I NEED HELP WITH MY EDITS

View, edit, and create GPX files online with advanced route planning capabilities and file processing tools, beautiful maps and detailed data visualizations.

https://gpx.studio

The UK government has been consulting on changing copyright rules to allow copying of creative works by AI companies.

We have responded to the consultation, arguing – like many – that creators’ rights must be respected.

Over the last year we have directly experienced the problems caused by AI bots.

Our Photomap contains almost 150,000 images, taken by local cyclists, providing an unparalleled resource of cycling/transport-related imagery, all geolocated and with rich metadata and categorisation.

These photos represent the hard work of our site users, who have uploaded them to demonstrate cycle/road infrastructure in areas they cycle – using this to demonstrate things that perhaps they would like to see fixed, or showing how good ideas could be transferred elsewhere.

As such, this material forms potential AI training material. That is the process of AI companies copying, or ‘scraping’ a website like ours to make a copy of the material, which they then use as raw material.

In the last 12 months, we have seen an explosion of illicit scraping activity. We have had to take increasingly extreme measures to protect the intellectual property of our users from this theft. We have seen sustained bot scraping with hundreds, even over 1,000, concurrent requests, aiming to copy our database.

This is the reality of AI scraping.

Our usage policy and our robots.txt file explicitly deny scraping for generative AI purposes, yet it is happening constantly from illicit operators. These bots almost always do not identify themselves, using vast numbers of randomised IP address from residential proxies, and using faked user-agents. As such, this is purely illicit activity. No legitimate AI company would act in this way (legitimate bots are broadly obeying our robots.txt).

These are companies copying our database without payment, creating costs which we have to bear, and in extremis denying access to legitimate visitors to our site.

These bots are not only copying our users’ images for use without attribution, they are also stealing our Database Right on an unlicensed basis. Database rights cover the overarching collection of objects in a database (in our case photographs) as distinct from the items themselves. Database rights recognise the extensive costs we (CycleStreets) have borne over many years to provide, host and facilitate, the ability to host photos.

Dealing with controlling this nuisance has also been a huge distraction from productive work, like the design changes and user-interface simplifications we are gradually rolling out around the site.

The current AI crawler bot theft situation has also highlighted the inadequacy of the robots.txt technical standard. We believe a next-generation standard to replace robots.txt is urgently needed, where allowance/denial of bot activity is determined by purpose rather than identity. We have no problem with traditional search engines. By contrast, unlicensed use by AI provides no benefit to our users or ourselves – it creates only costs.

Our response to the government consultation therefore expresses our view that:

• Copyright should not be weakened and should retain resting with the rights-holder.
• There is nothing to stop AI companies approaching rights-holders / those holding a database right (like ourselves) to request licensed use.
• We encourage innovation in the licensing space to facilitate automated bot agreement to licensing and associated payments.
• Robots.txt needs to be replaced with a next-generation, modern, JSON-based standard that works on the basis of usage rather than identity.
• AI bots must be required to publish their AI ranges.
• AI bots must be required to use identifiable User-Agent strings.

We have signed the Statement on AI training, and encourage others to do so. Thanks to Ed Newton-Rex and others who have worked hard on this issue.

Please do contact your MP to raise these issues, and do kindly point them to this post.

Mary Magdalena’s skull.

I used to enjoy making edits on OSM, but now it is so cluttered with every little detail in some areas that you can’t even zoom in to see anything but symbols. I don’t know how to cancel my username. Sorry folks, but I am outta here!

.

How to delete?

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_did_you_contribute%3F

13/02/2025-19/02/2025

About us

• Hiroshi Miura shared a video that explains the weekly process of managing the Japanese edition of weeklyOSM.

Mapping

• Comments are sought on a revised sensory_friendly=* proposal, for tagging to indicate if a feature provides sensory accessibility for people with sensory processing sensitivity and if there are designated sensory friendly hours.
• The practitioners=* proposal was unsuccessful with 7 votes in favour, 8 against and 3 abstentions. The initial sensory_friendly=* proposal was also unsuccessful with 9 votes in favour, 6 against and 0 abstentions.

