We care about having the best data. We care about having best the map. We care about having the best mapping community.

“We” is doing a lot here. Honestly, I don’t care about the render. Sure I’ve wanted some things rendered before, sure I’ve been emotional when it didn’t magically happen. But I’ve only though about rendering for a few minutes. People care a lot more then me, in retrospect, I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.

Honestly, I don’t care about the intricacies of tagging/”schemas”. Sure I’ve gotten emotional on the mailing list, and I’ve even talked about “you” (the list) behind your back. But you’ve thought about this more than me, I should have trusted you. Sorry.

I have thought a lot about the quality of our data, it’s not perfect. About the usability of our data, there are issues. About the accessibility of our data, it could easier. But actually we are doing pretty good. We are even doing better than the commercial datasets.

So trust the people that care the most, support us, encourage us, give us data and tooling, but most importantly, don’t get in our way. We’ve got this.

I organize the OpenStreetMap Salt Lake City monthly meetups. I don’t usually write reports on the individual meetups, but I had even more fun than usual last night so I thought I would write a quick report!

We had a great evening (as always) and with a good turnout too! We talked about SOTM US 2024, to be hosted in our fine city next June, and everyone signed up as a candidate volunteer for the event!

We also shared some knowledge about drones and related software; I know next to nothing about drones and haven’t kept up with the technology, so that was really interesting to me. We may pursue a small grant to acquire one for our OSM group. I am not sure from where yet.

As usual, we discussed recent business openings and closings to keep the map up to date. We have good resources like Gastronomic SLC (a weekly newsletter and website with news about restaurants and bars in the area) and City Weekly, a local newspaper, and of course our own observations.

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Way back in 2015 I wrote this diary post Is OSM business unfriendly? on how core OSM limiting itself to data collection had fostered a bustling ecosystem.

Organisations from small to large, commercial and non-commercial have built their businesses on building OSM know-how, normalizing the data, aggregating it with other sources, and providing services on top of it. It is one of the major factors that has made OSM not just a hobby project, but a notable player on the global stage.

Yes, the Linux Foundations OMF is disruptive, but the disruption is mainly in that it will remove a major part of the raison d’être for these organisation in the wider OSMspace.

The surprising bit at SOTM-EU over the weekend was just how hilariously unaware both Linux Foundation members and representatives were that their main effect will be stomping out a whole raft of SMEs, and the sudden realisation by the victims that US big tech and their non-profit front are not their friends.

What does this mean for core OSM?

I’ve argued that we should be moving the boundary of what we do outwards so that we can at least provide more of what was provided by the layer of service providers. Not all of the market for geo data and services outside of the US tech bubble is going to enthusiastically embrace that their choice of suppliers has been reduced to a duopoly. But I will concede that doing nothing and letting the market forces play out is the more OSMish reaction.

PS: I would point out that all of the above has already chewed though multiple times in public. Maybe if the Linux Foundation doesn’t want to be put on the spot and look very very out of touch they should read what other people are saying about them.

I don’t know why but I get a thrill every time I work on a map. Is that weird? It makes me want to keep coming back to do more. I also enjoy the fact that it may prove useful to others!

So the SotM EU just ended (guys from UK asked to call it “Europe”, not “EU”). We had a lot of talks, hundred people from the States and Belgium, met many friends. And also learned a bit more about Overture Maps. Nothing new since my Shtosm post, but updates my post about donating money. This is a rough DeepL translation of this and this telegram posts.

Marc’s Address

First, a simple one. Overture is not OpenStreetMap. Marc started by saying that the target audience for Overture Maps is developers. Just as Ballmer once chanted: developers, developers! And he’s right: Overture makes working with data much easier for developers. The data is collected, cleaned, in a convenient format, take it and build it into the product.

So the audience is product developers. Who know little about geo, but a lot about building products. As I wrote in the reddit about VLC, there are developers and there are developers. The audience here are opensource developers: god knows how to organize them. They are not the TA of Overture. They’re doing OSM. So when Mark encourages developers to use (and of course improve) Overture here, he’s kind of leading developers away from OSM. And that’s the first thing that was a bit tone deaf in his presentation.

