26/07/2022-01/08/2022

Breaking news

• The OpenStreetMap project will turn 18 on or around Tuesday 9 August 2022. If you have a birthday event to announce or want to post photos from your celebrations you can add them to the wiki page.

Mapping campaigns

• An item, in last week’s weeklyOSM, about classifying data quality in OSM triggered a brief discussion on the HOT talking list.
• People from TomTom have put together a series of MapRoulette tasks and shared them with the Chilean, Maltese, Slovenian, and other communities. Elsewhere, TomTom’s own editing has been criticised for making incorrect edits.

Mapping

• Anne-Karoline Distel published new videos describing how to map thatched roofs and how to tag a variety of roof:material on the one building.
• Patrik_B shared his workflow and tips for validating multiple tasks at once using JOSM and a number of plugins.

Community

• The next OSM-FOSSGIS community meeting is planned > to be held on the weekend of 16 to 18 September at the Linuxhotel in Essen. Travel is at your own expense; accommodation and meals will be provided by the the FOSSGIS Association, the German local chapter of OSM.
• User AwoowoArne, from Germany, is the UN Mapper of the Month.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OWG, the operational group that manages the OSMF servers, showed the board-approved version of their 2022 (Q3–Q4) budget.
• The OSMF Board is running an ‘Ask Us Anything’ at SotM, and is looking for questions.

Local chapter news

• OpenStreetMap US’s July newsletter has been published.
• OpenStreetMap Poland has signed > a cooperation agreement with the Internet portal gisplay.pl which will promote OSM and modern map solutions based on OSM data.

Events

• The OpenSteetMap community in Kerala held their Meetup 2022, which took place on Sunday 31 July in Kochi. Around 30 mappers across Kerala state participated. Presentations and hands-on sections on were devoted to mapping public transport and local government bodies.The meeting was reported by The Hindu, and Florian Lainez, of Jungle Bus, tweeted highlights of the day.

OSM research

• Mohammed Rizwan Khan reported on the development of a lite-mode ohsomeHeX application for smaller-screen mobile devices. Though the application will have limited functionality on smaller screens, it will still allow mobile users to get an overview of current OSM topics on the go.

switch2OSM

• Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn is cycling from Luxembourg to Saint Maxime, in Provence (over the top of Mont Ventoux!), and he used OpenStreetMap to plan his journey.
• New instructions for setting up a rendering server on Ubuntu 22.04 were published when that version of Ubuntu was released. In a diary entry, SomeoneElse explained that setting up replication with osm2pgsql or PyOsmium and monitoring with munin is much easier now, as Ubuntu provides up to date packages for osm2pgsql and osmium, so that a manual build from source is not needed any more.

Software

• ChrisPark blogged a Google Summer of Code midterm update for their goal of reintroducing transit to Valhalla, an open-source routing engine.
• The OpenStreetMap Ops Team has published post-mortem reports about two recent service outages: the longest outage in 5+ years, and a degraded standard tile layer incident.

Programming

• Roland Olbricht has released Docker containers to run the Overpass API. Instructions for installing these are available here.

Releases

• [1] Pieter Vander Vennet has added another map to the 46 themes at MapComplete, the OnWheels map. In his blog post, Pieter tells how he and four students, funded by Open Knowledge in Belgium, implemented the OnWheels project as part of their Open Summer of Code and created a special map for wheelchair users.

Did you know …

• … we left some options out in last week’s list of tools for contributing to OSM? Go Map!! is available on iPhone (thank you for the kind comments from @Notna M and @Tordans) and OsmApp for Android, iOS and Web. Felipe says on Telegram ‘On Chrome, Firefox and Safari you can download the Progressive App directly from its page’. We also recommend checking Wambacher’s SoftwareWatchlist.
• … all the best alternatives to the various Google services? This list > , by the French Clubic web magazine, contains a section about Google Maps alternatives. OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem are placed at the top of the list of alternatives.

Other “geo” things

• Plan4Better has used their Geo Open Accessibility Tool (GOAT) to see how close Munich is to being a 15-minute city.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Csömör	OSM 18th birthday hiking & survey in Csömör		2022-08-06
Cayambe	Notathon en OpenStreetMap – resolvamos notas de Cayambé, Ecuador		2022-08-06
	OSM Africa August Mapathon: Map Rwanda		2022-08-06
新北市	OpenStreetMap 街景踏查團 #3		2022-08-07
Washington	MappingDC Mappy Hour		2022-08-10
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2022-08-09
Köln	25. Stammtisch Köln		2022-08-10
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Meetup		2022-08-11
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2022-08-10
Zürich	143. OSM-Stammtisch		2022-08-11
Berlin	170. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2022-08-12
Perth	Social mapping Sunday: Claisebrook to Optus Statium		2022-08-14
Windsor	StreetComplete Group Quest		2022-08-16
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2022-08-15
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #43		2022-08-15
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2022-08-17
	154. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn		2022-08-16
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2022-08-16
Firenze	State of the Map 2022		2022-08-19 – 2022-08-21
Firenze	FOSS4G 2022		2022-08-22 – 2022-08-28
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen (Online)		2022-08-22
City of Nottingham	OSM East Midlands/Nottingham meetup (online)	✓	2022-08-23
City of Nottingham	OSM East Midlands/Nottingham meetup (online)	✓	2022-08-23
IJmuiden	OSM Nederland bijeenkomst (online)	✓	2022-08-24

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, SK53, SomeoneElse, Strubbl, TheSwavu, conradoos, derFred.

This Sunday, 7th of August 2022,
we are celebrating 18 years of OpenStreetMap!

Celebrations started the previous week and will continue for one more week. So, how do you plan to celebrate?

Planning to organise an online or in-person event? Please add your event to the OSM wiki! If wiki editing isn’t your thing, email communication@osmfoundation.org with your event details and we’ll add it

Making a birthday cake? See previous examples of OSM cakes for inspiration. Don’t forget the attribution!

You could post why you love OpenStreetMap Remember to use the hashtag #OpenStreetMap18 on social media.

Posting photos of celebrations? If your photos are accompanied with the text “CC-BY-SA 4.0” (or another open license), we can add them to the OSM wiki (or feel free to add them yourself! ~ register here).

Or you could post a photo of yourself holding a written message  

Planning an online party or mapathon?

You can use the BigBlueButton video server of the OpenStreetMap Foundation! To get a free account and your own video room, please signup.

• You can use your video room even after the birthday, for any OSM-related event.
• Community members in low-bandwidth environments may benefit from using BigBlueButton’s low-bandwidth settings.
• Please add your event to the OSM wiki! If wiki editing isn’t your thing, email communication@osmfoundation.org with your event details and we’ll add it

Join us!

Observance of the anniversary of the creation of OpenStreetMap is held on or about the 9th of August, which is the anniversary of the registration of the OpenStreetMap.org domain name. The concept of OpenStreetMap predates the domain name registration, but that seems a suitable anniversary date

Happy celebrations everyone

Get notified about new blogposts: Subscribe to the RSS feed!

Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in another language..? Please send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [language]

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings, and a lot more worldwide.  Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, calculate routes, etc.  OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps that can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

OSM’de mevcut olan hatlar

Ctrl+F yapıp hat numarasını yazarak bulabilirsiniz. Listeyi mümkün olduğunca güncellemeye çalışacağım.