Mapping campaigns

• ^[1] Séverin Ménard has posted an update on the building damage assessment he has been coordinating, with OSM France, after Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte. The MapStore tool he shared lets you access map views and a slideshow in English and French tracing the history of this mapping, mixing OSM data with the Rapid Mapping from Copernicus and post-disaster images from Pleiades. After an initial phase over Mamoudzou to test the methodology, JOSM presets, and map style to get feedback from contributors, a new TM project has been launched for Bandraboua in the north of the main island. The aim is to map wherever Pleiades post-disaster imagery is available.

Community

• Damien reviewed ► several mapping applications that might be useful for cycling activities, such as OsmAnd, Waymarked Trails, OpenCampingMap, BRouter, GeoVelo, and StreetComplete.
• Anne-Karoline Distel boarded the Kilkenny to Fiddown bus, mapping its route, while capturing street-level imagery and conducting drive-by mapping along the way.
• Geochicas, for the second consecutive year, is conducting a survey (hint: the countries in the drop-down menu are in Spanish, thus make sure to translate them before submitting) on gender diversity and inclusion within the global open mapping community. This year, the survey has been expanded to include the OSGeo community to compare results over different periods.
• While mapping the history of Cincinnati in OpenHistoricalMap, Hayden Schiff discovered a paper street that never existed but has appeared on local maps for the past 150 years.
• Alec has recounted his experience as a first-time OpenStreetMap contributor.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Grant Slater, OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Senior Site Reliability Engineer, has published a detailed post-mortem report on the 68-hour OSM outage that occurred 15 to 18 December 2024 (we reported earlier). The report provides a minute-by-minute breakdown of the challenges faced by the OSM Operations team during the incident. To prevent similar disruptions in the future, the team plans to upgrade out-of-band access, currently used as a manual fallback uplink during ISP outages. Additionally, they are exploring backup ISP options for the Amsterdam servers. The findings from this investigation were going to be discussed at the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend on 15 and 16 February.

Events

• You can explore the initiatives for Open Data Day 2025 on the ODD global map. The events will occur in March and some of them have open calls for registration.
• Miurahr reported that the OSGEO Hokkaido team and the SotM Japan team hosted FOSS4G Hokkaido and State of the Map Japan 2024 on Saturday 15 February, in Sapporo, Hokkaido, and shared several links to presentations. The recording is available ► from the event’s page.
• The website of the State of the Map 2025 has been published.

OSM in action

• Nau has discovered that a smartwatch can retrieve railway line and maximum speed data from OpenStreetMap, allowing railway passengers to monitor their journey in real time and compare it with the train’s current speed.
• Jonah Brüchert has introduced Transitous, an open routing service designed to improve public transportation navigation by integrating multiple transit agencies’ APIs. By leveraging publicly available timetable data, the project aims to provide more comprehensive and seamless route planning. The presentation highlights the progress made so far and outlined future developments and potential applications of the service.

Licenses

• The course of the Tour de La Provence, France, was plotted on a map with an OpenStreetMap base layer. However the official CIC website did not mention the required OSM contributors’ attribution.

Programming

• Qiita user krnsk17 shared ► a comparison of APIs between OpenStreetMap and ZENRIN Maps. He created a search programme snippet to find a covered walkway for rainy days. He concluded that the proprietary ZENRIN API is easier to use, while the OSM API is more flexible but more challenging for implementing search functionality.
• AKD, from OpenStreetMap Ireland, has showcased data extraction techniques from OpenStreetMap using Overpass Turbo, presenting several query examples.

Releases

• The GDAL/OGR 3.10.2 bug fix version ‘Gulf of Mexico’ has been released and developers are saying it is ‘to be used from the darkest depths of Gulf of Mexico to the top of
  Denali’.
• Happy birthday to QGIS. It has been 23 years since the release of v0.0.0.

