weeklyOSM
weeklyOSM 843
10/09/2026-16/09/2026 [1] Geolocation of text data | © Image: DLR | Map data © by OpenStreetMap Contributors. Mapping v7.2.0 of the iD tagging schema has been released and includes tweaks to labels, new icons, changed fields for various presets, new search terms, better documentation, improved build scripts, and more. Helper presets for some subvariants of…Continue reading →
10/09/2026-16/09/2026

[1] Geolocation of text data | © Image: DLR | Map data © by OpenStreetMap Contributors.
Mapping
- v7.2.0 of the iD tagging schema has been released and includes tweaks to labels, new icons, changed fields for various presets, new search terms, better documentation, improved build scripts, and more. Helper presets for some subvariants of aerialway stations, silos, and parking spots were added to make mapping easier. An actual new preset was added for offshore platforms. It includes bugfixes such as dropping bad suggestions, taginfo report includes addTags, and post boxes in USA no longer have duplicate drivethrough fields. Work continues in the background on some larger features, but changes listed above will soon be present in iD, GoMap!!, EveryDoor, StreetComplete, and other editors.
Community
- Andy Allan gave a talk at State of the Map 2026 about how OpenStreetMap’s transport layer migrated from server-side rendered map tiles to client-side rendered vector styles.
- The CoMaps team shared their experience of attending State of the Map in Paris.
- dia-jules explained, in the context of the USA, how unnecessary traffic light penalty times arise in OSRM and similar route planners, and how to reduce them specifically. If junctions on shared trunk roads are tagged as usual with
highway=traffic_light at each node, the router counts multiple delays per junction, even though in reality only one set of traffic lights is passed. The more precise method instead places the tag individually at the stop line using traffic_light=signal and traffic_light:direction, so that each route passes through only one traffic light junction. To prioritise the revision, dia-jules drew on traffic volume and accident data from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Greater Chicago area.
- Emmanuel Arrechea looked
back on State of the Map 2026, held at the École Géodata in Paris, where he and other members of LaNum Pays Basque and Mapadour joined 535 participants from 45 countries. He picked out five points from more than 180 talks and workshops, among them the sponsorship of the conference by companies such as Michelin, TomTom, Esri, Thales, and Capgemini, and the way organisations including IGN, SNCF, and Géovélo build their services on OSM data. He also highlighted Grant Slater’s talk on AI crawlers straining OSMF infrastructure and driving some 400 fake account registrations a day. Most sessions are available on OSM France’s PeerTube channel with French subtitles.
OpenStreetMap Foundation
- Chris Fleming explained, in an OSM Blog post, how naming works in OpenStreetMap, from the primary
name= tag to additional keys such as name:en= and official_name=. He used the recent official_name:en-US=Lake America addition to Lake Ontario as an example of how the name tag remains unchanged even after an official renaming, so the lake remains findable under both names. He also noted that OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped over 115 million names to date.
Local chapter news
- Jochen Topf and Katja Haferkorn of FOSSGIS reported
►
that the German Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Public Sector Modernisation is inviting the open data community, stakeholders, and the interested public to participate in an online consultation to gather proposals and suggestions for a more developed framework, to be known as the ‘Roadmap for Open Data’. FOSSGIS has also compiled
a statement on the topic.
Events
- The State of the Map 2026 is already documented on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and OpenStreetMpa Wiki.
Education
- High5apps explained how to add a website tag to a shop or amenity using JOSM. This short tutorial sparked quite a discussion on HackerNews.
- Aoyama Gakuin University’s Furuhashi Laboratory have published
a video lecture for the 2026 academic year’s ‘Basic Spatial Information Science B’ course, which covers various topics related to OpenStreetMap.
OSM research
- HeiGIT presented an analysis of cycling infrastructure in 885 European cities, using OpenStreetMap data together with tree canopy and heat-stress data to assess how well cycling routes are protected from heat.
- HeiGIT presented new indicators for its hiWalk tool, developed in collaboration with Walk21, that use OpenStreetMap and other open data to assess factors such as path lighting, tactile paving, tree shade, and access to everyday services, providing a more comprehensive picture of urban walkability.