1 2 3 3A 3B 4 5 6 7 8 8A 8E 8K 8Y 9A 9T 10 10B 10G 11 11BE 11ÇB 11CÜ 11ES 11G 11L 11M 11P 11R 11SA 11ST 11T 11ÜS 11V 11Y 12 13 13AB-1 13B 13H 13M 13Y 14 14A 14BK 14ÇK 14ES 14F 14KS 14R 14S 14ŞB 14TM 14YE 14YK 14YK-1 15 15B 15C 15D 15K 15SD 15TK 16 16D 16S 16YK 17 17L 17S 18 18F 18K 18Ü 18YS 19 19A 19A-2 19D 19E 19EK 19F 19FS 19S 19S-1 19SB 19T 19V 19YK 20 20D 20K 22 25 25C 25E 25S1 26 26A 26B 27SE 28 29 30A 30M 31 32 32M 32T 33 33B 34 34AS 34BZ 34Z 35 35A 35C 35D 36 36AS 36CB 36CE 36ES 36F 36L 36T 36V 36Z 37A 37M 37T 37Y 38 38H 38T 38Z 39 39K 39Y 40 41 41A 41ST 42 42HM 42K 42Z 43R 46Ç 46T 47Ç 47F 48 48F 48G 48K 48N 48R 48U 49 49GB 50G 50K 54E 54HT 55 55ET 55T 55Y 57UL 58A 58N 59A 59RS 62 63 66 70FE 70FY 70KE 71T 72T 72YT 73 73F 73H 74 74A 75O 76 76BA 76C 76D 76E 76G 76T 77 77A 78 78C 78F 79C 79KM 79KT 79Ş 79T 80 80T 82 85C 85T 87 88 89 89C 89M 89S 89YB 90 90B 91E 91M 92B 92C 92K 92M 92T 93 93M 94A 94Y 97 97E 97G 98 98A 98KM 98T 99 121CS 122C 122D 122H 122M 122V 129T 130 130A 130E 130H 130Ş 130T 131A 131B 131C 131H 131K 131T 131Ü 131Y 131YS 132 132ÇK 132H 132M 132N 132S 132SB 132T 132V 132YB 133A 133AK 133F 133KT 133M 133P 133Ş 133T 133TM 134 134CK 134YK 135 136 136R 136Z 137 138 139 139T 141A 141K 142 142A 142ES 142F 143 144A 144H 145 145M 145T 146 146K 146M 147 150 151 152 154 251 256 303A 319 320 320A 336 336E 336H 336M 336Y 399C 401 418 448 500T 522 522B 522ST 559C 622 BA-1 BA-2 BA-4 BA-5 BN1 BU-1 ÇM41 ÇM42 ÇM43 ÇM44 ÇM44-1 D2 DT2 E-3 E-9 E-10 E-11 E-57 E-58 EC1 EM1 EM2 ER1 ER2 ES2 GZ1 GZ2 H-1 H-2 H-3 H-6 H-8 H-9 HA-1 HA-2 HM2 HM3 HS1 HS2 HT1 HT5 HT6 HT10 HT11 HT12 HT13 HT18 HT29 KA-1 KA-2 KM2 KM3 KM10 KM11 KM12 KM13 KM14 KM15 KM17 KM18 KM21 KM24 KM25 KM26 KM27 KM28 KM29 KM30 KM31 KM33 KM34 KM35 KM36 KM37 KM41 KM42 KM43 KM44 KM45 KM46 KM47 KM48 KM60 KM70 KM71 KM72 MK1 MK2 MK3 MK4 MK11 MK12 MK13 MK14 MK15 MK16 MK19 MK22 MK31 MK42 MK49 MK53 MK92 MK97 MR9 MR10 MR11 MR20 MR40 MR42 MR50 MR51 MR60 MR61 R5 SG-2 TM1 TM5 TM6 U1 UM11 UM13 UM30 UM36 UM40 UM60 UM61 UM62 UM73

(notatki by nie zapomnieć)

Sprzątam bo mylnym moim otagowaniu Kamer jako “outdoor”, bo gdzieśtam było opisane tylko rozróżnienie indoor/outdoor, dopiero teraz widzę, że wszelkie uliczne kamery to jednak “public”. A “outdoor” to raczej zewnętrzna kamera na zamkniętej posesji.

Ani na osm.org ani na osmandzie nie umiem sensownie wyszukać dla danego rewiru “man_made : Surveillance” z “surveillance : outdoor”.

Próbuję więc sobie pomóc overpass-turbo i query, która mi działa, to:

node
["man_made"="surveillance"]({{bbox}})
["surveillance"="outdoor"]({{bbox}});
out body;

I jak zamiast “out body” dam “out ids” to mam listę interesujących mnie nodów.

Pytanie jak znaleźć te wszystkie świeżo dorzucone i jeszcze nie otagowane kamery.

Niestety, ["surveillance"~"^$"] nie daje rezultatów, bo byłyby to nody z pustym “surveillance”, a tu w ogóle tego tagu brak. Trzeba podmienić na [!"surveillance"] które robi robote!

Jeszcze tylko nie wiem jak znalezione nody masowo modyfikować. No i było by super móc zawęzić wyniki tylko do nodów stworzonych przeze mnie. Ale to zostawiam na kiedy indziej.

Microsoft have recently released their “Worldwide building footprints derived from satellite imagery”. This is a dataset containing the shape and positions of houses. It covers many parts of the world and is derived from Bing aerial imagery with the use of deep learning.

I find these footprints interesting for numerous reasons. The focus here will be to use the data to aid in mapping. There is further information on the OSM wiki.

In this diary entry I want to explain how I got the data into JOSM. In a following entry I will explain how I use this data to speed up building mapping.

Obtaining the data

The data is freely available on Github. It is licensed under ODbL and is compatible with OpenStreetMap. Each available country has its own zip file. Some of the files are of the order of gigabytes - far larger than can be opened in regular software. Pick a country and download the zip file.

Issues with the data

Care should be taken to examine and understand the data, and this set is no different.

• I found that numerous buildings were repeated in the data. This meant that JOSM had duplicated buildings and duplicated nodes after importing.

• There are various false-positives and true-negatives in the data. Some things that are buildings are not given in the data. Likewise the dataset thinks some objects are buildings which are not.

• The rotation of buildings can be off.

• The data may contain overlapping buildings, such as a garage overlapping with the house next to it.

Unzip and geoJSONL

The zip file contains a .geojsonl file (notice the ‘l’ at the end of the filename). This file type cannot be directly imported into JOSM. In addition, files on the order of gigabytes will clog up JOSM too much to be usable.

I found suggestions about splitting the large file into smaller files using the split command. However, the data is not spatially ordered within the file, so each split chunk has data from all over the country.

In order to create a small file of a subset of the data localised in an area of interest I turned to python and geopandas.

Python and Geopandas

Geopandas is a python library that can read and convert geoJSON(L) files, and can limit items to within a bounding box. I can specify the coordinates of a box and only the buildings within will be kept. This allows creation of a manageable file size focused on an area of interest. I’m sure what I used this for can be done with software like QGIS, but I’ve never used that type of software before.

A script

In the end I created a python script that would read in an unzipped .geojsonl file downloaded from the repository, cut out a selected region, remove duplicate geometries, and save the resulting geometries to a .geojson file that can be safely imported into JOSM.

The script is available on GitHub. You should have python installed. It needs the geopandas and numpy libraries, which can be obtained through the command pip install geopandas numpy. The script can be called with python extract_region.

Conclusion

The image below shows the data imported into JOSM

I’ve been able to extract geospatially grouped building footprints into JOSM. In testing how large files can be, and I’ve found files on the size of 300MB to be the limit that JOSM on my computer can handle. I have 24 GB ram.

My next entry will talk about how I use this data to speed up the mapping of buildings in OpenStreetMap and JOSM.

Many people know Nominatim simply as a web service, while in fact it is a powerful geocoding software. There are many ways to adapt your personal installation to your specific needs. To make it easier to use the full potential of Nominatim, the website now has a new Cookbook section.