Other “geo” things

• Barry Sharples provided a brief history of English waymarks, originally introduced to prevent winter travellers from perishing after losing their way in harsh weather conditions across England’s remote mountainous and moorland regions.
• Narcélio de Sá celebrated the release of a Portuguese version of the book Fina and the Maps (we reported earlier), an educational resource that teaches children and young people about digital cartography and collaborative mapping. The translation, carried out with his wife, Thaynara Batista, expands access to knowledge and encourages free cultural and digital collaboration from an early age, while highlighting the importance of open education and the impact of OpenStreetMap on building collective knowledge.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2025-02-24
Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up		2025-02-25
Granada	Introducción a OpenStreetMap		2025-02-25
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #66	✓	2025-02-25
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam: End of Winter Mapping Party		2025-02-26
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2025-02-26
	MapRVA Virtual Mapping Session		2025-02-28
Flensburg	2. Open Data Day in Flensburg		2025-03-01
Dwarka	14th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online)		2025-03-02
	MapRoulette online Community Meeting		2025-03-04
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2025-03-05
Molenbeek-Saint-Jean – Sint-Jans-Molenbeek	OpenStreetMap meetup in Brussels		2025-03-04
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2025-03-04
	Online-Diskussion OSM-Förderprogramm des FOSSGIS e.V.		2025-03-04
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2025-03-05
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2025-03-04
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2025-03-05
	iD Community Chat		2025-03-05
Brno	Kvartální OSM pivo		2025-03-05
	OSM Indoor Meetup		2025-03-05
	Missing Maps – DRK & MSF Online Mapathon [deutsch]		2025-03-05
Moers	Starke Frauen, Brot und Rosen – Community-Hackday im JuNo in Moers		2025-03-07 – 2025-03-09
Dwarka	14th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2025-03-09
København	OSMmapperCPH		2025-03-09
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #74		2025-03-10

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 PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, derFred, ediyes, mcliquid, miurahr.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Baru selesai mengerjakan Jalan Dewi Sartika (dibantu gsv), tinggal survey ke lokasi langsung untuk detailing later kalau sudah pulkam hehe..

Sekarang waktunya mengerjakan jalan sebrang sungai (Jl. nusa indah & cempaka)

Buenas tardes, soy Osvaldo y estoy buscando ayuda para colocar un mapa de ruta en el itinerario de viaje de mi agencia de viajes. la idea es por ejemplo:

DÍA 01 MÉXICO – LONDRES DÍA 02 - PARÍS DÍA 03 - ZURICH DÍA 04 - PARÍS DIA 05 - PARIS-MEXICO

Y DEBAJO UN MAPA QUE UNA CADA DESTINO CON UNA LINEA. el problema es que no estoy inmerso en este tema y deseo que me ayuden para lograrlo. utilizo Worpress y el tema Hello Elementor. muchas gracias por su atención

.

start

.

OSGEO Hokkaido team and SotM Japan team hosted the FOSS4G Hokkaido and State of the Map Japan 2024 in 15th February in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

The idea to organize two related conference was raised by Hokkosha in June 2024 and now is realized.

You can find the record at YouTube

Here is a link to the presentations.

• Web tool for Receipt mapping
• Behind the WeeklyOSM by Hiroshi Miura
• 20 years journey of OSM by AyameO

06/02/2025-12/02/2025

Mapping

• Requests for comments have been made on this proposal:
  • traffic_sign:id=* to explicitly reference official traffic sign identifiers, improving data accuracy and interoperability with external databases.
• The proposal to add golf=out_of_bounds, for mapping the area designated as being outside the boundaries of a golf hole, is open for voting until Saturday 22 February.

Mapping campaigns

• Mapbox has thrown down the gauntlet to the German mapping community, claiming that there are roads in Germany that are yet to be mapped. The contributors wish them luck and hope that Brian Sperlongano has popped enough corn for all of us.
• In response to recent disruptions in the US Federal Government disruption of foreign assistance, HOT is launching a 90 day campaign of ‘Open Maps for Humanitarian Needs’, inviting volunteers to map.
• YouthMappers at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia is set to host a mapping party in Bandung, aiming to document and identify local plant species.

