OpenStreetMap
Everyone knows that StreetComplete is a simple editor. But did you know that it has more features than it seems at first glance?
On osm.org does not support video, so the article will be on telegra.ph https://telegra.ph/Advanced-StreetComplete-08-04
На русском языке: https://telegra.ph/Prodvinutyj-StreetComplete-08-05
Yesterday which was the 5th of August, 2023 we ha our weekly mapathon. This holds every Saturday of every week. I trained our newbie from last week on how to use Maproulette and how to map road. Then I also opened a new account and trained a newbie yesterday on how to map. We had two newbies yesterday but I could only open an account for the other because our time was up. We all also had refreshments and had fun mapping. We were a total of 6.
I attended the monthly coordination meeting that took place on the 5th August from 9:45am-11am. The Agenda for the meeting 1. Map Nigeria Mapathon Project -progress and concerns 2. Other community Activities- 3. Reports from Mapathon centers/State Chapters/Campus Team 4. SotM Nigeria 2023-updates and Actions required
I also invited 2 persons to attend the meeting. It was quite nice.
There’s lots of software around to work with OpenStreetMap data - querying it, creating maps from it, using it for navigation. One area that there has historically been less support is analysing OSM changeset data. As an example, here is one of mine.
However, many years ago Toby Murray wrote ChangesetMD. That can be used to maintain a database of changeset information (tags, discussions, etc.). Martijn van Exel updated that to a recent version of Python and I made a couple more changes to support very recent Python versions and made the replication more scriptable.
Over on the planet.osm.org site, there’s a download for all the changeets generated at the same time as the weekly “planet” file is created, and also one for all the changeets and discussions as well. The changesets-only one is just over 6GB (bzipped), and the one with discussions as well is only about 250MB more, because most changesets don’t have discussions.
If you’re not interested in changeset data dating back to 2012 you don’t need to download this file; you can just start replicating from whatever point in the past you are intereted in starting from.
If you’re on Debian or Ubuntu, you’ll likely want to follow these instructions from a non-root user account of your choice (substitute that account for “youruseraccount” in the instructions).
From the virtual account created by the installation, which you can reenter by running
cd /home/${youruseraccount}/src/ChangesetMD
source .venv/bin/activate
Run something like this
python changesetmd.py -d changesets -c -g
The “-g” is optional and initialises the database to story geometric data. “changesets” in the line above is just the database name.
To load the database with changesets and discussions:
python changesetmd.py -d changesets -g -f ~/data/discussions-latest.osm.bz2
Added lots of building in SA between anderson loop-huebner and I10-NW Military HWY. Will continue adding in sections until SA buildings are filled in completely.
I participated in the coordination of the conference state of The Map Nigeria in preparation for the Conference
Magic Earth is an Android App that used OpenStreetmap as it’s mapping source. Unfortunately many streets i travel either had no speed limit or a value that was in ERROR. So tonight I joined OSM and learned how to edit Speed Limits on streets. To my surprise I racked up 27 changes to post.
Editied OSM again this week.
I’ve spent time at Sargent Park (Winnipeg, Canada), and noticed a lot of missing pathways, which I can use on a bike or walking. I’ve made several updates to paths, roads, parking, fences, building names, facility names, etc.
I’m quite happy with the changes.
I haven’t found a good android app for OSM, either. Someone must know something decent– a kind of google maps competitor.
Today I came to think again about on-demand bus service areas. There is one mention on the OSM wiki: this explanation from Belgium, but I’m not sure if it really refers to a service area rather than a line with on-demand stops. The idea of the on-demand bus service area is that from one central stop a small bus will take you wherever you want to go, almost like a taxi, but only at certain times, and together with other passengers (if there are any). The concept has been quite common for some time in rural areas all over Europe. In my opinion, we could just draw the area, give it some tag so it is put down in the data that this rural area is generally accessible by public transport.
Mapper BroccoliB did so here, and his attempt was also what made me think about it again.
The reason I came across his edit was that my wife and I had a day off and used it for a bike ride through the sparsely-populated area north-east of Wolfsburg, just across the former border between West and East Germany. It was nice cycling along the Mittellandkanal - but I have to say that we are quite used to gravel tracks and have equipped our bikes with appropriate puncture-safe tyres. Some excellent pear trees along the road here. No traffic at all because of a road closure further south. When we came to the nearest larger village, we had to decide if we wanted to continue on the road in heavier traffic now or use a track running parallel. To our surprise (it wasn’t mapped as such yet), it had excellently smooth asphalt. For the way back we had opted for a bus line that also carries up to five bicycles (for free!). It’s really amazing what the land of Saxony-Anhalt with its limited resources and sparse population does for an attractive public transport. Lower Saxony could take a page from its book!