Under the Cookbook menu you will in the future be able to find tutorials for customizing your Nominatim installation, how-tos how to use your own Nominatim API on websites, batch geocoding and other less conventional uses.

The first tutorial about transliteration shows how to extend the ICU tokenizer with your own custom Python code.

The Cookbook also collects talks and workshops about Nominatim. There you find everything from gentle introductions to geocoding to talks about the internals of the software.

Are you attending State of the Map in person (in Italy) or online? Here are some ideas on how to actively participate/contribute to the conference in person or online!

1. Help out as a volunteer

Volunteers are the driving force of OSM and SotM conference. Would you like to help by volunteering to ensure the SotM is as smooth as possible? Here are the roles you can help with:

In-person Volunteers (Note: You must be physically present in Italy)

• Conference setup (volunteers must be already at 18 August available)
• teardown/clean up
• registration/info desk
• video/recording
• video/cutting
• technical assistants for the speakers
• Session hosts (OSM knowledge is mandatory)

Online Volunteers

• the info desk at Venueless
• technical assistants for the BBB rooms

If you are interested in volunteering, please reach out to the SotM Working Group via sotm [at] openstreetmap [dot] org and sign up at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2022/volunteers#Schedule

2. Submit a lightning talk

Share a 5-minute talk about your mapping initiatives/experiences in OpenStreetMap or about your local community activities to the global OpenStreetMap community! Sign up at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2022/registration_lightning_talks

Deadline for submission is 12 August 2022

3. For technique-oriented people, you can help as part of the video team!

Please reach out to the SotM Working Group via sotm [at] openstreetmap [dot] org

4. Be the SotM 2022 photographer(s)

The person(s) could generally take some photos in the name of SotM organization team and also should take the group photo. We kindly as ask the released photos have CC licence (*) so we can use them later in the SotM context.

(*) under an open license (CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later recommended or CC0)

5. Organize a self-organized session

Besides the main programme, we will offer space for self-organized sessions (or Birds of Feather / BoF). We have set up the OSM wiki page https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2022/self-organized_sessions, where you can sign up for a self-organized online session. For the on-site self-organized session, we will set up a whiteboard where you can reserve your timeslot and room at the conference venue. You can brainstorm for your session topic as early as now!

6. Check the SotM 2022 Programme schedule and plan which sessions you are attending

We have a variety of tracks (general, academic, workshops) and topics in our programme schedule https://2022.stateofthemap.org/programme/ so you can plan as early as now which talks/sessions you are attending as well as list your questions to the speaker(s)!

Did we miss anything? If you have participated in SotM conferences before, let us know how and share your experiences in the comment/reply!

SotM Organising Committee

Sign up for event updates and follow us @sotm!

Do you want to translate this and other blog posts into your language…? Please email communication@osmfoundation.org with the subject: Helping with translations in [your language]

The State of the Map conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap, organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development, and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings, and a lot more worldwide.  Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, calculate routes, etc.  OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps that can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

We are happy to announce a new release 4.1.0 of Nominatim. After many months of stress testing in production, the ICU tokenizer introduced in the last release is now the default. The release also brings improved handling for house numbers and postcodes.

The 4.0 release saw one of the most extensive overhauls of the Nominatim code with the introduction of the ICU tokenizer. In the last months, we have stress-tested this code on the OSMF’s servers at https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org. There are no major incidents to report. The code did very well for the thousands of requests the servers get. Users did report smaller issues and suggestions for improvements, which we have continuously implemented in the last months. With this release the new code is ready for wider use and from now, will be used per default when you set up a new installation.

Using the flexible framework that the ICU tokenizer provides, the code now also has much improved handling of house numbers and postcodes. The addr:housenumber tag is checked for obvious errors. Postcodes are checked against the acceptable format of each country and discarded if they do not match. These changes greatly reduce the number of odd results that apparently do not fit a search query. Also, Nominatim no longer cares about spaces in house numbers and postcodes. That will make it a lot easier to find addresses.

If you already have a Nominatim database running, you can update to the latest release according to our migration instructions. However, to profit from the ICU tokenizer or the improved housenumber and postcode handling, a reimport is required.

Thank you again to OpenCage, Graphhopper and Komoot for their continued support of Nominatim’s development. If you are interested in supporting work on Nominatim, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Disclaimer: yes, I know, it’s absolutely micro mapping, but see “Side effects”.

It’s now been about 4 weeks since I started mapping thatched buildings in Ireland more systematically than just ad hoc adding roof:material=thatch whenever I saw one. I had focussed on Co. Kilkenny, because of a 1994 survey carried out by thatcher and archaeologist Jimmy Lenehan in that county, so all I had to do was revisit the sites and check whether the roof:material was still the same. I ended up visiting about 58 of of the 106 sites in his survey. (I tried to remember to add survey_date to those, so I could run an overpass query.)

He also told me about some newly thatched buildings, where I could add the tag, too.

I also had a long talk with him in his own thatched house which was a very interesting experience, because it was a very warm day (for Ireland), and the thatch really did insulate the house really well. He is not very good with technology, but I think he understood the potential of mapping the thatched buildings on an OpenData platform. I’ve added ref:IE:lenehan to the buildings from his survey and documented the tag in the wiki.

I also had a chat with our Heritage Officer who thought it was a good idea to undertake a new survey, but doesn’t seem to grasp the advantages of crowd sourcing and OpenData quite as much as I would hope. She is under the impression that I’m only doing a photographic survey, because I told her that I was uploading the photographs to WikiCommons (about 82 uploads for Co. Kilkenny so far). She asked if I would provide these images to their county archive as well, because “not everybody knows how to use that OpenData thing”. Well, everybody knows how to use Google, that should bring them to WikiCommons straight away. So I politely explained that and declined providing duplicate content. Needless to say, there is also no public funding for a survey this year, so I’ll just soldier on in my own time and out of my own pocket.

I had chats with some residents of thatched cottages, especially in South Kilkenny where they are concentrated. I still believe it is because of the rivers as the natural habitat of the material rather than the thatchers. In my third video, available from Aug 6th of my thatched buildings series and the uMap, I think it becomes quite obvious. I’m not saying that there is no correlation, obviously there will be or were more people thatching in an area where the material was/ is grown, but the material was there first.

Thatching history of buildings

I was able to ask those residents/ owners of thatched buildings when their buildings was last thatched and by whom. I added that information as thatch_date (not documented yet, but similar to start_date) or, where applicable, thatch:end_date (also not documented). I also got some of that information from the two thatchers I’ve spoken to so far, and I have to catch up on adding that information still.

thatch dates on overpass

I’ve also added thatcher_name with the information given by the owners or what I found in Jimmy’s survey or from the other thatcher (Matty Kelly) I talked to. This one is documented in the wiki. Sometimes, I got a whole biography of a roof, so to speak.

overpass for thatcher_name

Protected structures

I also added ref:IE:niah (documented) for those buildings on the National Index of Architectural Heritage which was quite sobering, because since the government’s last survey, quite a few buildings have lost their thatched roof and therefore their qualification to be on that list (I presume). A new survey by the ministry is planned for the next two years, I believe. (See “side effects”).

Side effects

Yes, it is very much micro mapping or even smaller than micro, but on the one hand, I’m trying to make a point to show the authorities what OpenData can do, and on the other hand, a lot of collateral mapping got done along the way:

Working with the authorities

While trying to locate the thatched buildings and adding their ref:IE:niah, I sometimes found that their location on the government map was wrong, so I contacted the department with my alternative locations, and they were implemented over night. Thank you, Damian!

I also created a concordance of the numbering in Jimmy’s survey with another survey conducted by the Office of Public Works in the same year and provided it to our local Heritage Council with annotations of which buildings were no longer thatched.