Maps
- cultours.app is a free interactive
map of roughly 100,000 cultural heritage sites in Germany: castles, churches, ruins, memorials including Stolpersteine, Roman and prehistoric sites, towers, and viewpoints. Data comes from OpenStreetMap via Overpass, enriched with Wikipedia and Wikidata. No login, no cookies, no tracking. The developer introduced
the project in the German community forum and is looking for feedback on a couple of tagging questions there.
- Dachlast.de presented
an OSM-based camping map for Germany and neighbouring countries, which combines a route planner with eight data layers. The map shows campsites, motorhome pitches, drinking water points, toilets, showers, supply and disposal points, charging points, and petrol stations along the planned route. The data is ‘harvested’ weekly from OpenStreetMap and, according to the operator, comprises around 400,000 points in the area stretching from Denmark to northern Italy, eastern France and western Poland.
- The Planet Thinks is a fully turnable globe displaying live changesets on OpenstreetMap as coloured sparks.
OSM in action
- [1] The Institute of Data Sciences at the DLR (German Aerospace Centre) explained
►
how geoparsing, that is, the identification of place names in texts and their association with geographical points, lines, or polygons, makes geodata usable for crisis management, supply chains, and research. The team is developing methods for toponym recognition and disambiguation, comparing these against multilingual benchmark data and applying them in various DLR projects, such as geolocating social media content during crises or analysing supply chains in the aviation industry. These methods are also being incorporated into the EU project OpenWebSearchEU, which aims to create a European alternative to dominant search providers, as well as into the collaboration with the Joint Research Centre on news analysis for European decision-makers.
- Heise reported that the interactive map by the action alliance ‘Heiße Luft‘
shows the locations of planned and under-construction data centres in Germany.
- Greenways Ireland presented the official website of the Irish Department of Transport for the country’s growing network of car-free cycle and walking routes. The interactive map uses OpenStreetMap with proper attribution and can be filtered by region, theme, and route length. As well as route descriptions, the site provides up-to-date information on route closures and an overview of the national greenway strategy.
- The Bayreuther Tagblatt reported
►
that St.-Georgen-Straße in Bindlach will be completely closed for around four days from 21 September due to development work. One positive point is that the map of the surrounding area used in the article is credited as ‘© openstreetmap.org/copyright’.
- Dominik Hochwarth, of Ingenieur.de, reported
►
that TU Graz has developed an OpenStreetMap-based tool that estimates the amounts of concrete, brick, and wood contained in buildings. The programme first determines a building’s size and geometry using OpenStreetMap data, then incorporates its building type, year of construction, construction method, and energy efficiency class. Based on this information, the software identifies a suitable building archetype and calculates which materials were likely used in its construction.
Software
- Steven Hooper has built BadCaddie, an app that uses OpenStreetMap golf-course data for course discovery and hole maps, alongside GNSS yardages, scorekeeping, and club suggestions, based on recorded shot distances. It is available for iPhone with an Apple Watch companion and as a plugin for Even Realities G2 glasses.
- Ian Wagner explained how Stadia Maps has been taking a fresh look at the cartographic decisions at every level of their map stack. Their recent water layer changes and water label updates have made a visible difference to the Stamen Terrain style.
- Tina reported that OsmAnd now allows users to colour their tracks based on speed, altitude, or slope data. Custom colour palettes help turn complex GPX data into clear, meaningful visual stories.
Releases
- The CoMaps team has released version 2026.08.31, which is now out across all release channels. New features include the display of reviews from Mangrove Reviews and a new transport modes UI on iOS.
- The OpenStreetMap Carto maintainers have prepared version 6.1.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet. Christoph Hormann detailed the visible changes introduced by this release in an OSM diary post.
Other “geo” things
- TechCrunch reported that Tern has won a contract from the US Army to deploy its low-cost GNSS alternative technology. The US$11.26 million contract will see the Army use Tern’s navigation technology in vehicles. According to its official website, Tern is developing a positioning system that does not rely on satellites, signals, or external infrastructure. It has been tested by the US Departments of Transportation and Defense.
