite search engines (lets say https//ddg.gg as an example).

Check any sites who are not providi

I just discovered https://github.com/openstreetmap/tile-attribution And it seems like a great way to get involved with openstreetmap via GitHub - It doesn’t require any coding ability, one would need an active GitHub acount to add an issue to the issue tracker but basically find a site using your favourite search engines (lets say https//ddg.gg as an example).

Check any sites who are not providing attribution to openstreetmap when using openstreetmap and report the full hostname of website to the issue tracker :-)

What can we all share to people on social media we use to promote friends & family to support OpenStreetMap’s work?

Have a great day! Josh G of Australia.

https://hardened.computer/@xuid0/113795267986230039


Jochen Topf

More taginfo news

Once a year or so I set aside some time to work on taginfo. Then I start working on it and find more and more things that I want to work on and invariably it takes longer than planned. And there is always much more to do that I don’t get to. But I did get some interesting things done this time around…

Tag status

OSM wiki pages about keys and tags show a Tag status for many tag

Once a year or so I set aside some time to work on taginfo. Then I start working on it and find more and more things that I want to work on and invariably it takes longer than planned. And there is always much more to do that I don’t get to. But I did get some interesting things done this time around…

Tag status

OSM wiki pages about keys and tags show a Tag status for many tags. The status is somewhat fuzzy, which one of the about 10 common values a tag should have is not always so clear, and sometimes wiki pages for different languages show different values. But thanks to a lot of work from a lot of people the state of the wiki documentation has improved a lot over the years and this information is now better maintained and quite useful.

Taginfo has always parsed out this status information from the wiki pages but not done anything with it. But now it does. On key pages the Overview tab now shows a “Status” box which shows the status from the wiki, or it might tell you that the status is unknown or ambiguous (if there is a disagreement between different language wiki pages). I created a new “look” for the status badge which uses the same colors as the wiki for some of the status values.

There are probably more places where we want to show that status, not only on the “key” pages, but also the “tag” pages and some others. But I’ll leave that for some later time.

You can also get an overview about all the keys and tags and their status on the Tag status page on taginfo. This shows statistics about all the status values, lists of keys and tags, and also special tables showing which keys and tags have inconsistent status values in different languages.

Data from wiki

Which brings me to the next topic: There is a lot of information in the wiki. Taginfo can’t known what information is correct or not, but it can flag some problems with the data, inconsistencies it finds, or, for instance, all the images used to document keys and tags that are quite large and so need a long time to load.

The Wiki source section on taginfo now collects a lot of such information to help wiki maintainers with their job. Some of what’s shown there is new, some has been available in reports or taginfo-internal pages before. I hope this will be useful for somebody.

Discardable tags

There is one somewhat special tag status called “discardable”. Tags with this status have been found not to be useful and some editors remove these tags automatically and silently when OSM objects are edited. That way the data will sooner or later be removed from OSM without any huge automated edit.

Taginfo now reads the configuration from the iD and JOSM editors to find out which tags they think of as discardable as well as the tag status information from the wiki. A new report shows this information which could be especially useful for editor developers and wiki maintainers.

And in the mentioned “Status” box on the key pages, this information will also be highlighted.

CSV export

Most tables shown on taginfo have a “JSON” button in the header which links to a URL for downloading the data shown in the table. You don’t have to read the API docs, just use that link, maybe change the parameters a bit and get to the data that’s in that table.

Using JSON is great for many use cases, but in some cases it is still somewhat cumbersome. A user had asked for CSV export, so I implemented that also. Most tables now also have a “CSV” button. So it is really easy to, say export some data to CSV, load it into LibreOffice and create some chart.

Keyboard shortcuts

There probably aren’t many people using the keyboard shortcuts that taginfo provides. But they can be quite useful for experienced users. But who can remember them all?

There is now a new feature: You can press and hold the question mark (?) key on any page and taginfo will show you which shortcuts there are and what links on that page they are a shortcut for. Not the most important thing, but it was fun to work on that, fiddle around and see how to best do that.