Rural mapillary

As I was visiting the sites, mostly on public transport, on my bike or on foot, but also one trip in a car, I took mapillary footage of very rural areas where usually nobody else goes: South Kilkenny, Callan area.

New roads

Especially on two round trips on my bike near Callan, I took very minor roads and discovered one previously mapped as an incomplete track, which turned out to be a connecting road.

I furthermore discovered a reference number for a minor road which had been classified as a service road before. I felt quite like an explorer. :D

StreetComplete

Since I was depending on public transport so much, I sometimes had over an hour left before the bus home went, so I used that time SCing Callan (mostly). I always try to kill at least two birds with one stone, so when I was stuck for transport home after a gig with my band, I took an AirBnB and surveyed that village in the evening and continued on the next day to meet a thatcher. Previously no house numbers and no building site mapped and wrong or missing street names

(I’m probably forgetting things here…)

Public transport routes

Since I had to take unmapped bus routes, I tracked them on OSMAnd and added them to OSM. They’re incomplete, because I didn’t need to go the whole way, but at least it’s definitely ground truth.

Bus route 828

WikiCommons

I tried to be very thorough when I uploaded the photographs and added as much structured Wikidata as possible (like the townland for every photograph, viewpoint location and object location) to make the images as useful and accessible as possible. I learned a bit along the way, but might have made some mistakes, because I hadn’t done this before.

And when I came across a castle or a lime kiln along the way, I took pictures of those as well, obviously, and uploaded them.

Work experience

I also got to help Matty out one day preparing the scallops for thatching, but that’s got nothing to do with mapping…There might be a video on my channel in the future.

Radio interview

I was also interviewed for the local radio, but the interviewer “got confused” about OSM, so his questions didn’t focus too much on that, unfortunately. I tried, I really did. It’ll be broadcast August 7th, I believe.

Outlook

I’ll continue with this for another while. I’m also hoping to talk to our Minister for Heritage, Something, Something and Housing (I can never remember, he’s Malcolm to me) about the need for more support of owners of thatched buildings and the need to preserve areas where water reed is grown. I had learned from Matty Kelly that many farmers in South Wexford (an area quite known for its thatched buildings) are draining fields, so that water reed cannot grow there any longer. Have I mentioned that it is imported from Turkey and the Ukraine? Not very sustainable. (I was going to meet the minister in a different matter anyway, but people have suggested that I should bring it up with him.)

I might write a paper about this at some point, focussing less on the mapping and more on the heritage (grown and built) angle, but of course promoting OSM. Try to stop me!

Sin é bhfuil. Thanks for reading until the end.

no this is not about Minecraft, its about my non existent journey to map out Mainaschaff (my hometown) by the end of summer break (2nd week of September)

I already did 6-7 blocks today in around 2h which leaves me with more time than I have left to do the rest of the city.

So I’m stopping here…. for now.

If anyone wants to help me, feel free to just like…. make the map better.

Bye, nonexistent reader :)

thank you sawan shariar vay, day 3august 2022

Dear all,

Today, v5.6.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default stylesheet on the OSM website) has been released. Once changes are deployed on the openstreetmap.org it will take couple of days before all tiles show the new rendering.

Changes include

• using locally installed fonts instead of system fonts, for more up to date fonts;
• changing tree and tree row colours to the same colour as areas with trees;
• rendering parcel lockers; and
• rendering name labels of bays and straights from z14 only, and lakes from z5

Thanks to all the contributors for this release including GoutamVerma, yvecai, ttomasz, and Indieberrie, new contributors.

For a full list of commits, see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/compare/v5.5.1…v5.6.0

As always, we welcome any bug reports at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues

OpenStreetMap Carto could use more help reviewing pull requests, so if you’re able to, please head over to Github and review some of the open PRs.

Hi, Everybody!

There are thousands of official and nonofficial routes which symbols (marks) you can see in cities, forests and etc. All these routes are routes for your activities. Many of them exist in OpenStreetMap and you can see them online here for example.

Routes​

In OsmAnd you can highlight routes (present on OpenStreetMap) and hiking symbol overlay for your activities. It may be useful for your cycling, hiking, etc. You can select multiple routes at once though they will be displayed as layers and if the road has multiple routes over it only top colour will be visible. If you have some specific rendering styles enabled, you could have a bigger routes variety i.e. for Snowmobile style you could select Snowmobile routes.

Show routes on the map​

To configure it, follow these steps:

Android Menu → Configure map → Routes

iOS Menu → Configure map → Routes

Choosing routes in OsmAnd​

Hiking / Cycling / Travel routes are clickable. Just tap the route symbol, get full route information and download the GPX file for the selected route. (Routes are marked on the map with OSMC symbols.)

Clicking on a shield (OSMC symbols) proposes to choose the nearest routes.

Choosing the route opens Track Context menu:

You can view the route, and its relief, download it as a GPX-file, edit it with "Plan route" tool and even start navigation along it:

• look at Route info (Distance, Uphill, Downhill, Altitude range, Route name, Network, Operator, etc.).

• looking at Altitude Graph, Analyze on map, Share like GPX-file and etc.

• download the route like GPX-file by clicking to "Download" button. After that, you can do any actions with this GPX-file (navigation, change viewing, modifying by "Route plan" tool and etc).

Generated Travel Routes​

OpenStreetMap users upload hundreds of Public GPS Traces every day. OsmAnd backend team can download these GPS tracks, sort these by categories (hiking, cycling and etc.). After we generate OBF-file with these tracks which you can add to OsmAnd like one of Vector layers. Settings of this layer you find here:

Android Menu → Configure map → Routes → Travel routes

For example, we can download generated OBF-files with Public GPS Traces:

• Gpsies-cycling-travel.obf
• 2021-cycling.travel.obf

Clicking on this file adds the OBF-file to OsmAnd Local folder.

Now, we can switch on 'Travel routes' and view POIs of routes on the map:

Clicking on POI opens Track Context menu of travel routes like it is done for Routes. You can download GPX file of chosen Travel route, and view all route info:

Advantages of OBF-file:

• small file size.
• search for tracks directly on the map.
• the ability to make your own OBF-files with GPX-tracks: upload GPX-tracks and get OBF-file (with a name "xxx.travel.obf").

Follow OsmAnd at Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit!

Join us at our groups of Telegram (OsmAnd News channel), (EN), (IT), (FR), (DE), (RU), (UA), (ES), (PL), (AR), (TR).

Memoria

Hace unos meses alguien preguntó ( disculpen que no recuerdo quien ) sobre opciones para recibir notificaciones de cambios en el mapa que sirvieran para hacerle seguimiento a ediciones en zonas especificas.

Investigando un poco, solamente encontré un excelente articulo de Willie donde se habla de los filtros de Osmcha, el uso de RSS/Telegram/IFTTT/Zapier/Huginn para recibir este tipo de notificaciones.

Me pareció interesante, “pero” habían 2 cosas que no terminaron de convencerme:

1. El flujo de trabajo quizás es complejo para usuarios novatos
2. No todo es 100% software libre

Y en ese momento gracias a información adicional que me facilitó Matheus sobre los canales Telegram que usan en Brasil con filtros de Osmcha, pude obtener una idea más general para buscar alguna alternativa que fuese mas sencilla.

Nota: Openstreetmap tiene una gran cantidad de servicios que usan RSS, con lo cual se hace mucho más sencillo usar este método.

Deltachat

Como mencionan en su página web, Deltachat es simplemente un app de mensajería que trabaja mediante el correo ( se pudiese ver como un cliente de correo ). Es fácil de usar, multiplataforma y es software libre.