The second is what I detailed in my question after the talk. That is, I’ve written before that Overture is an awesome wrapper to OSM. It sells data, it sells an idea, it does all the things we don’t want to do. But at the same time, the attitude towards Overture and the community was: you’re doing a great job, all these maps are very good, the tools you’ve written are great too, keep it up.

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OpenStreetMap (OSM) is fun and fantastic for so many reasons. One being able to roam around the world from the comfort of your chair. I started mapping on OpenStreetMap in 2015 by coincidence through a friend. And OSM later became part of my work at Mapbox. Where I went through out the world as an armchair mapper. I used to maintain a list of interesting places as I encountered them. Then map it later when I am free. Here are my 3 memorable OpenStreetMap edits.

Valparai, Tamil Nadu, India

Tea plantations in Valparai by Thangaraj Kumaravel | Image license: CC BY 2.0 Deed

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Mapping Cary’s Downtown Park

First Contribution

This was my first attempt at trying to map out a public park from the original CAD drawings attempting to draw out this map by hand using JOSM. If there’s a way that I could trace polygons from QGIS and be able to save them, I’ll probably end up trying to go that route.

What I Learned

1. AutoCAD files aren’t always geocoded
2. GeoParquet files are your friend
3. Geodatabases are your best friend
4. Don’t trust Aerial Imagery, field surveys

Someone should really praise me for the incredible job I’m doing of mapping a shitload of POIs in my neighborhood

Also, how do I put smileys, on here ?

Let’s take a look at addition and division mapping of natural and landuse. First we will look at the inconveniences that exist when mapping such areas. Next we will look at the method behind division mapping and scenarios of how to apply it. And finally take a real world example of how these two mapping styles were applied.

The definition of addition mapping is the act of adding new data to a white spot area aka an area with no data.

The definition of division mapping is the act of taking an existing object and dividing it down into smaller partitions.

Inconveniences when mapping natural and landuse

There are two main inconveniences when mapping natural and landuse from aerial imagery. First, depending on the resolution of the imagery, deciding where to make a clear cut if it is a distinct natural or landuse area. And second, the amount of clicking required to create a new area.

For the first inconvenience, more or less, it is personal choice and level of details. E.g. try to answer this question: when would one make a distinction between natural = scrub and natural = wood? The difficulty exists in the fact that the value scrub permits trees and lots of time these trees are/aren’t growing close enough to each other.

For the second inconvenience, lots of editors have the option to split a way (aka division mapping). In JOSM you can split an area with ALT+X (UtilsPlugin2 required). Or manually split the circumference of an area at two nodes and then separately connect the two arcs.

UtilsPlugin2 - Split Object tool

Let’s say one needed to create 4 square farmlands in a grid layout. How many node clicks are required?

Mapping the traditional way (aka addition mapping) 16 node clicks are required. One square has 4 nodes, and there are 4 squares, so 4 * 4 = 16.

Mapping with UtilsPlugin2, it takes 8-10 node clicks. There are two methods to achieve this. The first step is equivalent for both methods by drawing the circumference which is 4 node clicks.

Method 1

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We use the data from OpenStreetMap while hiking through Colombia, Panama and Peru. It is really solid and a big thanks you to all the contributors!

One thing always stands out though. Almost all of the local people have never heard of the name ‘OpenStreetMap’. However, whenever we get information about trails they ask if we use Maps.me or recommend using it. For those that don’t know, Maps.me is simply an app showing data from OpenSteetMap!

We’re not sure why Maps.me is such a popular recommendation, though the name may be easier to remember that OpenStreetMap. We think it may simply have been one of the first apps that was free and allowed you to easily download maps for offline use?

We use an app called Organic Maps ourselves and can recommend it to anyone that goes hiking in another country. It is a privacy-friendly app and we found out it even preloads data from Wikipedia (for instance on towns, soms highlights/attractions and mountain tops).

EVENTO - 14 e 15 de Novembro de 2023 - GISDAY AMAZÔNIA 2023 🌿🌍

Semana de Conscientização Geográfica

EVENT November 14th and 15th, 2023 - GISDAY AMAZÔNIA 2023 🌿🌍

Geographic Awareness Week

Participe deste evento incrível e explore o poder da geoinformação na Amazônia!