Tuesday, 07. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

diorey 4

HIII!!! happy new year! i’ve decided to try an maintain a editing streak for the entirety of 2025 and it’s going pretty well (at time of writing i’ve edited daily since december 25th of 2024)! nothing much aside from that i just try to use streetcomplete when bored lol

HIII!!! happy new year! i’ve decided to try an maintain a editing streak for the entirety of 2025 and it’s going pretty well (at time of writing i’ve edited daily since december 25th of 2024)! nothing much aside from that i just try to use streetcomplete when bored lol


A un mes del SOTM Latam 2024

El Palacete Pinho, en el barrio Ciudad Vieja en Belém de Pará (Brasil), fue la sede de la tan ansiada reunión de mapeadoras y mapeadores de Latinoamérica. Habían pasado cinco años (pandemia incluida) del último SOTM en Encarnación, Paraguay. Pero, para mí, eran seis años, desde la última vez que participé en el evento, en 2018, en Buenos Aires. Así, que ese hermoso palacio, ubicado a p

El Palacete Pinho, en el barrio Ciudad Vieja en Belém de Pará (Brasil), fue la sede de la tan ansiada reunión de mapeadoras y mapeadores de Latinoamérica. Habían pasado cinco años (pandemia incluida) del último SOTM en Encarnación, Paraguay. Pero, para mí, eran seis años, desde la última vez que participé en el evento, en 2018, en Buenos Aires. Así, que ese hermoso palacio, ubicado a pocos metros del río Acará, fue el espacio en el que nos conocimos, encontramos y reencontramos; durante un fin de semana aprovechamos para reconectar con la comunidad regional de OpenStreetMap. De este modo, finalizamos una semana llena de eventos que comenzó con la FOSS4G el lunes antes de ese fin de semana.

En esos días me di cuenta de que ha pasado un tiempo desde que comencé a involucrarme con el mapa de OSM. Lo noté con claridad cuando reconocí otras personas que tienen también su tiempo de colaborar (aunque me tomó unas horas reconocerles) e intentaba recordar de que otro evento les conocía. Pero, además, al ver tantas personas jóvenes involucrándose con distintos intereses temáticos, proyectos e iniciativas. Lo primero que me llevo del SOTM Latam 2024 es una bocanada de frescura al escuchar nuevas voces en la comunidad. Vamos bien y para rato.

Este recambio está impulsado por el apoyo que brindan organizaciones como YouthMappers, HOTOSM y Universidades. Lo cual muestra una diversidad de temáticas de mapeo interesante, que incluyen movilidad (bicicleta, aceras, transporte público), resiliencia, el interés en la Amazonía y población vulnerable. En cuanto al rol de las universidades, y siendo que trabajo en una de ellas, me llamó la atención no solo por las presentaciones durante el SOTM sino también durante el Track Académico del FOSS4G. Este aspecto fue un tema de conversación que tuve con varias personas asistentes al SOTM Latam, pues el espacio académico aparece como relevante para impulsar el trabajo conjunto entre docentes/investigadores y estudiantes universitarios con interés en el mapeo.

A los dos días (y sus noches) les sacamos provecho tanto como fue posible. El crecimiento de la comunidad comienza a generar una hermosa presión para que el evento se alargue un poco más. Afortunadamente, ya para este año tenemos sede para el siguiente SOTM, la hermosa ciudad de Medellín, Colombia. Esta noticia me genera satisfacción por dos razones. La primera es que la comunidad colombiana de OSM está haciendo un trabajo espectacular y estoy seguro de que el evento será un éxito rotundo. La segunda razón, es la cercanía con Centroamérica, lo que espero que nos ayude a participar con más personas presentando ponencias y talleres en Medellín.


OpenStreetMap Blog

Apply to be the OSM Core Software Development Facilitator

The OSM Foundation has recently received investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software. In this context we are looking for a OSM core software development facilitator who will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work. […]

The OSM Foundation has recently received investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software. In this context we are looking for a OSM core software development facilitator who will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work.

Please submit your application to the OSM Foundation Personnel Committee at pc@osmfoundation.org. Include CV, cover letter, and/or examples of work as attachments. Applications will be accepted until January 21, 2025.