Nota: Podemos empezar con la misma cuenta de correo que usamos regularmente, sólo debemos ingresar nuestras credenciales y la aplicación se encarga de conectarse al servidor y realizar la configuración. O también una cuenta alternativa.

El app se encarga de crear una carpeta adicional llamada “Deltachat” donde se guardan todos los mensajes que se manejan desde la aplicación. En mi caso el webmail lo manejo con Roundcube.

Luego que tenemos la aplicación instalada, ya sea en el dispositivo móvil o en la computadora vamos a proceder a configurar el conector rss que en este caso es un bot. Deltachat tiene la posibilidad de integrar bots y acá vamos a mencionar a Simplebot. Es un app tambien software libre que podemos usar en nuestros propios servidores y/o usar algunas de las instancias públicas, donde no sólo agregan la opción de RSS sino muchos otros plugins adicionales.

Actualmente levanté una instancia del bot con su plugin RSS en la dirección rss[at]osm[dot]lat . Quizás alguna otra persona esté interesada en usarlo dentro del ecosistema de osm. Solamente debemos agregar el bot como contacto y enviarle un mensaje con el comando /help

Feed

Ahora vamos a configurar nuestro Feed RSS para poder suscribirlo al bot y recibir las notificaciones. Ingresamos en el siguiente URL:

https://tyrasd.github.io/osm-qa-feeds/

En mi caso quiero monitorear la ciudad de Cúcuta - Colombia, así que adapto el área lo mas cercano posible a lo que necesito:

Luego que continuamos se nos generan 6 feed rss dentro de la zona a monitorear ( cada una tiene su propósito, acá voy a usar WhoDidIt ). Sólo debemos darle click derecho para copiar el link del feed, ya que no necesitamos bajar el archivo.

Volvemos a la ventana donde tenemos la conversación del bot en Deltachat y siguiendo la ayuda del bot:

/sub Subscribe current chat to the given feed.

Example:

/sub https://delta.chat/feed.xml

/sub https://delta.chat/feed.xml keyword

Suscribimos el link anterior que copiamos ( pueden hacerlo con los 6 feed, inclusive pueden agregar otros links como por ejemplo para monitorear cambios en el wiki de osm )

/sub url-completa-que-copiamos

Y esperamos confirmación del bot… Ya en este punto simplemente debemos editar algo en esa zona y nos llegará la notificación en Deltachat:

Como pueden ver logré crear un canal donde llegarán notificaciones a todas las personas que estén dentro ( sé que existe posibilidad de crear canales públicos, pero todavía no llego a ese milestone ). Hay muchas maneras hacer esto, yo sólo espero que esta sea una de las sencillas :-)

Agradecido con las personas que aportaron información… Fue bastante divertido aprender un poco de Python… Todo feedback es bienvenido. EOF.

His homepage and his contribution page.

Hello Domenico ! Would you like to briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

I am 60 years old, married and the father of a girl. I live in Ravenna (Italy).

How and when did you get to know OpenStreetMap?

I met OpenStreetMap in 2011 during a Linux party.

How do you use OpenStreetMap?

I use OpenStreetMap as a simple contributor who might need it in some way.

What kind of contributor are you and in which area do you map?

I was a not very active contributor until 2016 while, after that, I had more time on my hands and since 2017 I have been contributing more actively. Currently the main areas I map are the province of Agrigento in Sicilia.

What are you mapping? Do you have a specialisation?

The area I am mapping is the city of Aragona, which was not mapped in OpenStreetMap in 2016. I have knowledge of topography because of my military profession and because I graduated as a surveyor.

What is your greatest achievement as mapper?

Having found that large groups such as Google Maps have sometimes copied my work, I have included errors in some areas (known only to me) promptly reported, subsequently removed them.

Why are you mapping? What motivates you?

I map because I have a lot of free time and for the satisfaction of being useful to those who need it, especially tourists who want to visit particularly interesting areas of Sicily.

Do you have any ideas to expand the OpenStreetMap community, to motivate more people to contribute?

Make a link with data collection applications such as Street Complete, useful e.g. by joggers, for both simple users and leisure associations, Pro Loco and those that generally promote the area.

Do you have contact with other mappers?

At the moment no, if there are any JOSM experts I would be very happy to make their acquaintance.

What is in your view the greatest strength of OpenStreetMap?

The simplicity of contribution.

What are the largest challenges for OpenStreetMap?

Becoming the world’s largest geographic database and being able to innovate in simplicity.

How to do stay on top of news about OpenStreetMap?

It would be good if comments from contributing users were grouped by topic and also translated into Italian.

To conclude, is there anything else you want to share with the readers?

At the moment, I think that will be enough. I remain at your disposal, greetings to the entire OpenStreetMap team.

Thank you, Domenico, for this interview.

Translated from Italian by Claire Muyllaert and Pierre Parmentier with the help of www.DeepL.com/Translator.

Sa homepage et sa page de contribution.

Bonjour Domenico ! Voudrais-tu te présenter brièvement à nos lecteurs ?

J’ai 60 ans, je suis marié et père d’une fille. Je vis à Ravenne (Italie).

Comment et quand as-tu découvert OpenStreetMap ?

J’ai rencontré OpenStreetMap en 2011 lors d’une soirée Linux.

Comment utilises-tu OpenStreetMap ?

J’utilise OpenStreetMap comme un simple contributeur qui pourrait en avoir besoin d’une manière ou d’une autre.

Quelle sorte de contributeur es-tu et dans quelle région cartographies-tu ?

J’étais un contributeur peu actif jusqu’en 2016 alors que, par la suite, j’ai eu plus de temps à ma disposition et depuis 2017, je contribue plus activement. Actuellement, les principales zones que je cartographie sont la province d’Agrigento en Sicile.

Que cartographies-tu ? As-tu une spécialisation ?

La zone que je cartographie est la ville d’Aragona, laquelle en 2016 n’était pas cartographiée dans OpenStreetMap. J’ai des connaissances en topographie en raison de ma profession militaire et parce que j’ai obtenu un diplôme de géomètre.

Quelle est ta plus grande prouesse en tant que contributeur ?

Ayant constaté que de grands groupes tels que Google Maps ont parfois copié mon travail, j’ai inclus des erreurs dans certaines zones (connues de moi seul) rapidement signalées, puis retirées.

Pourquoi cartographies-tu? Qu’est-ce qui te motive ?

Je cartographie parce que j’ai beaucoup de temps libre et pour la satisfaction d’être utile à ceux qui en ont besoin, principalement les touristes qui veulent visiter des zones particulièrement intéressantes de la Sicile.

As-tu des idées pour élargir la communauté OpenStreetMap, pour motiver plus de gens à contribuer ?

Établir un lien avec des applications de collecte de données telles que Street Complete, utiles par exemple pour les joggeurs, les simples utilisateurs et les associations de loisirs, [Pro Loco] (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Loco) et celles qui font généralement la promotion de la zone.

As-tu des contacts avec d’autres contributeurs ?

Pour l’instant non, mais s’il y a des experts de JOSM, je serais très heureux de faire leur connaissance.

Quelle est, selon toi, la plus grande force d’OpenStreetMap ?

La simplicité de la contribution.

Quel est le plus grand défi pour OpenStreetMap ?

Devenir la plus grande base de données géographiques du monde et être capable d’innover en toute simplicité.

Comment restes-tu à jour par rapport à l’actualité d’OpenStreetMap ?

Il serait bon que les commentaires des utilisateurs-contributeurs soient regroupés par thème et traduits en italien également.

Pour conclure, y a-t-il encore quelque chose que tu voudrais dire au lecteur ?

Pour l’instant, je pense que cela suffira. Je reste à votre disposition, salutations à toute l’équipe d’OpenStreetMap.

Grand merci, Domenico, pour cette interview.