🗺️🦀 Hello OpenStreetMap community,
I am excited to share with you my latest invention, osm-yolo-crossings — a new tool that harnesses cutting-edge AI technology to autonomously detect and map pedestrian crossings (zebras) in OpenStreetMap. After the successful AI building import in Poland, it’s now time to expand and improve pedestrian safety!
Leveraging the power of YOLOv8 object detection, this tool is designed to ensure that we no longer miss pedestrian crossings on our maps. With an impressive >99.7% precision rate, it’s able to import around 88% of all detected crossings. The tool discards the remaining 12% due to low confidence levels. Thanks to smart filtering, this system is incredibly efficient. For instance, it can map the entirety of Poland in just about two months using a single server without GPU. This is AI working smart, not hard!
With the new release of more than 59 million points of interest (POIs) from Overture, consisting of Microsoft and Meta POI datasets combined, the natural question arises: how can this be useful for OpenStreetMap?
The most important challenge in getting this data into OSM is making sure the place labels in Overture have an equivalent in OSM. This is mostly doable with automation, but many cases require context.
Validation of these is a forthcoming challenge: street-level imagery from Mapillary will be especially helpful, but being there in person to validate is also a big advantage. That aside, even if the data can be added to OSM one-by-one (not imported) with validation, the tags need to have a proper format.
I got started by referencing Feye Andal’s great and succinct guide on viewing the data in AWS Athena. I found a slight lack of clarity in the instructions: you need to make sure your Athena instance, and your S3 bucket where queries are saved, are on us-west-2 region, same as the Overture dataset, unless you copy the dataset first to a bucket in your other region. So make sure the regions are the same, and the instructions should work flawlessly!
Exploring the dataset, there are 1037 unique place labels in it. 86,000+ are structure_and_geography which can refer to a wide range of natural geography or built structures in OSM, difficult to match with any specific tag without context. Others translate directly, such as a laundromat.
Some example tags include: "forest", "stadium_arena", "farm", "professional_services", "baptist_church", "park", "print_media", "spas", "passport_and_visa_services", "restaurant", "dentist"
To get most of the tags matched, I used Python to import the OpenAI module, and connect to my OpenAI account, which charges a few fractions of a penny per request.
I set a system message, which defines the role the AI should play or assume. My message was:
It seems that there is only one instruction for getting fresh Sentinel-2. It tells you quite well how to prepare images, but it is difficult to explain how to use them in OSM editors. So after step 7, you can do
Processing->Toolbox->Raster Tools->Generate XYZ tiles (MBTiles)
Extent of the map area you need.Maximum Zoom is most likely 15.Output Path, specify where to save the tile filembtiles plugin in JOSMBy the way, recently Guru Maps learned how to tear off MBtiles https://gurumaps.app/blog/2023/06/14/mbtiles
But if you still want a tile server, you can do without tileserver-php from the instructions. And without the QTiles plugin, it will also work faster!
Processing->Toolbox->Raster Tools->Generate XYZ tiles (Directory)
Extent of the map area you need.Maximum Zoom is most likely 15.Output Directory. You can immediately select the directory of your web server.python -m http.server 80 or PHP: php -S 127.0.0.1:80
Preferences->Layers->+TMS
http://localhost/<tile folder name>/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png
p. s. I used QGIS 3.32.1-Lima.
upd: method from @maraf24
Instead of starting the web server, specify the following URL in JOSM:
file://<absolute path to the folder with tiles>/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png
This OSM diary is an English translation of Yekastreet’s OSM diary post called Sobre el “Mapping Workshop 2023”. Translating and re-posting because I enjoyed it so much :D
Among the many kilometres of routes we have mapped in the seven years since Youthmappers started, our own journey as YEKAStreetMGA continues to surprise and please us the most. We have grown as a team, from our first mapathons in the barely equipped classrooms of the university, to the partnerships we are now forming with our local mapping networks. Design by design, we make the use of open data tools a little more accessible. Through methodological design (a term unthinkable for us in the early days), we have now transformed our first university meetings into structured processes to disseminate and share our knowledge with a new community of mappers.