In the role of facilitator, you will help the developers with prioritising and organising the work around the software development for the core OpenStreetMap database infrastructure. The work is mainly centered around the openstreetmap-website project and its C++ implementation openstreetmap-cgimap but also includes smaller “satellite” projects for providing data dumps and updates.

Your role is to organise communication with the OSM community to ensure visibility on the development work and to establish a space for the community to contribute productively. You will be responsible for managing the budget assigned to core development work. In that you will work closely with the OSMF Engineering Working Group and regularly report to the OSMF board.

Scope of work / responsibilities

The facilitator plans, coordinates and contributes to

  • taking stock of the current state of the core OSM software stack, state of development, current issues and possible future developments
  • clarifying together with developers what expectations for contributions are and ensuring accessible documentation
  • developing a light-weight roadmap plan as guideline for current and future contributors
  • creating a space for volunteers from the developing and general community to contribute productively
  • identification of areas where paid support can assist the volunteer developers
  • hiring and supervising of one or more persons to take on a supportive maintainer role
  • communication within the group of developers, with developers and maintainers from interrelated software projects, the OSMF and the OSM community at large

The facilitator will be expected to take a leading role in shaping these tasks in close collaboration with the existing maintainers and developers, to ensure a modus operandi that works for all involved.

Profile

The successful candidates should have prior experience in management in an engineering project. Ideally they have also some experience with

  • participating in open source projects, as developers and/or in a managing role
  • mentoring other developers and working with volunteers
  • working with OpenStreetMap and its community

Good communication skills are essential and you should enjoy working with developers with many different backgrounds. You should be able to work independently and self-directed and be able to shape your own role within a group of highly motivated and engaged volunteers.

Employment/contracting structure

Location: 100% Remote

The STF project is expected to start in January 2025.

The facilitator position will be a contractor position and is funded for 2 years with a total budget of 175 working days. We expect the facilitator to be more active in the first year, when they get to know the team and projects. At the end of the funding period, the OSMF will evaluate the impact and benefit of the facilitator position and may decide to continue funding the role.

The person will work from their premises, and determine their own schedule. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a global organisation; working with people in different time zones and handling related scheduling constraints is expected.

Monday, 06. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

Estudio de caso: El origen del brote de cólera de 1854


El brote de cólera de 1854 en Londres representa un hito fundamental en la historia de la epidemiología. Este estudio de caso nos transporta a una época en la que la comprensión de las enfermedades infecciosas era limitada y las teorías sobre su propagación eran muy diferentes a las actuales. A través de la meticulosa investigación de John Snow, descubriremos cómo un médico logró d

John Snow.jpg

El brote de cólera de 1854 en Londres representa un hito fundamental en la historia de la epidemiología. Este estudio de caso nos transporta a una época en la que la comprensión de las enfermedades infecciosas era limitada y las teorías sobre su propagación eran muy diferentes a las actuales. A través de la meticulosa investigación de John Snow, descubriremos cómo un médico logró desentrañar el misterio de este brote, desafiando las creencias establecidas y sentando las bases de la epidemiología moderna. Este caso no solo nos enseña sobre la importancia de la investigación epidemiológica para controlar enfermedades infecciosas, sino que también nos revela cómo la combinación de observación cuidadosa, pensamiento crítico y métodos innovadores puede conducir a descubrimientos transformadores en el campo de la salud pública y ¡Lo descubrió haciendo el primer análisis geoespacial de la historia!

Para la actualización de este estudio de caso usaremos la herramienta Umap para rehacer el análisis de John Snow que identifica la fuente del brote de cólera de 1854 en Broad Street, Londres .

Para este ejemplo, utilizaremos los datos del blog de Robin quén se encargó de digitalizar los datos originales de Snow.