Traduit de l’italien par Claire Muyllaert et Pierre Parmentier avec l’aide de www.DeepL.com/Translator.

Zijn homepage en zijn bijdragerpagina.

Hallo Domenico. Wil je jezelf even voorstellen aan onze lezers?

Ik ben 60 jaar oud, getrouwd en vader van een meisje. Ik woon in Ravenna (Italië).

Hoe en wanneer heb je OpenStreetMap ontdekt?

Ik ontdekte OpenStreetMap in 2011 tijdens een Linux-feestje.

Hoe gebruik je OpenStreetMap?

Ik gebruik OpenStreetMap als een eenvoudige bijdrager die het op één of andere manier nodig zou kunnen hebben.

Wat voor soort bijdrager ben je en in welk kaartgebied map je?

Tot 2016 was ik een niet erg actieve bijdrager, terwijl ik daarna meer tijd om handen had en sinds 2017 een actievere bijdrage lever. Momenteel zijn de belangrijkste gebieden die ik in kaart breng in de provincie Agrigento in Sicilië.

Wat ben je in kaart aan het brengen? Heb je een specialisatie?

Het gebied dat ik in kaart breng is de stad Aragona, die in 2016 nog niet in kaart was gebracht in OpenStreetMap. Ik heb kennis van topografie vanwege mijn militaire beroep en omdat ik afgestudeerd ben als landmeter.

Waar ben je het meest trots op als mapper?

Nadat ik had vastgesteld dat grote groepen zoals Google Maps soms mijn werk hebben gekopieerd, heb ik fouten in sommige gebieden (die door mij alleen bekend waren) onmiddellijk gemeld en vervolgens verwijderd.

Waarom breng je het in kaart? Wat motiveert je?

Ik kaart omdat ik veel vrije tijd heb en om nuttig te zijn voor degenen die het nodig hebben, vooral toeristen die bijzonder interessante gebieden van Sicilië willen bezoeken.

Heb je ideeën over hoe we de OpenStreetMap-gemeenschap kunnen uitbreiden of meer mappers kunnen motiveren?

Enn link leggen met applications voor het verzamelen van gegevens, zoals Street Complete, nuttig voor bv. voor joggers, voor zowel eenvoudige gebruikers als vrijetijdsverenigingen, Pro Loco en toepassingen die het gebied in het algemeen promoten.

Heb je contact met andere mappers?

Op dit moment niet, maar als er JOSM-deskundigen zijn, zou ik graag met hen kennismaken.

Naar uw mening wat is de grootste kracht van OpenStreetMap?

De eenvoud van de bijdrage.

Wat is de grootste uitdaging voor OpenStreetMap?

De grootste geografische databank ter wereld worden en te kunnen innoveren in eenvoud.

Hoe blijf je op de hoogte van het OpenStreetMap-nieuws?

Het zou goed zijn als commentaren van bijdragende gebruikers per onderwerp werden gegroepeerd en ook in het Italiaans werden vertaald.

Om af te sluiten, is er nog iets dat je zou willen vertellen aan de lezer?

Op dit moment, denk ik dat dat het genoeg zal zijn. Ik blijf tot uw beschikking, groeten aan het hele OpenStreetMap team.

Hartelijk dank, Domenico, voor dit interview.

Vertaald uit het Italiaans door Claire Muyllaert en Pierre Parmentier met de hulp van www.DeepL.com/Translator.

Hey all,

In the past month, MapComplete was part of Open Summer of Code where 4 students and myself did make a lot of improvements and a new theme.

With this diary entry, I’d like to give you some insights in what we’ve done the past 4 weeks.

What is Open Summer of Code

Open Summer of Code (or OSOC) is a programme organized by Open Knowledge Belgium, which is a small belgian NGO that promotes Open Source and Open Data.

For OSOC, they search clients (organizations or governmental institutions) which have an interesting problem that they want solved and with budget to pay a team of about 4 students.

These 4 students will be guided by a coach (such as me) to make sure something useful comes out of it.

The actual problems are varied. We’ve had a planning tool for building new homes, a calendar application based on SOLID, a tool to discover research papers, …
The bottom line is that data must be open and that all produced software and tools will be open sourced. If possible, the programs should reuse existing tools and datasets, such as OpenStreetMap or wikidata.

OnWheels: the wheelchair accessibility map

One of the projects this year was paid for by BOSA (a belgian gov organization) requested by OnWheels - a belgian application which helps wheelchair users to navigate the world. They have a database of shops, restaurants and other amenties together with some info about them, such as name, contact details and opening hours, but also information about the width of the door, the height of the kurb at the entrance, …

During the past years, the idea of opening this data has grown within OnWheels, for various reasons. By opening the data, more people can reuse it. Furthermore, by switching to OSM, the cost of maintaining this data is shared amongst more people.

However, making the switch is not easy. With the OSOC-project, we wanted to create a first version of how an OnWheels 2.0 might work.

Whom is this app for?

During our scoping sessions, we identified three groups of people who will be interacting with this app:

1. People with reduced mobility
2. Data contributors
3. Users which might export or analyze the data

People with reduced mobility

The first group of users is the obvious group - they are the main group of users and should be able to get the information they need quickly and easily. They include wheelchair users, but many more groups of people are served by having good data; including people without a disability. In a way, people with e.g. a stroller can benefit from this information as well.

Data contributors

The second group of people are the data contributors. They include the casual mapper, the group of people who do a mapathonn (e.g. as a teambuilding) to a municipality who has a dataset lying around that they want to import.

Data reusers

The last group are the data reusers, whom want to reuse and analyze the data. A typical example here is a government or municipality who wants to create a report about the accessibility in their city.

What is good wheelchair accessibility data?

OSM has a long tradition of mapping wheelchair-accessibility with wheelchair=*. As it turns out, this is rather limited. Some wheelchairs are wider then others, some wheelchairs are pretty long (e.g. wheelchairs with a third wheel in front; electric scooters often used by old people, …).

Some wheelchair users can cross big kerbs (e.g. by getting up, stepping over, lifting their wheelchair over the kerb and sitting down again), whereas other people with reduced mobility might not be able to cross a kerb of even 2 cm.

In other words, we want more detailed information!

This also raises an important data question. Should we add this information on the POI of the shop, on the enclosing building or on the door? We decided to add the information on the individual door objects. For example, the shop might move, but the door will stay for the next shop. Furthermore, a building (and thus a shop) might have multiple entrances with different properties… By keeping this information on the doors, the data model stays pretty clean.

Mapathon/immersive session

We also tested this in real life, by going out with the team in wheelchairs for a stroll through the city. Quite an adventure, especially taking the subway… You can find a movie about it on the project site.

The features

With these three groups of users in mind, we set out to create an application which served all of them.

Of course, MapComplete already goes a long way serving these groups. The main focus lay thus on creating a mapcomplete-theme for wheelchair users, with a few extra needed features on the sides.

Layer: Entrances

The first important layer where we all deal with are entrances. For wheelchair users, they are very important: if the entrance is too small or the kurb to high, it becomes an insurmountable obstacle.

Indoor navigation and level selector

The first major, new feature is the level selector. When there are features in view over multiple levels, an elevator will appear on the right where users can select which level they want to view.

In tandem, a layer showing indoor mapping features (such as rooms and corridors) was developed.

When mixing the indoors layer, entrances, walls_and_buildings and pedestrian_paths-layers, we get a basic indoor viewer. A good testing ground is the building we were at during the project.

_NB: this indoor viewer replaces the previous theme ‘entrances’

A dash of magic

Having an indoor viewer is cool, but doing some automatic analysis of the data makes all the difference.