Community

• Just van den Broecke was interviewed by OpenCage regarding the OpenStreetMap Alpumapa Workshop.
• jbcharron shared ► a series of Overpass queries aimed at improving associatedStreet, a relation used to link streets with houses for addressing purposes.
• Gregory Marler has made a video detailing his experience of mapping Perth, Scotland, using EveryDoor and KeypadMapper.
• Amanda McCann and Milvus emerged as joint winners in OpenCage’s January 2025 edition of #fridaygeotrivia. This month’s challenge asked participants to name country pairs sharing a land border of less than 50 km in total length.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OpenStreetMap Foundation has announced that eight new entities, including ESRI, Meta, Microsoft, Niantic, and QGIS, joined its Corporate Membership Programme in 2024, contributing at various levels to support OSM’s infrastructure and community efforts.

Events

• IVIDES.org® has opened the pre-registration for the Green Open Data Day 2025 event, to be held on March 31, 2025, in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), as part of the initiatives celebrating open data around the world. You can consult the program and register today. In-person and remote activities are planned to map trees with OpenStreetMap and to remind people of the importance of vegetation cover in the face of the current climate crisis.
• Open Knowledge Brasil is looking for proposals suggesting open data events, including those associated with OpenStreetMap, to celebrate Open Data Day 2025. Ideas are needed by Monday 17 February.

OSM research

• Héctor Ochoa-Ortiz and Barbara Re, from the Università degli Studi di Camerino (Italy), have explored why and how commercial organisations contribute to OpenStreetMap, identifying five key ways: data editing, tool development, event sponsorship, OSM-related funding, and community building. These approaches are motivated by both business needs (for example, improving data quality) and social values (fostering community engagement). The paper also addresses challenges such as governance barriers and technical limitations that have led to alternative initiatives such as Overture Maps.
• Niroshan and Carswell have published a paper with an analysis of machine learning approaches, focusing on their application to updating OpenStreetMap.
• McKeen and others have published an article about the evolution of humanitarian mapping within the OpenStreetMap community, in the Scientific Reports. The authors concentrated on the editing of buildings and roads in specific countries. The analysis of temporal patterns revealed the impact of major disaster activations for the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, 2014 West Africa Ebola Crisis, 2015 Nepal Earthquake, and 2017 Mexico Earthquake – as well as Hurricanes Irma and Maria around the same time. Subsequent disaster activations showed less engagement from the OSM community except during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Outside of crisis times, the trend-cycle analysis revealed that humanitarian mapping experienced sustained growth regarding monthly added buildings and highways from 2012 to mid-2017. However, the trend-cycle analysis further depicted a consolidation phase since mid-2017.

Maps

• ^[1] -karlos- (aka DerKarlos) has revived his old 3D-rendered OpenStreetMap project ‘OSM go’ by integrating Panoramax images after Mapillary’s API shutdown, and is now exploring other improvements, including better 3D rendering techniques and possibly rewriting the project in Rust or Zig. You can view the Brandenburg Gate, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks. There is an ‘OSM go’ project page on the OSM wiki and at GitLab.
• After several months of research and server-intensive mapping, Charlie Plett has completed the British Empire’s territorial boundaries in OpenHistoricalMap.

OSM in action

• OK Klima ► has created a map that shows the current situation (mobility, energy, consumption, buildings, food system) of the municipalities in Switzerland in relation to the Paris climate agreement. OpenStreetMap data was used as the basis for calculating ► some of the indicators.

Programming

• Sarah Hoffmann has been selected for the one-year pilot of the Sovereign Tech Fellowship programme by the Sovereign Tech Agency. The fellowship will provide support for the maintenance of Nominatim, Photon, osm2pgsql, and pyosmium throughout the next year. Congratulations Sarah!
• Matthias Schwindt, from GPS Radler, explained ► how to install and use alternative OpenStreetMap maps on the Garmin Fenix 8 watch, covering different installation methods, map activation and usability, as well as insights into Garmin’s Outdoor Maps+ subscription service.

