Pipelines are notoriously tough to map. They lie mostly underground, often with little to no visible trace on aerial imagery. What may look like a pipeline route on the ground may actually be a tangled bundle of pipelines, and even if we can figure out an individual pipeline’s true route, imagery tells us nothing about its name, who operates it, or what substance it carries.

Fortunately, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, publishes authoritative, open data on pipeline routes. The NPMS Public Viewer, however, presents this data as raster images and limits how far you can zoom in. Despite this, we can use it quite effectively to identify pipelines and trace their precise routes.

Workflow

Requirements: JOSM, with Expert Mode enabled (this can be found at the bottom of the View menu).

Choose a county

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English below / Português abaixo

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Dans mon précédent post, mon propos visait à promouvoir la cartographie de terrain comme première activité concrète de cartographie OSM proposée à des débutants, plutôt que l’hégémonique cartographie des bâtiments, mais pas du tout à dénigrer la cartographie des bâtiments en tant que telle : alors que certaines personnes dans la communauté voient essentiellement OSM comme une base de données de navigation et jugent les bâtiments comme un objet secondaire voire assez inutile, pour ma part, je reconnais tout à fait leur importance pour divers aspects, comme par exemple, participer à représenter (notamment avec les barrières et les arbres) ce qu’on appelle en géographie le tissu urbain, ou servir comme approximation de l’effectif d’une population. J’ai d’ailleurs enseigné pendant quelques années InaSAFE pour QGIS, qui utilise notamment les bâtiments OSM comme données de vulnérabilités, ou coordonné la cartographie de tous les bâtiments dans les préfectures et sous-préfectures de la RCA pendant la crise de 2012 -2014.

Pour autant, je ne fais pas des bâtiments l’alpha et l’oméga de la carto OSM, et en fait, surtout pas l’alpha. En effet, ce n’est pas le premier objet que je ferais cartographier sur imagerie par des débutants :

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It’s summer in the Philippines, and even at 08h, the sun’s already ablaze, and a friend with an umbrella is always welcome sight.

Our Tuesday morning in Tagbilaran started with a field mapping exercise with volunteers from the University of Bohol YouthMappers Club, gathering by the bandstand in Plaza Rizal for last minute rejoinders.

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Welcome to my fifth OpenStreetMap NextGen development diary.
This week has been mostly focused on GPS Traces 🛰.

🔖 You can read my other development diaries here:
osm.org/user/NorthCrab/diary/

🐙 This project is open-source and publicly available:
https://github.com/Zaczero/openstreetmap-ng

GPS Traces Demo

It’s best to experience the refreshed traces in a video form, so I prepared a short demo (no audio):
⏯️ https://files.monicz.dev/osm/traces-demo.mp4

For comparison, here’s how the same trace looks on the current website:
osm.org/user/bielebog/traces/11326871

You will quickly notice the super-fast upload speed and the new trace animations. If there’s something wrong with the file you attached, you will receive instant feedback on the upload page. One new feature is possibility to edit trace name. Previously, this feature has been hidden behind API 0.6.

One more planned feature is rendering the map behind the trace animation. Now that the system works on individual coordinates, it will be fairly easy to implement. Traces without a human-understandable point of reference are not as useful as they could be.

Unified Traces URLs

Let’s start with discussing the current URL routes.

• If you want to access a way, you visit /way/<ID>
• If you want to access a note, you visit /note/<ID>
• If you want to access a trace, you visit /user/<USER>/traces/<ID>

Which is not consistent. OpenStreetMap-NG unifies this experience by introducing a new URL route: /trace/<ID>. All existing URLs remain backwards compatible and are automatically redirected.

Short-Term Development Plan

There’s just a few things left before reaching the core feature parity with the existing website. Those are the things I want to finish before inviting new contributors ツ.

• Elements sidebar (50% work in progress)
• User Diaries
• User Profiles
• Applications (OAuth) settings

Contributor Benefits

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Having both GoPro Hero11 and Max360, I was curious whether there would be any use from running both cameras at the same time. While Max 360 captures all around, would Hero 11 possibly have better resolution, which could be useful for streetview platforms like Mapillary and Panoramax, thus also providing additional detail for OSM mapping?

Here’s the same object - a surveillance camera - from both action cameras. Hero11 is even a little bit further away.

Max360:

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My first diary entry in thirteen years, and so much has changed on OSM. The editing tools have come on so much, and there is now an incredible level of detail, even in the rural town I’m living in now. I think I need to go back to the documentation to refresh my memory and look at adding all the things missing in my neighbourhood.

It is for doing mapping so I can get better, so thank you guys! Google Maps is my main option but I am in Rank 149 of OpenStreetMap! Thank you for @DavidDean as he said he was in the top 50 in 2008! I specifically like you guys! Kind Regards, Brilloant

On April 3, 2024, an earthquake happened outside the coast of Hualien, which caused serious roadblocks and human casualties. OpenStreetMap Taiwan has opened 3 projects for mapping affected areas, requesting worldwide mappers to map buildings, landuses, missing roads or waterways in Hualien.

• Central Cross-island Highway eastern section: https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16508
• Suhua Highway: https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16507/
• Hua-Dong Valley northern part, Sincheng, Siulin, Hualien, Ji’an, Shoufong: https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16505

We are talking if there is a possibility to donate the newest satellite image after the earthquake to map the after-earthquake situations. And the possibility of hosting mapping events on-site after the affected area returns to normal, helping locals by mapping the newest map data.