The walls_and_buildings received an update. Every building-feature will calculate which entrance-objects are located within or on the edge of the building. These can be neatly shown on the building, giving an neat overview:

Layers: Toilets, reception desks, elevators and some more layers

Other important features for wheelchair users are toilets, reception desks and elevators. The toilet layer received some extra questions to gather data relevant for people with reduced mobility; and a layer with reception desks and elevators was added.

The elevator layer asks for information about the physical size of the elevator and offers the possibility to mark an elevator as broken or closed which, sadly, is often the case as we noticed during our wheelchair trip .

The kurbs-theme got some improvements too.

At last, a hotel layer was added as well to have some feature parity.

Features for data reusers

Last year, a feature to download the current view (as geojson or CSV) was already added (even though this feature is disabled by default - it can be enabled by adding an URL-parameter or by enabling it in the theme config).

For the professional data reusers, a ‘dashboard’ was added as well, where some stats can be seen in the blink of an eye.

Importing data

To import data, a layer to read maproullette tasks has been created which works similar to the import notes. More information on that will come soon.

Mixing it together

All these layers and features are mixed together in the OnWheels theme

More magic

At last, the onwheels-theme also ‘steals’ the doors-overview from the enclosing building-layer. Clicking a feature within a building with doors, will reveal the information about those doors.

More info

More info on the project page: https://osoc22.github.io/project-on-wheels/

Some other changes

The shops theme has received an update as well. I ~~stole~~ parsed the id-tagging-scheme-files and extracted the different shop types with their icons. As a result, the shops how have very nice individual icons.

As scrolling through a long list (~160) of options became cumbersome, I did implement a new way of presenting this view which offers a searchable list of options.

In the mean time, the educational theme has launched. This one features a list of languages that one can choose as school language. This list was queried from Wikidata and is very long (>1000 entries) - immediately breaking this new searchable options tool… It was amended to only show the official languages of the country the school is located in (again: wikidata info and a bit of magic). If the school still uses another language to teach, searching will probably reveal this information.

And, as usual, many translations came in and some miscellaneous bugfixes and question updates were added as well.

I have just returned from a no-toll way trip through France. What struck me was the widespread errors in speed limit tags, or the complete absence thereof, especially on a 90 kph or 80 kph stretch. Is somebody actually taking care of this in the France OSM editor group?

When you are reading this you should be already experienced with validating and using JOSM so I will not include basics here.

Validating multiple tasks at once or “Multivalidation”

Usually I am validating tasks in projects that are focused on mapping buildings. I am going to show you an example of my workflow on one of the Mozambique projects because there are two things that are not in every project and it’s very easy to validate in this area so you can try it on your own. Here is the project

I highly recommend using the shortcuts in JOSM, which you can customize, or you can put tools that you are often using to your toolbar. I will write shortcuts for windows in { }.

For Multivalidation in Mozambique I am using these tools:

EXPERT MODE
Edit → Preferences {F12} → checkbox in the bottom left corner. Thanks to this you will be able to see some stuff that has been hidden before like the number of each layer, more options for Search or some tools like extrude tool for example. If you are using shortcuts (like {X} for extrude tool) those will work even if you won’t turn on the Expert mode.

PLUGINS
List of plugins that I am using and their most useful feature for me:

• Buildings_tools - fundamental plugin for mapping buildings
• Todo - great tool for adding buildings, task areas, anything into list and then easily check all of them
• Utilsplugin2 - mainly for Replace geometry {Ctrl+Shift+G}
• Mapathoner - mainly for Selecting non orthogonal buildings
• Markseen - mark seen areas of the map
• Conflation* - basically Replace geometry for multiple objects at once. Since it is kinda tricky and doesn't have that much of a use I leave it here just as an honorable mention.

TASKGRID
Importing borders of every task (taskgrid) in the project File → Open Location {Ctrl+L}. New window will pop up and you will type there URL link in this form
https://tasking-manager-tm4-production-api.hotosm.org/api/v2/projects/PROJECT_ID/tasks/?as_file=true&format=geojson
so for project #12658 it would be
https://tasking-manager-tm4-production-api.hotosm.org/api/v2/projects/12658/tasks/?as_file=true&format=geojson
Make sure you have ticked option “Download as new layer”.
Don’t worry you don’t have to remember the URL, once you use it, JOSM will remember it and you will just edit the PROJECT_ID part.
I am importing taskgrid because in this project we are suppose to also map buildings outside of the task boundary. And since we don’t want to map buildings inside other tasks, thanks to this we will know if they are inside or not.

MAP PAINT STYLES
Map paint styles are very useful tool that can change visual aspects of what you see on the map. You can even create your own with the MapCSS.

• Missing Maps / Youth Mappers Validators Checks - highlighting shared nodes
• Inline_Validation - highlighting overlaping buildings
• Custom paint style - I am using a map paint style made by peculiar theater. It is specially for the taskgird. Thanks to this you will be able to immediately see the number of task and its state (mapped/validated/not mapped/…). This comes handy in multivalidation when you want to mark only some of the tasks as More mapping needed.
  To import it into your JOSM go to Edit → Preferences {F12} →Map paint styles → PLUS sign in top right corner → Name it as you want and in the URL paste
  https://gitlab.com/peculiar-theater/mapcss/-/archive/main/mapcss-main.zip?path=tm-taskgrid

SEARCH
Edit → Search {Ctrl+F}. Very useful tool for validation. And if you are using any search string often, you can easily make it as a button that will appear on your toolbar. To do so, in the Search window, Options section (middle, very left) tick “add toolbar button”. I recommend changing the icons of these buttons in Edit → Preferences {F12} → Toolbar. Or left click on your toolbar → Configure toolbar. I have 8 different buttons like this, I recommend you using these strings:

• “building:-yes” - select every building that has any other tag then building = yes (for example hut, barn, etc.). This is useful because in this Mozambique project we are supposed to use only the building = yes tag.
• “building=yes nodes:5-20” - select buildings with 5-20 nodes. I am using this because in these Mozambique projects there are circular buildings usually very uncommon. So if this search catches any, there is a high chance that I would map them as a rectangular building (with usually 4 nodes).
• “type:way” - I am using this to select borders of tasks that I am currently validating
• “area[building] > node:connection” switch Search syntax in bottom left panel to MapCSS selector - this selects shared nodes. Yes, these are already visually highlighted with Missing Maps / Youth Mappers Validators Checks map paint style but using this string we can easily select them all at once and then we can add them into Todo list plugin.

MY WORKFLOW

In Tasking manager I select multiple tasks, usually I am filtering them by user so I can give them the best feedback since I will check multiple tasks that they mapped. And it is easier for me because if there are any mistakes I know what I should focus on. After I lock the tasks I check if there are any comments, if the mapper didn’t asked about something that they needed help with.

I open JOSM and import the taskgrid, as mentioned before, File → Open Location and use the URL. Then I do my usual checking system for all the tasks at once. I use “area[building] > node:connection”. If it selects any nodes I add them into the Todo list plugin and check them one by one (to unglue buildings that are sharing nodes, I click on the building and press {G} ). Same process goes for “building:-yes” and Mapathoner →Select Non Orthogonal Buildings as well. Since usually there are no circular buildings in Mozambique I am using “building=yes nodes:5-20” as well. If the building has for example 5 nodes and I want to make it 4 nodes rectangular I press {Q} and then Tools → Simplify Way {Shift+Y}.

After all the obvious topological mistakes are solved, I am going to check every task one by one. I switch my active layer (top right part of the screen) to “Boundary for tasks: xxxxx”, use “type:way” search string and add it to the To do list. Then I switch back into OSM layer. Now I can easily move between tasks that I am validating. Then I do the usual validation for each task individually. I scan the area of the task if every building is mapped and if the mapped buildings are mapped well.