📆 DATA: 14/11/23 - Presencial na UEPA/NUPAD/LEGA 15/11/23 - Híbrido - Online

🕘 HORÁRIO: 09:00 às 18:00

🤝 ORGANIZAÇÃO: LEGA (Laboratório de Estudos e Pesquisas Geoambientais da Amazônia) - UEPA

🤝 PARCERIA: Meninas das Geotecnologias - IFPA

🌟 APOIO: Esri, UmbraOSM, Youthmappers

✅ INSCRIÇÕES ABERTAS em https://doity.com.br/gisday-amazonia-2023

Não perca! Este evento é uma oportunidade única para aprender, colaborar e descobrir como a tecnologia geoespacial está moldando o futuro da Amazônia. Junte-se a nós e seja parte dessa jornada rumo à conscientização geográfica! 🌎🌿 #GisDayAmazônia2023 #Geoinformação #PreservaçãoAmbiental

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Been putting some effort into expanding detail around Upper Mast Landing Rd. in Freeport, Maine.

The V Brazilian Cartographic Olympiad - OBRAC 2023 included OpenStreetMap as part of its second stage. The participating teams, integrated by teachers and students (aged between 14 and 18 years) from public and private schools, from all over the country, mapped environmental and socioeconomic aspects of selected areas of the Brazilian Amazon Region, using online editors and applications for mapping with OpenStreetMap.

Exposition Amazônia no Mapa

Dr. Raquel Dezidério Souto (IVIDES.org and UFRJ), who coordinated the technical part of the second stage of the 2023 edition, created a virtual exhibition Amazônia no Mapa, where anyone can visit the maps of the Brazilian Amazon Region, created by the teams of the OBRAC 2023.

Source: OBRAC 2023 Teams - Ref. 6298800859 (topo esq.); 6299051019 (topo dir.); 6116334695 (centro esq.); 6474822799 (centro dir.); 6169070179 (inf. dir.); 6191786719 (inf. esq.).

OBRAC

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Only two public bookcases identified today. I think the project could be wrapped up in around 10 more hours.

This project was featured on OpenStreetMap’s Instagram and Facebook pages - very flattering and validating considering I started editing OSM several months ago!

Intro

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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Tampermonkey is web browser extension that allows adding JavaScript to any website in your browser and manipulate content of that website. It sounds scary and probably should, first you need to trust extension itself and then scripts that you install. Since extension itself has huge community and history, millions of installs across Chrome/Edge/Firefox extensions stores, 5 stars… Let’s assume we can trust it…

I wrote some time ago script that I want to share with everyone, it adds few buttons to OpenStreetMap.org website. Here is example how it looks like:

On example of New York above buttons would take you to following websites:

• PeWu nice and simple history view of changes on nodes, ways or relations
• DeepHistory another history viewer, but in tabular view
• Relation Analyzer helpful website for validating/analyzing relations
• Overpass Opens Overpass at same viewport as currently seen on OSM website

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A couple of million-dollar ideas

1. Do you like to write descriptions for edits? And review other people’s edits if there is an unclear comment? Autogeneration of descriptions like in MAPS.ME and EveryDoor is interesting. But why not make ChatGPT do it?

2. ChatGPT is already pretty good at recognising pictures. And we have thousands of open notes from StreetComplete with signs of establishments. It would be nice to add tags to the object in a couple of clicks that ChatGPT could recognize. Or build this function directly into some editor.

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What kind of work would you put AI to?

Greetings to all OSM contributors, I have finally found some time to share my mapping party report. I wrote it in English and French. This mapping party was held in France near Grenoble, in a village called Saint-Barthélemy-de-Séchilienne. There were 8 of us who participated in this mapping event.

For the report, I wrote some scripts: a bash script that uses the osmosis command to extract the following metrics like : number of roads, tracks, roads with names, alleys, shops, libraries, buildings, …, see the full list in the report.

The idea of this script was to download the data of the city/village before the mapping party and run the script on the resulting osm file. Then, do the same after the mapping party to see how many objects were added. Info about my script can be found here

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Bhagwal is a village in Tehsil Kharian District Gujrat Punjab Province Pakistan 🇵🇰

Trying to add detail to the areas around Lower Mast Landing Road, Upper Mast Landing Road, and Bow Street.