That’s the name of the workshops I facilitated last week, with the goal of introducing/promoting OpenStreetMap, along with introducing tools like FieldPaper, OpenAerialMap, Sketch-Map Tool and Umap, to meet the objectives of local DRR practitioners’ upcoming mapping initiative.

Last Friday I had conducted two workshop in Iloilo, one (unplanned) for Iloilo’s Provincial DRRMO (disaster agency), and another for Iloilo City own DRRMO. In the Philippines, city charters may provide them autonomy from the geographic province they’re part of. These Disaster Risk Reduction Management Offices (a tongue-full, I know) are the government agencies responsible for mitigating localized disaster risks, and planning for disaster prevention for their respective territories.

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While commercial map providers like Google, provide map data in local Indian languages, the local language labels are usually transliterated from English, resulting in errors. OSM, Wikidata and Wikipedia platforms provide a way to improve the local language maps leveraging multilingual labels through Wikidata identifiers on OSM, through semi automated updates. For good quality maps on Wikipedia and OSM, the Wikidata location needs to be accurate and Wikidata identifier should be uniquely mapped to the actual OSM geometry. I worked on removing the mismatches for villages of a district in Andhra Pradesh. I have documented my experience as clearly as possible, so that even users with less programming and tools skills can contribute to the work. As an example, identifying and fixing errors in Wikidata location is given below.

Identifying and fixing error in locations on Wikidata pages

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As we announced in a previous post, we continue to inform the OpenStreetMap LATAM community about the SOTM LATAM 2024 committees, and now we present the Programming Committee.

The main functions of this committee are:

• Propose the activity program during the days of the SOTM
• Design protocol activities
• Design the event Tracks
• Design parallel activities
• Design recreation activities
• Coordinate with the speakers what is necessary for their participations
• Evaluate the carrying out of recognition of mappers in the region

The committee members are:

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Well did that alone

As we announced in the previous post, we continue to inform the OpenStreetMap LATAM community about the SOTM LATAM 2024 committees, and now we present the Academic Program Committee.

The main functions of this committee are:

• Evaluate the presentation proposals received
• Evaluate scholarship applications received
• Management of travel and accommodation scholarships

As additional information for those interested in presenting a talk or presentation, the topics may be (but are not limited to):

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So I thought surveys meant that I go out and ask people… conduct a survey, but apparently it means that you have been there personally to check it… so… that means I didn’t tag any of my entries where it would apply with this… lol

Welcome to my fourth OpenStreetMap NextGen development diary.
Sorry for being a day late! I wanted to finish up one of the new features which caused this small delay. ✨

🔖 You can read my other development diaries here:
osm.org/user/NorthCrab/diary/

🐙 My work is available publicly on this GitHub repository:
https://github.com/Zaczero/openstreetmap-ng

Let’s summarize the last week’s work:

Client-side Trace Images

While migrating the traces functionality, I came up with an amazing and seemingly obvious idea. Why not make trace images SVGs and render them client-sided? This feature has few significant advantages: even faster trace uploading, no additional disk usage, unlimited customization, infinite resolution, faster page loading. And so here it is:

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Not A Goodbye!

This is the Closing Chapter! However, the story continues😀

My friend (and colleague) Ola messaged me and asked, “Eden, how do you feel, that your internship at HOTOSM is ending soon?” I took a long pause to answer that 🥹.

As the curtains draw close on this chapter of my professional journey, I find myself reflecting on colourful experiences, lessons, and memories that have defined my time as an intern at HOTOSM.

It’s been 3 months already!?🥹 Like someone rightly said “time goes by quickly, when you are having fun”. I’m usually the type of person that looks forward to the end of a thing because I learnt to always finish what I started. But this time, it felt weird! A mix of nostalgia and anticipation.

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Overview

Progress has been solid over the past week. My main focus is still trying to add in as many missing buildings as possible, but I’ve covered the following during the week:

• Micromapping. While fixing two schools and two shopping centres, I decided to micromap them using a combination of aerial imagery and my local knowledge.

• More buildings. I’m still just trying to “fill in the blanks” and get buildings added.

• Small fixes. While doing other mapping, I came across various small issues that I fixed at the same time.

Micromapping

Schools

While updating some details for Victoria Park High School & Victoria Park Primary School, I decided to micromap them while fixing some misalignments. I tried to map in a way that makes sense and not just to make it look pretty on the renderer.

While doing this, I noticed that the park next to the High School had some seemingly strange boundaries. I need to do some more research to confirm where the park boundaries lie, so for now it remains the same.

Shopping Centres

Similar to how I started with the schools, I wanted to correct some details and fix some “wonky” mapping from older imagery. I ended up doing some pretty detailed micromapping except for changing some shop details - I know that they aren’t there any more, but I don’t have the current shop details at the moment.

More Buildings

I’m very happy with the progress that I’ve made. It’s slow at times, but it is moving and I can see the difference. There has been a decent amount of properties that had a node with address but no area mapped for the building. This has come in handy once or twice where I could verify the building to ensure that it is still there, which wasn’t always the case.

Having said that, it would still be great for a local to confirm all of this, there’s only so much I can do from Ireland.

Small Fixes

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Today 4/6/2024 , created a login

Need to get familiar with editing of maps.

Need to see if a markup can be held without release while fine-tuning the content or just for reference.