After I am done with validating the task I scan the area outside the task box. Thanks to the taskgrid that I imported before, I can see where are other tasks so I am mapping onlybuildings that are not in areas of any other task.
If you want you can turn off the hatched background of the OSM non downloaded area (View -> Draw boundaries of downloaded data {shortcut isn’t working} ).
If I find any building first of all I have to download the OSM data to check if it isn’t mapped already. The quickest way to download the data is File -> Download in current view (I recommend adding a shortcut). But you can use the usuall Download Data… {Ctrl+Shift+Down} (icon on your toolbar is arrow pointing down) aswell.
Usually I am checking the area from my current task to the next nearest. When I am done with this, I move to the next task using the to do plugin and repeat the process.

After I am done with validating all the tasks I write a nice feedback in the Tasking Manager. I am poiting out all the mistakes in comment of one task, so the mapper has all the informations together. Usually I choose either the first task on the list or the one where the mapper made the most mistakes. In the comment you can also mention number of another task if he made a specific mistake there or insert printscreens of the mistakes, preferably with before and after. Also if needed, thanks to the custom map paint style you can easily remember number of tasks which you are gonna mark as More mapping needed.

USEFULL LINKS

Advanced building mapping guide

When the mapping is very poor I am using print screens from the current task in my feedback, here are some examples

Feedback messages examples

Mapathons are the events where I gathered all my knowledge. Check if there are any in your area and if not, you can always join the Missing Maps London ones, which I highly recommend. They are organising one open for everyone on first tuesday of the month and then another one for experienced mappers in the middle of the month. See you there :)

Huge thanks to anthaas who showed me most of the tips and tricks.

19/07/2022-25/07/2022

Mapping

• Andrea Spinelli wondered how to add a point of interest with iD at a specific coordinate. Officially, this function is not desired. Developers recommend the use of Cmd + Opt + M, or equivalent, to open the measurement panel, which shows the exact location of a selected node. In comments following the blog post, readers shared their alternative approaches.
• A bicycle route linking Stuttgart in Germany to Strasbourg in France has been created, as reported last week. Without signposts along it, a discussion has started about whether it meets OpenStreetMap’s inclusion criteria. At the moment there are opinions on multiple channels for and against, including the French mailing list > and the German forum > .
• EdoBoo reported, in their OSM Diary, that their visit to Forte di Montecchio motivated them to revise the mapping of this fortress with more detail.
• Mapping public transport seems to remain a challenge for new mappers, although the wiki contains a step-by-step tutorial.
• ngumenawesamson, from HOT, presented a detailed classification of aspects of data quality on OSM, under 10 headings. It is planned to use this classification to identify actions which can be taken, within HOT projects, to reduce some of these issues.
• Voting on Documentation of key prefixes and suffixes, to establish the convention of documenting key prefixes at pages named Key:prefix:* and key suffixes at pages named Key:*:suffix on the wiki, is open until Sunday 7 August.
• Voting on the following proposals has closed:
  • school=entrance, to deprecate the use of the tag school=entrance, was approved with 26 votes for, 3 votes against and 0 abstentions.
  • amenity=library_dropoff, for mapping a place where library patrons can return or drop-off books, other than the library itself, was approved with 12 votes for, 1 vote against and 0 abstentions.

Community

• The national mapping agency for Great Britain, the Ordnance Survey (OSGB), recently released a new map, OS Map, as a website and a mobile app. The map provides both free and subscription layers. The free layers integrate data from a range of sources: OSGB open data, OSGB closed data and OpenStreetMap via MapBox. The UK community has noticed problems with the latter layer as it includes private paths, which has resulted in irate landowners deleting perfectly valid OSM data.
• User TrickyFoxy raised the question of whether registration for OpenStreetMap by mobile users (especially with Google) is too complex and linked to different issues on GitHub, one of which has been open since 2015. As Tom Hughes pointed out at the time, any solution must enable new mappers to accept the contributor terms.

Education

• Introducing young people to responsible mapping through education and training is certainly more meaningful than hunting for nodes. Great examples are the actions of Muni Mappers from Uganda and Laura Mugeha at the Technical University, Nairobi, Kenya.

OSM research

• Roberto Pizzolotto, of the University of Calabria, published a scientific trajectory of OpenStreetMap. It showed that the main themes (a conceptual network) chiefly related to technical matters. Collaboration among scholars and institutes (the social network) was not strong, and knowledge and ideas circulated within a limited network.

Maps

• For the May Contain Hackers 2022 event in the Netherlands there is a special map based on OSM, which Evelyn also prepared for OsmAnd.

switch2OSM

• The French association Randonner Leger > , wrote > a guide about using OSMAnd for trekking purposes.

Software

• Canadian contributors reported reliability problems with OSM tile servers. The OpenStreetMap operations group is aware of latency problems for North American users as the one US rendering server, Pyrene, no longer has the capacity to keep up with demand. It is planned to add a new server soon in the east of North America.
• Benjamin Clark, from Meta, shared the 2022 development plans for MapWithAI’s RapiD editor for OpenStreetMap in a GitHub project issue. It is open to comments and feedback.
• Ilya Zverev wondered how to edit tags directly from openstreetmap.org. He built a solution which works as a browser extension available for Firefox and Chrome.

Programming

• Paul Norman took the recent outage of the standard tile layer as motivation to describe the means of monitoring system health.

Did you know …

• … there are many ways to contribute regularly to OSM?
  Desktop:
  • OSM Streak
  • MapRoulette
  • Pic4Review
  • Unmapped Places
  • Find Suspicious OpenStreetMap Changesets
  • OSMCha
  • NotesReview
  • Many Tasking Managers

  Smartphone:

  • StreetComplete
  • Every Door
  • Vespucci
  • OSMfocus Reborn
  • OSM Go!
  • Jungle Bus

  We are sure we have forgotten some. Please write to us and let us know, we will add them next week.

Other “geo” things

• The Tour de France Femmes bicycle race has a live map of the event which uses the Leaflet library, known for its use of OpenStreetMap as a base layer provider, among others.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
	iD for Beginner Training		2022-07-30
臺北市	COSCUP 2022 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata 聯合議程軌		2022-07-30
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires	4a reunión bimestral de OSM Latam (organiza OSM Argentina)		2022-07-30
Ernakulam	OSM Kerala Community Meetup 2022		2022-07-31
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2022-08-01
	MapRoulette Monthly Community Meeting		2022-08-02
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter Stammtisch		2022-08-02
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2022-08-03
City of Westminster	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2022-08-02
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #38 (Online)	✓	2022-08-02
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Meetup		2022-08-04
Cayambe	Notathon en OpenStreetMap – resolvamos notas de Cayambé, Ecuador		2022-08-06
	OSM Africa August Mapathon: Map Rwanda		2022-08-06
新北市	OpenStreetMap 街景踏查團 #3		2022-08-07
Washington	MappingDC Mappy Hour		2022-08-10
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2022-08-09
Köln	25. Stammtisch Köln		2022-08-10
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Meetup		2022-08-11
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2022-08-10
Zürich	143. OSM-Stammtisch		2022-08-11
Berlin	170. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2022-08-12
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #43		2022-08-15
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2022-08-17
	154. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn		2022-08-16
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2022-08-16
Firenze	State of the Map 2022		2022-08-19 – 2022-08-21

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 Lejun, MatthiasMatthias, Nordpfeil, PierZen, SK53, TheSwavu, derFred.

I was mapping public transport routes and stops waaay north in Chennai city when I noticed an existing stop that had local_ref=IIT. This rung so loud a bell in my head that I went to Overpass Turbo to dig up all nodes with that tag. Surprise, surprise..

Es entretenido …. pero muy laborioso!!!

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