  1. Recuperemos los datos y descomprimámoslos en nuestro directorio actual desde: http://www.rtwilson.com/downloads/SnowGIS_v2.zip

  2. Transformamos los datos .shp en geojson

  3. Cargamos la información y visualizamos los resultados del mapa de colera de 1854

Sunday, 05. January 2025

OpenStreetMap User's Diaries

OpenStreetMap NextGen Development Diary #22 — Mobile Support

Starting the new year with milestone achievements! In this 22nd development update, we’re excited to present comprehensive mobile support improvements across OpenStreetMap-NG. We’ve also reached critical development milestones that put us on the final stretch toward public beta testing.

🔖 You can read other development diaries here:
www.openstreetmap.org/user/NorthCrab/diary/

Starting the new year with milestone achievements! In this 22nd development update, we’re excited to present comprehensive mobile support improvements across OpenStreetMap-NG. We’ve also reached critical development milestones that put us on the final stretch toward public beta testing.

🔖 You can read other development diaries here:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/NorthCrab/diary/

⭐ This project is open-source — join us today:
https://github.com/openstreetmap-ng/openstreetmap-ng

GitHub Stars

🛈 This initiative is not affiliated with the OpenStreetMap Foundation.


Video Summary

This week’s video demonstration focuses primarily on our mobile interface improvements. Through practical examples and side-by-side comparisons, I showcase how OpenStreetMap-NG elevates the mobile experience.

⬇ Click the image below to play

Video thumbnail

or click here: https://peertube.monicz.dev/w/kRt9W3qqcRtxSwxsGiXmUN


Enhanced Mobile Support

We’ve significantly improved mobile support across the entire platform, addressing critical usability issues present in the current OSM implementation. Highlighted enhancements include:

  • Persistent search bar on mobile devices
  • Smooth, animated navigation transitions for a more polished experience
  • Reorganized navigation menu with logical grouping and improved accessibility
  • Optimized map scale indicator placement for better readability
  • Better text formatting and spacing in content pages like “About”
  • Properly scaled and positioned UI elements across all pages
  • Functional GPS traces interface (fixing current broken mobile experience)
  • Responsive settings pages with proper layout and scrolling
  • Working OAuth2 application management interface
  • Properly rendered profile pages with optimized spacing
  • Mobile-friendly sign-in and sign-up pages (great first-time experience)

While these highlights showcase our most notable improvements, we’ve applied the same attention to detail across every corner of OpenStreetMap-NG. Each page, component, and interaction has been optimized for mobile users.

▶️ Watch video segment


Planet Replication Sync

We’ve achieved another milestone in OpenStreetMap-NG’s data synchronization capabilities. The project now supports continuous planet replication data synchronization (minutely, hourly, daily), expanding beyond our previous reliance on planet dumps and extracts.

With replication support in place, OpenStreetMap-NG gains the ability to generate custom geographic extracts without requiring additional tooling. Additionally, this functionality marks a foundation for the future OSM Ruby to OSM-NG migration procedure.

▶️ Watch video segment


Preparation For Release

As we approach the public beta testing phase, we’ve completed several critical components:

  • Email notification system (including message templates)
  • Background automatic changeset management
  • Various performance optimizations and fixes

What’s Left:

  • Dark mode implementation

The focus on implementing dark mode before public beta is strategic - we want to gather useful feedback on this feature during the testing period when user engagement will be at its peak. This approach ensures we can identify and address any visual or usability issues early in the development cycle.

▶️ Watch video segment


🌠 Sponsors

This update was sponsored by 17 individual supporters on Liberapay and GitHub Sponsors.

Thank you people of the map! 🦀

Early supporters of the project receive something special: the time-limited OpenStreetMap-NG Founder profile badge. We believe in inclusive community building, so this unique reward is available to every supporter during the development phase, regardless of donation amount.


weeklyOSM

weeklyOSM 754

26/12/2024-01/01/2025 GNU/Linux.ch dedicates an article to BRouter-Web [1] | © GNU/Linux.ch || Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors About us weeklyOSM has been advertised irregularly on Bluesky since issue 692, October 2023. As of issue 753, we will regularly announce the publication of a new issue there. Mapping Anne-Karoline Distel continued to remotely map Indianola, Iowa…<

26/12/2024-01/01/2025

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GNU/Linux.ch dedicates an article to BRouter-Web [1] | © GNU/Linux.ch || Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

About us

  • weeklyOSM has been advertised irregularly on Bluesky since issue 692, October 2023. As of issue 753, we will regularly announce the publication of a new issue there.