Releases

• Nominatim 5.0.0 has been released, completing its transition to a Python package by removing the PHP front end and bundled osm2pgsql, while introducing a reworked osm2pgsql import style configuration, better integration with osm2pgsql-themepark, and new pre-processing hooks for search queries, including improved handling of Japanese addresses.
• Version 1.6.0 of the Panoramax Android app Baba has been released. This version brings GNSS support for phones without Google services, better notifications for picture uploads, and allows saving to external storage.
• GeoCompas.AI has introduced the SAMGEO-API, a service designed to streamline geospatial AI Data generation using the SAM2 module, which promises to enhance workflows for mapping projects with tools like DS-Annotate and the JOSM Magic Wand plugin. OSM contributors have talked about their user experiences on the OSM Community forum.

Did you know that …

• … the geocompx project is a community-driven effort to provide resources for learning and teaching geocomputation in multiple programming languages? Geocomputation with R and Geocomputation with Python are available as open source books, with Geocomputation with Julia in development. The making maps section of the books describe various cartographic packages. The interactive maps are based on Leaflet and OpenStreetMap.

OSM in the media

• Eleven Landesamt für Geoinformation und Landesvermessung Niedersachsen (Hannover Germany) trainees have supported ► the Missing Maps project by mapping 1387 buildings in OpenStreetMap to aid humanitarian efforts. Guided by the German Red Cross, they focused on flood-prone areas near Montréal and other global regions, gaining valuable technical and social insights.Contributors from Québec were a bit surprised to read of this emergency call on the HOT Tasking Manager. Pierre Béland tooted suggesting that next time they might concentrate on climate change in Europe.

Other “geo” things

• Eva-Maria Weiß looked ► at the 20-year history of Google Maps and highlights the convenience of navigation and travel planning, while ethical concerns have been raised ► regarding data protection, corporate influence and the decline of independent map alternatives.
• The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has called for nominations for the 2025 Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction. Nominations must be submitted by Friday 28 March.
• Aurelio Morales has shown ► how to create maps in QGIS using DeepSeek, the new Chinese open-source AI.
• India’s newly launched navigation satellite has not reached its intended orbit due to an engine problem and is now in the wrong orbit, creating challenges for the country’s satellite navigation system. Currently, the Indian Space Research Organization is developing alternative mission strategies to utilise the satellite for navigation in an elliptical orbit.
• Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan have developed a new indoor navigation system for drones, utilising reflected radio waves.
• A study has analysed tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic gaps in Cameroon by integrating national TB notification data with geospatial datasets from OpenStreetMap and WorldPop. The findings reveal that 53% of TB cases and 50% of rifampicin-resistant TB cases remain undiagnosed, highlighting disparities in diagnostic tool distribution. The study underscores the need for better resource allocation and targeted interventions to improve TB detection in high-burden regions.
• The QGIS Resources Hub has a new website, which you can use to discover and explore the resources.
• Christoph Hormann has extended the coverage of his Musaicum satellite imagery to include the North Atlantic islands.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Richmond	MapRVA Meetup		2025-02-14
Pankow	200. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2025-02-14
Moers	I Love Free Software Day Community-Hackday vom 14. – 16. Februar 2025 im JuNo, Moers Repelen		2025-02-14 – 2025-02-16
東区	State of the Map Japan 2024		2025-02-14
Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend		2025-02-15 – 2025-02-16
	Panoramax monthly international meeting		2025-02-17
Budapest	OSM térképest 2025-02-18		2025-02-18
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2025-02-18
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2025-02-18
Arlon	Réunion Province de Luxembourg		2025-02-18
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2025-02-19
Bonn	185. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2025-02-18
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen	✓	2025-02-18
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2025-02-19
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2025-02-19
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2025-02-19
Guadalajara	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise, Maria Del Carmen Camarena, Eliud Ernandes, and Gustavo Larroyo		2025-02-20
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2025-02-21
Guadalajara	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise, Zyanya Yax, and Chino Ortega		2025-02-22
Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up		2025-02-25
Granada	Introducción a OpenStreetMap		2025-02-25
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam: End of Winter Mapping Party		2025-02-26
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2025-02-26
Flensburg	2. Open Data Day in Flensburg		2025-03-01
	14th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online)		2025-03-02