- ABC Science’s Julian O’Shea explored how Australia has been mapped ‘wrong’ from a 1547 world map to modern GPS.
Upcoming Events
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 Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, HeiGIT, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.
Continue reading →
10/09/2026-16/09/2026

[1] Geolocation of text data | © Image: DLR | Map data © by OpenStreetMap Contributors.
Mapping
- v7.2.0 of the iD tagging schema has been released and includes tweaks to labels, new icons, changed fields for various presets, new search terms, better documentation, improved build scripts, and more. Helper presets for some subvariants of aerialway stations, silos, and parking spots were added to make mapping easier. An actual new preset was added for offshore platforms. It includes bugfixes such as dropping bad suggestions, taginfo report includes addTags, and post boxes in USA no longer have duplicate drivethrough fields. Work continues in the background on some larger features, but changes listed above will soon be present in iD, GoMap!!, EveryDoor, StreetComplete, and other editors.
Community
- Andy Allan gave a talk at State of the Map 2026 about how OpenStreetMap’s transport layer migrated from server-side rendered map tiles to client-side rendered vector styles.
- The CoMaps team shared their experience of attending State of the Map in Paris.
- dia-jules explained, in the context of the USA, how unnecessary traffic light penalty times arise in OSRM and similar route planners, and how to reduce them specifically. If junctions on shared trunk roads are tagged as usual with
highway=traffic_lightat each node, the router counts multiple delays per junction, even though in reality only one set of traffic lights is passed. The more precise method instead places the tag individually at the stop line usingtraffic_light=signalandtraffic_light:direction, so that each route passes through only one traffic light junction. To prioritise the revision, dia-jules drew on traffic volume and accident data from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Greater Chicago area. - Emmanuel Arrechea looked
back on State of the Map 2026, held at the École Géodata in Paris, where he and other members of LaNum Pays Basque and Mapadour joined 535 participants from 45 countries. He picked out five points from more than 180 talks and workshops, among them the sponsorship of the conference by companies such as Michelin, TomTom, Esri, Thales, and Capgemini, and the way organisations including IGN, SNCF, and Géovélo build their services on OSM data. He also highlighted Grant Slater’s talk on AI crawlers straining OSMF infrastructure and driving some 400 fake account registrations a day. Most sessions are available on OSM France’s PeerTube channel with French subtitles.
OpenStreetMap Foundation
- Chris Fleming explained, in an OSM Blog post, how naming works in OpenStreetMap, from the primary
name=tag to additional keys such asname:en=andofficial_name=. He used the recentofficial_name:en-US=Lake Americaaddition to Lake Ontario as an example of how thenametag remains unchanged even after an official renaming, so the lake remains findable under both names. He also noted that OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped over 115 million names to date.
Local chapter news
- Jochen Topf and Katja Haferkorn of FOSSGIS reported
►
that the German Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Public Sector Modernisation is inviting the open data community, stakeholders, and the interested public to participate in an online consultation to gather proposals and suggestions for a more developed framework, to be known as the ‘Roadmap for Open Data’. FOSSGIS has also compiled
a statement on the topic.
Events
- The State of the Map 2026 is already documented on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and OpenStreetMpa Wiki.
Education
- High5apps explained how to add a website tag to a shop or amenity using JOSM. This short tutorial sparked quite a discussion on HackerNews.
- Aoyama Gakuin University’s Furuhashi Laboratory have published
a video lecture for the 2026 academic year’s ‘Basic Spatial Information Science B’ course, which covers various topics related to OpenStreetMap.
OSM research
- HeiGIT presented an analysis of cycling infrastructure in 885 European cities, using OpenStreetMap data together with tree canopy and heat-stress data to assess how well cycling routes are protected from heat.
- HeiGIT presented new indicators for its hiWalk tool, developed in collaboration with Walk21, that use OpenStreetMap and other open data to assess factors such as path lighting, tactile paving, tree shade, and access to everyday services, providing a more comprehensive picture of urban walkability.
Maps
- cultours.app is a free interactive
map of roughly 100,000 cultural heritage sites in Germany: castles, churches, ruins, memorials including Stolpersteine, Roman and prehistoric sites, towers, and viewpoints. Data comes from OpenStreetMap via Overpass, enriched with Wikipedia and Wikidata. No login, no cookies, no tracking. The developer introduced
the project in the German community forum and is looking for feedback on a couple of tagging questions there.