Mapping

  • Anne-Karoline Distel continued to remotely map Indianola, Iowa (we reported earlier).
  • Noha307’s mapping of footpaths around Albuquerque International Sunport, New Mexico, USA, marked the final 2024 changeset in the OSM database (December 31, 2024, 23:59:55 +0000). Shortly afterwards, TrickyFoxy became the first mapper to contribute to the OSM database in 2025, with the mapping of buildings in Volgograd Oblast, Russia (January 1, 2025, 00:00:00 +0000). You can view all the mappers who contributed during the historic database year transition here.
  • M!dgard shared their project of mapping the WWI Western Front demarcation stones, known as ‘demarcatiepalen’ in Dutch and ‘bornes Vauthier’ in French. After identifying and adding all 19 Belgian stones to OpenStreetMap, they cross-referenced the data with the Flemish heritage agency’s database. In France, only 22 of 77 stones have been mapped and M!dgard plans to collaborate with a French heritage organisation to complete the task using their detailed list and photo album of the remaining stones.
  • SK53 compiled, classified, and analysed the nearly 860 keys used to describe amenity=pub objects in Great Britain.

Community

  • Ilya Zverev highlighted the disparity between donations from Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon to OpenStreetMap and their $3 million annual Overture Maps membership fees, contrasting this with significant contributions from non-profits like the German Sovereign Tech Fund. Zverev praised the OSMF for using some donations to create jobs, while Simon Poole added that Overture’s fees exclude additional staffing costs and critiqued Prototype Fund grants for focusing on lower-priority activities. Poole argued that addressing structural issues, such as competition from the Linux Foundation, should be prioritised over software development.
  • Jiří Eischmann emphasised the function of #LocusMap that he really likes: ‘you can take a photo of a map, calibrate it with the standard map and then display it as an overlay’.
  • Gregory Marler reflected on November’s #30DayMapChallenge in their OSM diary, highlighting standout artistic contributions that leveraged OpenStreetMap data. Gregory announced that they have a YouTube video series discussing their top picks, with new parts releasing every other day.
  • Jiri Vlasak reflected on the fifth year of their ‘Divide and Map. Now.’ (DAMN) project, a tool for dividing large mapping areas into smaller segments for collaboration. In 2024, challenges included performance issues with over 300,000 segments, which were resolved through pagination and size limits, and confusing JavaScript clients, which are planned for improvement in 2025. The project transitioned to OAuth 2.0 and added a ‘divide to squares’ feature compatible with MapSwipe. They aim to make JavaScript clients more user-friendly and to achieve self-hosting in 2025.
  • Yasunori Kirimoto published a summary of the MapLibre User Group Japan Activities in 2024.

Events

  • In these OSM user diaries you can read about people’s experiences of the State of the Map LatAm 2024: tatipara , kauevestena , and crestrepo .

OSM research

  • The paper ‘Mapping Public Urban Green Spaces Based on OpenStreetMap and Sentinel-2 Imagery Using Belief Functions’, published in 2021, by Ludwig and others, showed the use of OpenStreetMap data to reduce uncertainties in the classification of green areas in Sentinel-2 imagery.

Maps

  • Benjamin Tran Dinh and Sarah Mamy have developed Chronotrains, an interactive rail map of Europe that shows how far you can travel by train within 8 hours.
  • Klas Karlsson explained how to add and style OpenStreetMap Vector Tiles with QGIS.

OSM in action

  • Hackaday showcased Arnis, an open-source project by Louis Erbkamm that transforms OpenStreetMap data into detailed Minecraft maps. Written in Rust, the tool allows users to import geographic areas into Minecraft by specifying coordinates, enabling immersive exploration of real-world locations. Although computationally intensive, Arnis is functional and the project welcomes community contributions to enhance its features.
  • The Bandung city government has developed an OpenStreetMap-based interactive map that provides public access to traffic camera feeds across the city of Bandung, Indonesia.
  • SPOT is an AI-driven tool designed to simplify the critical task of geolocating images, videos, or eyewitness reports. A beta release is publicly available, as is a tutorial.