What we have experienced as students, as women, in a socio-political context that routinely places us between non-functional institutionalism and the uncertainty of self-management in educational processes, reaffirms once again that teaching is a highly political act. Empowering. Essential in the construction of new models of society. And, in a country where making community is a crime, mapping and locating ourselves is in itself an act of humanitarian rebellion. Here we are, here we exist, more than planimetry and satellite rasters. We are vectors on the map, with direction and meaning. And our dedication and commitment to cultivating and growing the community in Central America overcomes the risks and dangers.
Central America yes, because when we speak of Latin America we make invisible the particular individuality of Central Americans, we exist between Mexico and South America, and although we share, we are indisputably different from the rest of Latin America in our struggles, way of life, needs and challenges.
i’m loving open street maps! never gave it the time of day before ;)
Hello everyone, better late than never, and yeah, that’s my first time here =D
This is meant to be a testimonial covering a somewhat more technical part, for a more “fun” version, I made a thread on Twitter* with LOTS of good photos!! (last year I’ve made a similar) !!
Well, in the beginning, I wasn’t expecting to even be at the event, like, another continent, too expensive travel… I’ve submitted my piece of work, that I was already working on It was (accepted)[https://talks.osgeo.org/foss4g-2023/talk/CRPWUS/]!
Then I’ve been approved for the travel grant program and also as a volunteer!!! I was so so glad, then I need to say thanks again for OSGEO, FLOSSK, UFPR, and HOT they were the ones that made the travel possible!!
Kosovo is a lovely country, there’s amazing and quite affordable food everywhere! Also, the locals and the “locals”, but from Albania (I found this shared sense of belonging very enchanting) received me very well, I got to know many badass people from FOSS community, like the giants from OpenLabs and Cloud 68, they are incredible people and contributors, now I’m really eager to get to know Tirana!
Now getting to the promised technical part: I saw so many solutions and applications, It’s so amusing to see ever-growing FOSS software, including in fields like 3D GIS and even digital twins fancy stuff.
As an OSM lover what I found most heartfelt was that everyone was so fond of OSM there, all applications with base maps had some OSM flavor/derived there, and all making analysis using OSM as the main or one of the data sources…
Do we (OSM) have a league table for all countries/ entities (non-countries?), which is based on the quality of OSM mapping in that country?
I ask this question, because I was undertaking a MapRoulette challenge, to help with mapping in Algiers, and although some pockets of excellent mapping existed, it seemed clear that this was very much the exception.
How do we gather metrics, to assess the quality of mapping in a given country, so that quality can be improved?
How do we engage with the ‘local’ OSM community, to perhaps help them to improve mapping?
Can we define a regular (and repeatable) set of MapRoulette challenges, that would enable remote mapping to be carried out, in support of ‘hands-on’ mapping/ surveying carried out by ‘locals on the ground’?
How do we publicise tools such as StreetComplete, to help populate the data/ metadata of a country, in order to build upon the ‘big picture’ data that is gathered?
What are we missing, above?
Please add to this, and edit, as appropriate.
Many thanks,
Chris
My personal list of the OSM projects for Slovakia (assorted by importance):
ToDos:
Welcome tool - https://welcome.osm.be/europe
Surfaces - https://data.humdata.org/m/dataset/slovakia-road-surface-data
JuRaVa cycloroute - to map by armchair mapping
Entry point
Inspired by my endeavours to create a colour-coded map of sewer vents/ stink pipes by manufacturer, and by my county council’s endeavour to undertake a survey of holy wells, I started adding name:etymology:wikidata first to the holy wells in Co. Kilkenny, but then to the whole of Ireland.
I had produced a video about mapping holy wells in March 2021, but I think I need to make an updated one, because I was oblivious of the name:etymology group, and instead, had suggested people use subject:wikidata. Silly me. But at least, I only had to retag some of them rather than looking up every name.
Some saints or holy people like St. Patrick and “Our” Lady where easily identified, of course, but there were some very obscure saints there for which I had to create wikidata entries. For some, I just could not figure out which saint the holy wells were named after. I also had to skip St. Brigid and St. Kieran, because either name relates to more than one saint.
The first night I did this, I gave every saint a colour or colour combination, but I had to give up on that, because it is called the land of 1,000 saints after all. Here’s a list of saints IN Ireland on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_saints_of_Ireland. There are holy wells named after Biblical saints and early, non-Irish saints as well.
Some holy wells are also not named after a saint, but after the cure they supposedly give, Tobernasuil would be healing eyes, for example. That’s how far my Irish goes… But I’ve asked someone for help. But I added the wikidata identifier for “eye” in that case.