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 MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, derFred, jcr83, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

1. adım: ArcGIS REST sunucusunda yanlış konfigürasyon nedeniyle erişilebilen WFS endpoint ini kopyalıyoruz.
2. adım: QGIS indirip kuruyoruz, ardından WFS endpoint i ilgili kısımdan ekliyoruz.
3. adım: Endpointten elde edilen altlıkları açıyoruz ve istediklerimizi Shapefile olarak dışa aktarıyoruz.
4. adım: Son olarak eğer projeksiyon EPSG:4326 değilse JOSMdeki OpenData eklentisi genelde düzgün açamamakta. Bunun için de [https://mygeodata.cloud/ şu siteden] GeoJSON haline dönüştürüyoruz.
5. Adım: Multipolygonlar düzgün aktarılmadığı için sınırları elle bir daha düzenleyip OSM sunucusuna yolluyoruz. Veride azıcık kayma olması mümkün. (muhtemelen veriler önce ED50/TUREF’den aktarılıyor, biz de bunu bir daha dönüştürdük. hata payı var)

Hi

I am a absolute beginner in use the open street map tool.

I want to import publicly available data, postcode, address etc into an open street map. How do I do that?

Como mapear nomes de Rua no Openstreetmap com uma camada de fundo do senso-2022.

nesse video vou mostrar como mapear nomes de Rua com uma camada de fundo com dados de nomes de Rua disponibilizada pelo IBGE.

Link do arquivo usado no video com os dados de nomes de Rua de algumas cidades brasileiras para o mapeamento de nomes de Ruas no Openstreetmap.

OBS: use esse arquivo como camada de fundo.

https://projeto.softwarelivre.tec.br/s/3zxd54iSjr7YQZ4

Link do Video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyHqiViMMw&t=118s

Baixar os aquivos da camada de face do Senso-2022;IBGE http://gpsutil.com/CNEFE-2022/

Fonte: IBGE; Senso-2022

UMBRAOSM - União dos Mapeadores Brasileiro do Openstreetmap

This is cross-linked from my blog, posted on 11 July 2023

I recently joined the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in modering their Community Working Group and Tech Working Group’s discussions on AI-Assisted Mapping.

This, in part, was a reminder that I (still!) haven’t published an OSM diary that summarises my MA research, and that publication is still process. But it was also a reminder that I have yet to really summarise or bring together what I have shared so far.

Here’s a short summary:

Moderation: “Perspectives on AI-Assisted Mapping”

• Session 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTtTh6gHEwI
• Session 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfdDV9xSoo
• These two sessions - recorded as hour-long discussions with unrecorded 30 minute discussions at the end, were really interesting (and much-needed!) community spaces for the OSM community. I’m grateful to have been given the trust needed to facilitate, and learned a lot from folks there. Most notably, I think the discussion primarily ended up focusing not on “what we should be building” but what AI means to mappers in the first place (these being very different things)!

Talk: “Crisis Maps, Community, and Corporations (an Anthropologist’s perspective)”

• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0a84F0pdNU&t=351s
• Slides: Coming soon!
• This was given at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit in 2021 in the form of a talk. It shared some of my initial thoughts around crisis mapping specifically, and citations in that direction. In particular, I focused a bit more on what defines the kinds of crises that become maps, and informational asymmetries within the community.

Talk: “Mapping crises, communities and capitalism on OpenStreetMap: situating humanitarian mapping in the (open source) mapping supply chain”

• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkdY-NG0LI&t=636s
• Slides: https://zenodo.org/record/7004452
• This talk was given at the State of the Map conference (the global summit for the OSM community) in 2022 in the science/research track. I shared a summary of my MA research, with many more ethnographic excerpts than I was able to bring to the previous iteration. In this talk, I focused primarily on asking the kinds of questions that emerged from my conversations, discussions, and observations over the last ~2 years. Folks’ reactions were so kind!