Open Data

  • Ronan Ysebaert, Marianne Guérois, and Louis Laurian published an open data archive using a 1 km grid at an EU scale. It shows the accessibility indicators of services related to cities and towns. It follows a reproducible, transparent, and updatable framework and uses only OSRM data, based on OpenStreetMap.
  • Martina Oefelein tooted that the Munich Transport Corporation (MVG) has published anonymised usage data for their MVG-Rad bike-sharing service for download. She analysed the data using statistics and maps, and has shared her findings and code in a GitHub repository.

Software

  • [1] GNU/Linux.ch introduced the BRouter as a versatile route planning tool based on OpenStreetMap, suitable for various transport modes including walking, cycling, and driving. With features such as route customisation, elevation profiles, no-go zones, and export options, it offers flexibility and functionality for users on desktops or mobile devices.
  • Victor and Eugene shared OsmAnd’s 2025 New Year Resolutions, showcasing several new planned features to be implemented this year. They also recounted several of the 2024 resolutions that were successfully fulfilled last year.
  • Dirk Stöcker has issued a challenge to the JOSM community to improve the completeness of translations in the programme, as only 7 out of the 41 supported languages exceed 99% coverage for the core interface. Important languages like French still lag behind, prompting the call to action for 2025 to become the ‘Year of the JOSM I18n Contest’. Contributions can be coordinated via the Translations page, where a statistics table highlights the current progress.
  • Sesivany has evaluated the various OSM-based map applications for mobile phones: Mapy.cz, OsmAnd, LocusMap, Organic Maps, and Freemap.sk.

Programming

  • Ilya Zverev has invited Every Door users to brainstorm potential software architecture alternatives for extending the app with external modules, extensions, plugins, or whatever.
  • Pavel has described how to analyse OpenStreetMap changesets with DuckDB and dbt, focusing on converting large XML datasets into the efficient Parquet format for streamlined workflows and storage in S3 for dashboards. They demonstrated solutions to challenges such as de-duplication, resource management and metadata integration, using GIS tools, automation via GNU Make and Parallel, and lightweight pipelines for flexible analysis and visualisation.
  • The experimental tool Godview integrates OpenStreetMap data with a Large Language Model to offer a chat-based map service. Created by Reddit user Ranoutofusernames, during the holidays, to address limitations in Google Maps, it allows users to combine natural language prompts such as ‘cheap hotels, petrol stations, and hiking parking lots between Hamburg and Berlin’ for multi-faceted map results. Currently it is limited to iOS and capped at five search results. Godview’s ability to integrate multiple queries and navigate seamlessly to results, highlights its potential as a robust alternative to Google Maps.
  • hlfan has developed a solution for programmatically identifying and fixing gaps in route relations within OpenStreetMap data.

Releases

  • Alexis Lecanu announced that Baba, a new Panoramax client for Android, can be downloaded from Google Play, and since it is the first version, he is asking people to report on GitLab any problems they encounter.
  • Yohan Boniface has noted in uMap’s December change log fixes for some minor bugs and improvements to the functionality of this useful web map creator.
  • OsmAnd has released version 4.9 for iOS, featuring enhanced multi-layer GPX track support, customisable audio alerts for navigation, and improved map rendering. Additionally, this version introduces an updated interface for trip planning and new tools for offline editing, offering a more streamlined and versatile user experience.
  • Benjamin (aka piratenpanda) tooted about the improvements to veggiekarte, which has resulted in better cluster loading times.