- Dachlast.de presented
an OSM-based camping map for Germany and neighbouring countries, which combines a route planner with eight data layers. The map shows campsites, motorhome pitches, drinking water points, toilets, showers, supply and disposal points, charging points, and petrol stations along the planned route. The data is ‘harvested’ weekly from OpenStreetMap and, according to the operator, comprises around 400,000 points in the area stretching from Denmark to northern Italy, eastern France and western Poland.
- The Planet Thinks is a fully turnable globe displaying live changesets on OpenstreetMap as coloured sparks.
OSM in action
- [1] The Institute of Data Sciences at the DLR (German Aerospace Centre) explained
►
how geoparsing, that is, the identification of place names in texts and their association with geographical points, lines, or polygons, makes geodata usable for crisis management, supply chains, and research. The team is developing methods for toponym recognition and disambiguation, comparing these against multilingual benchmark data and applying them in various DLR projects, such as geolocating social media content during crises or analysing supply chains in the aviation industry. These methods are also being incorporated into the EU project OpenWebSearchEU, which aims to create a European alternative to dominant search providers, as well as into the collaboration with the Joint Research Centre on news analysis for European decision-makers.
- Heise reported that the interactive map by the action alliance ‘Heiße Luft‘
shows the locations of planned and under-construction data centres in Germany.
- Greenways Ireland presented the official website of the Irish Department of Transport for the country’s growing network of car-free cycle and walking routes. The interactive map uses OpenStreetMap with proper attribution and can be filtered by region, theme, and route length. As well as route descriptions, the site provides up-to-date information on route closures and an overview of the national greenway strategy.
- The Bayreuther Tagblatt reported
►
that St.-Georgen-Straße in Bindlach will be completely closed for around four days from 21 September due to development work. One positive point is that the map of the surrounding area used in the article is credited as ‘© openstreetmap.org/copyright’.
- Dominik Hochwarth, of Ingenieur.de, reported
►
that TU Graz has developed an OpenStreetMap-based tool that estimates the amounts of concrete, brick, and wood contained in buildings. The programme first determines a building’s size and geometry using OpenStreetMap data, then incorporates its building type, year of construction, construction method, and energy efficiency class. Based on this information, the software identifies a suitable building archetype and calculates which materials were likely used in its construction.
Software
- Steven Hooper has built BadCaddie, an app that uses OpenStreetMap golf-course data for course discovery and hole maps, alongside GNSS yardages, scorekeeping, and club suggestions, based on recorded shot distances. It is available for iPhone with an Apple Watch companion and as a plugin for Even Realities G2 glasses.
- Ian Wagner explained how Stadia Maps has been taking a fresh look at the cartographic decisions at every level of their map stack. Their recent water layer changes and water label updates have made a visible difference to the Stamen Terrain style.
- Tina reported that OsmAnd now allows users to colour their tracks based on speed, altitude, or slope data. Custom colour palettes help turn complex GPX data into clear, meaningful visual stories.
Releases
- The CoMaps team has released version 2026.08.31, which is now out across all release channels. New features include the display of reviews from Mangrove Reviews and a new transport modes UI on iOS.
- The OpenStreetMap Carto maintainers have prepared version 6.1.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet. Christoph Hormann detailed the visible changes introduced by this release in an OSM diary post.
Other “geo” things
- TechCrunch reported that Tern has won a contract from the US Army to deploy its low-cost GNSS alternative technology. The US$11.26 million contract will see the Army use Tern’s navigation technology in vehicles. According to its official website, Tern is developing a positioning system that does not rely on satellites, signals, or external infrastructure. It has been tested by the US Departments of Transportation and Defense.
- ABC Science’s Julian O’Shea explored how Australia has been mapped ‘wrong’ from a 1547 world map to modern GPS.
Upcoming Events
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 Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, HeiGIT, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.
OpenStreetMap Blogs