Thank yous

• Thank you for the invitation to moderate Arnalie Vicario and Petya Kangalova for the invitation to join the Community Working Group
• Thank you to the Science track at the State of the Summit for accepting my talk proposal, and for the supportive folks who asked questions at the conference and encouraged this work

В iD появилось поле “ID изображения в Panoramax”, которое отвечает за тег panoramax=*. Все, кто по моему совету заливал фото/панорамы на Panoramax теперь могут пометить POI (и не только) тегами с ID их фото на этом сервисе.

Imagery Offset Database

Todo mapeador aficionado debería saber que todas las imágenes obtenidas de forma remota (por ejemplo, imágenes satelitales y fotografías aéreas) y otras fuentes, excepto las trazas GPS, suelen estar mal alineadas con respecto a la realidad. Como resultado, el cartógrafo debería poder alinear las imágenes en su editor preferido utilizando trazas GPS. El proceso lleva entre 5 y 10 minutos y, debido a la precisión del GPS, los resultados varían. No es tan malo si eres el único cartógrafo en cientos de kilómetros a lo largo de cientos de años, pero para la cartografía cooperativa, incluso una variación de un metro importa.

Un análisis del problema reveló dos posibles soluciones, ambas igualmente efectivas. La base de datos de desplazamientos y el complemento de desplazamientos implementan ambas; no se excluyen, sino que se complementan entre sí, lo que permite al mapeador verificar los desplazamientos no solo con trazas GPS, sino utilizando un método de alineación alternativo.

Cada objeto en la base de datos OSM tiene coordenadas (en grados en la proyección WGS84/EPSG:4326), una fecha de creación, un autor y una descripción, que ayudan a determinar la aplicabilidad y la cobertura de un desplazamiento.

Es una buena práctica utilizar esta base de datos en nuestro mapeo de cada área. Si te interesa aprender a usar este mecanismo puedes leer: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ES:Imagery_Offset_Database

Some days ago, I searched online for a bus route that was supposed to be newly introduced to go from Kilkenny to New Ross. I didn’t find it, but I found another one which pleased me even more which goes from Kilkenny to Fiddown (ref=891). The reason it pleases me is that the other route is already partly covered by another bus company and I don’t really need it, and the 891 covers a route that goes past several historical sites and at least two hiking routes. Since I don’t drive, I will certainly avail of it myself. I don’t mind organizing myself lifts, and I enjoy the company of my “drivers”, but sometimes it’s good to be more independent. For context, the bus route started on January 20th 2025.

Street-level imagery

So I decided to track it, because I don’t really trust Transport for Ireland’s route maps, and I can’t be sure that they didn’t use proprietary map material to provide the routes online, even though their background map is OSM. But I have seen routes on their website which they seemed to have taken out of thin air which had nothing to do with the actual route the bus takes.

From the bus schedule, I had a fair idea of where the bus was going to go, and I had travelled most of the roads already and captured street-level-imagery, but I thought it would be no harm to do it again. Of course, that is a bit tricky on the bus, and I couldn’t ask the driver to leave the GoPro Max on the roof of the bus. I had brought the magnetic foot, but turns out, there is very little plane metal space on the bus. So the setup was a bit wobbly, but it worked. It only swayed in the bendier bends.

It’s partly held in place by my bag:

I was sure it was gonna crash at some point, especially with some of the bumpier rural roads, but it didn’t.

This is the sequence where I had least coverage before.

The battery lasted just about long enough.

As usual, I uploaded to Mapillary first and then to Panoramax. I might have forgotten to change the viewpoint angle on the Mapillary imagery… At least on Panoramax, I could go in and change it later.