Did you know that …

  • … the Participatory Mapping Observatory, one of the initiatives coordinated by IVIDES.org, has published a book on techniques and cases of success in participatory mapping and social cartography, in Brazilian Portuguese and with a free download > ? The Institute plans to release a book in 2025 with case studies on collaborative mapping, most of them using OpenStreetMap.
  • … Alexay Noskov and collaborators have published a collection of datasets for the WeGovNow project? They contains data provided by stakeholders, OpenStreetMap data, under the OSM data licence (ODbL), and data generated by the IGIS.TK applications. You can read more about the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and its collaborative network.
  • … OpenFreeMap lets you display custom maps on your website and apps for free? It provides several vector tilesets, including liberty, positron and Brighton.
  • … the OSM planet file is currently about 2006 GB in uncompressed XML format and about 146 GB when compressed with bzip2?
  • … OsmAnd offers hourly offline map updates for free to OpenStreetMap contributors? Tungmar recalled being surprised years ago when he had access without a subscription, only to realise recently that it stopped because he was no longer logged in.

Other “geo” things

  • A gold robbery suspect in Banyumas, Indonesia, admitted during police interrogation that they had relied on Google Maps to identify potential targets. Specifically, they searched for local gold stores that lacked security grilles on their shopfronts.
  • Christopher May highlighted the AuthaGraph projection, an approximately equal-area projection created by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa. The projection achieves its accuracy by dividing the globe into 96 triangles, mapping them onto a tetrahedron, and then unfolding it into a rectangle. This method minimises the distortions common in traditional Mercator and Dymaxion projections, offering a more accurate representation of Earth’s geography, particularly at the high latitudes.
  • In the final #geomobpod of the year, the podcast’s hosts, Ed, Steven, and Alastair, got together to reflect on 2024.
  • Malay Haldar and the Airbnb engineering team have explored how to optimise map search rankings differently from traditional list-based rankings. Maps require unique strategies due to uniform user attention across scattered pins, rather than a top-down decay in lists. Innovations included limiting map pins to maximise discoverability, introducing tiered attention with ‘mini-pins’ for less prominent listings, and recentering maps to prioritise high-probability bookings near the centre.
  • A Deutschlandfunk report discussed recent discoveries revealing that the Amazon basin, long thought to be an untouched wilderness, once hosted advanced urban centres. Using technologies including LiDAR, researchers have uncovered evidence of sophisticated ‘garden cities’, challenging old assumptions, and supporting indigenous legends of thriving civilisations in the Amazon.
  • A research group from the University of Ghent, Belgium, published a study in 2020 in which they were able to prove that there is no ‘Mercator effect’. You can take the test as well. This quiz was found via Paulina Rowinska’s MapMatics, How we navigate the world through numbers, recommended by the editorial team!

Upcoming Events

Where What Online When Country
Montrouge Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris 2025-01-02 flag
OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting 2025-01-03
Moers Community-Hackday vom 3. – 5. Januar 2024 im JuNo, Moers Repelen 2025-01-03 – 2025-01-05 flag
Model Town Tehsil 13th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online) 2025-01-05 flag
Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng] 2025-01-07
San Jose South Bay Map Night 2025-01-08 flag
Stuttgart Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen 2025-01-08 flag
iD Community Chat 2025-01-08
Salt Lake City OSM Utah Monthly Map Night 2025-01-09 flag
Lorain County OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup 2025-01-09 flag
Bangalore South OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party 2025-01-11 flag
Model Town Tehsil 13th OSM Delhi Mapping Party 2025-01-12 flag
København OSMmapperCPH 2025-01-12 flag
Richmond MapRVA Meetup with OSM US 2025-01-14 flag
Chambéry Mapathon en ligne saison 24/25 CartONG 2025-01-13 flag
中正區 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #72 2025-01-13 flag
München Münchner OSM-Treffen 2025-01-14 flag
Asamblea General Extraordinaria Enero 2025 Asociación OSM España (Online) 2025-01-14
[Online] Map-py Wednesday 2025-01-15
[Online] Map-py Wednesday 2025-01-16
Utrecht Nieuwjaarsborrel OSGeo.nl, OSM.nl en QGIS Gebruikersvereniging Nederland 2025-01-19 flag
Panoramax monthly international meeting 2025-01-20
Hannover OSM-Stammtisch Hannover 2025-01-20 flag

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.