Drive-by mapping

Speed limits and road ref numbers

A project I’m working on at the moment is adding maxspeed to the rural roads. On February 7th 2025, a directive from the Department for Transport lowered the speed limit on the “local rural roads” (the ones where the reference number starts with L and those without any reference number, I presume - I’m still waiting for a reply from the Department for Transport) from 80 km/h to 60km/h. If you’ve ever driven on one of those, you’ll wonder how anyone in their right state of mind would even attempt to go at 80 km/h, but that was the law. We’re (OSM) still missing a lot of the L numbers nationwide, because of course, the government is not able to provide them as open data, that would be too easy. So, that was one of the things I looked out for - missing L numbers. It would have saved me a lot of frustration, if they were displayed closer to the junction in OSMAnd, but I had to long-click on everyone of them where it wasn’t displayed to see whether it was already mapped or not. I also added notes for missing speed limit signs, even where they wrongly still displayed 80 km/h. I mapped those on the desktop PC without the wrong speed limit, just to know where the traffic signs are for later reference and to be able to split the highway at the correct location. I’m also not quite sure how to map speed limit signs which have different speed limits on the front and back, bc I can’t use direction then.

Bus stops

I used OSMAnd for tracking the routes, adding notes and adding the odd POI (post boxes, defibs, wayside shrine etc).

When I got on the bus, I asked the bus driver to point out where the new bus stops are, because I did not expect bus stop signs for most of them. #Ireland #experience He said I was right, because it was “a new bus route”. Sure, that makes sense. We wouldn’t want people to know where the bus stops are to promote the route and establish sustainable routines, would we?

Anyways, some locations are therefore also only estimates, because he didn’t slow down, and just told me the name of the place in passing. Someone will have to re-survey in about a year, when there is a slightly better chance of bus stop signs, but I have my doubts that they will ever come. As a Canadian friend put it, “oral tradition is still very strong in Ireland”.

The “highlight” of the trip was an unscheduled excursion into the bus depot, because the heating on the bus wasn’t working, and the gaggle of bus drivers (four at some point on the bus) thought it would help to add water somewhere. It didn’t. So, four hours at about 8°C. The sacrifices we make for the general good. But the bus depot is mapped now which one would not locate from the street.

Here’s the route, if anyone is interested.

construction

I also spotted a couple newly built or under construction houses for which I also left notes. Most of them are not visible on the outdated aerial imagery yet, so I drew estimates and left fixmes.

Addresses

I think I spotted one house number and three house names which I added to the map. Because, unlike in other countries like Lithuania or the Netherlands, the government also doesn’t publish open address data. Do I sound frustrated? That’s because I am.

I think in total, I left 7 pages of notes: Notes by b-unicycling.

All in all, I’m glad to report that I was not the only passenger on the bus; there was a bus driver in training and for most of the journey, there were one to four other people with me. The word has spread already, it seems.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, please setup and configure a Oracle Cloud instance for mapillary tools. Please refer to this guide for instructions on how to accomplish this.

Uploading a 360 video to Mapillary on Oracle Cloud instance from ARM computer

1. Login to Oracle Cloud Instances.
2. Select your Mapillary instance configured from this guide.
3. On the top bar, click Start to boot your instance and note any public IP address changes.
4. Open Terminal and SSH into your Oracle instance.
   • ssh -i ~/.ssh/oracle_mapillary_keys/[your private key (not .pub)] opc@[IP Address copied from Oracle]
5. Open a second terminal window and copy files from your local machine / SD card / elsewhere to your Oracle instance. This will place the file into the folder on your instance you created during configuration.
   • scp -i ~/.ssh/oracle_mapillary_keys/[your private key (not .pub)] [/path/to/local/360/file] opc@[IP Address copied from Oracle]:~/mapillary
6. Wait for these file(s) to transfer to the Oracle instance and switch back to the instance terminal window. Upload the transferred files to Mapillary.
   • mapillary_tools process_and_upload ~/mapillary/*.360
7. Wait for the upload(s) to complete. Delete the files off the instance and gracefully exit the instance.
   • rm ~/mapillary/*.360 && exit
8. Return to Oracle dashboard on the web, select Stop from the top bar to stop the instance from running while not in use.