Cartographers in Uganda’s National Water and Sewerage Corporation would play a vital role in water resource management by creating maps of water infrastructure, such as pipes and treatment plants, and mapping water sources like rivers and lakes. They would also identify areas prone to flooding, monitor water quality, and inform infrastructure planning using geospatial data. By providing accurate spatial data, cartographers would enhance planning, efficiency, and decision-making, working closely with engineers, hydrologists, and environmental scientists to ensure effective water resource management and infrastructure development.

May 16, 2025 (22.46 PM) : “Before starting validation on Project 18915, would you mind assisting with validation on another project first? It would be helpful for practice on a few tasks/grids beforehand.”

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Since this is my very first validation project, I thought it would be best to train myself beforehand.

To start, I needed to choose a project to validate. I preferred a recent and active one, so I decided on Project #20468, which was created in response to the recent earthquake in Myanmar. The objective of this mapping project is to identify clusters of residential areas to support better disaster mitigation efforts in the future. Individual buildings do not need to be mapped—only clusters of houses (more than five) using landuse=residential.

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The first issue I encountered after clicking the “Validate” button was that JOSM needed to be open with “Remote Control” enabled.

So, I opened JOSM, navigated to Edit → Preferences → Remote Control, and enabled the option. Once that was done, the task loaded successfully from my browser into JOSM. That was a pleasant surprise—I hadn’t known JOSM had this feature.

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Next issue: my favorite keyboard shortcuts from the iD editor didn’t work in JOSM. I figured the keys might be different, and wondered whether someone had already created a shortcut conversion table between iD and JOSM.

Eventually, I found the relevant information.

At the moment, I don’t need many shortcuts—just a few essentials. The wireframe toggle is particularly important since it helps me cross-check OSM data against the underlying satellite imagery. Additionally, I often want to inspect specific OSM objects; I’ve already prepared several Violentmonkey scripts (such as BetterOSM and OSMHelper) to satisfy my curiosity. For that, I need to open the original URL of an OSM object in the browser.

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A particular goal of mine will be to map Jackson Mississippi’s highest poverty areas. Source: Poverty Rate by Open Data for the City of Jackson, MS

There are many more neighborhoods with high poverty rates in the city of Jackson, MS but these below will be my primary focus. Once these areas are mapped, the scope will expand.

Focus

1. The neighborhood block Northeast of Boling Street and Bullard Street.

   Includes: Hoover Street, Daniels Street, McAdoo Street, Broadview Street, Ford Avenue, Englewood Street, Hermitage Street, Garden Circle, Sagamore Street, Sagamore Street, Lynda Street, Breazeale Street, Dutchman Row, Palo Alto Street, Richmond Circle, and Ford Avenue.

2. Immediate area around Hawkins Field Airport.

   The area Northeast of Sunset Drive, Coleman Avenue, and Elraine Boulevard up to Medgar Evers Boulevard.

3. The area between West Silas Brown Street, West Pascagoula Street, and South Gallatin Street.

Joining the Unique Mappers Network Nigeria has been a turning point for me. As a passionate student of Surveying and Geoinformatics, stepping into the world of OpenStreetMap was like unlocking a new level in my career and community impact journey.

My OSM Goals Contribute high-quality spatial data that makes real-life impact Master advanced mapping tools like JOSM, iD Editor, and HOT Tasking Manager Inspire fellow students and young professionals in Nigeria to embrace open mapping Support humanitarian mapping, disaster response, and climate resilience efforts.

To Everyone in the OSMFight Arena… This is more than a competition – it’s a movement. A call to action. A chance to leave our digital footprints across the globe. So whether you’re mapping buildings in Port Harcourt, roads in Kano, or health facilities in Bauchi – know that YOU are making a difference.

Let’s light up the map, one building at a time! Let’s bring the crown home 🏆🗺️ Let’s make Unique Mappers Network Nigeria proud 🙌🏾💚

It works !! OSMfight as a gamification for community engagement of OSM contribution -This week we are engaging paired mappers for OSMfight for the next one week - we need to get our project task running,engaging and fun to map https://tasks.openstreetmap.us/projects/815#description

OSMfight this week engages volunteers from our 1. Unique Mappers Abuja Mapathon Center 2. Unique Mappers Enugu Mapathon Center 3. Unique Mappers Port Harcourt Mapathon Center 4. Unique Mappers Kaduna Mapathon Center and others

Our challenge remains breaking the barrier of high cost of internet data subscription in Nigeria

Sustaining our mapathon centers with basic volunteering motivations

Engaging data users stakeholders workshop and lost more

We look forward to our partners and supporters !!!!!

You can support us here https://uniquemappers.org/donate/

Deutsche Post, which operates almost all of Germany’s postboxes, recently changed the collection times for most of them. This was discussed on the German Forum starting 4th of April. I wondered if this could be seen in the database.

So I created this diagram:

… See full entry

Streetcars Rule

I’m trying to make a map of a streetcar line that I think ought to be built.

Little did I know when I first started my job in Antarctica that I’d become obsessed with editing OpenStreetMap during my empty hours at work. While I made an account back in 2019, that was simply to add a missing sidewalk from my mission in India that bothered me. Last month, I was playing around with some maps, seeing how different engines would interpret a cycle route I frequently took back home, and I noticed the trail was laid out with a bit of jank. I decided I had an account and the fix would be easy, so I went ahead and did it. I then saw the sidewalk options, and started playing with infilling the sidewalks around the route.

That was a mistake.

I have since spent hours adding sidewalks everywhere I’ve been. As I learned the tools and improved my methods, I started looking at other options. Street lamps, lowered curbs with tactile paving, and power poles were next. I started looking into other ways to contribute and installed Street Complete on my phone. I saw my office trailer wasn’t listed on the map at McMurdo, so I used OSMTracker for Android to map it out (Turns out, my phones GPS combined with the poor signal so far south makes things a bit more challenging). I then started using it to map all the infrastructure I could reach. I spent 2 hours on one of my few 2-day weekends down here out in -10F weather mapping out the power poles and lines connecting them.

Needless to say, this has become a bit of an obsession, but I suppose if I’m going to have that, I can at least use it to do some good in the world, no matter how small. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some suburban sprawl to map out. Those sidewalks aren’t going to add themselves!

Today, I had a good time at the national office and Mapathon center of Unique Mappers Network-the OpenStreetMap Nigeria Community NGO (osm.org/#map=18/4.899962/6.921081) to engage newbies, signing them up and training them on how to contribute to OpenStreetMap. Among them are Ngozi,Fortune,David and Chika (NMak,verified,Peter Msiion D and Victoria Jaja). Please, check out for them to welcome them and share your success stories and motivation for OSM volunteering. Fortune(verifiedfortune) joining Unique Mappers IT cohort 1 for 2025 would be contributing for the next 6 months as part of his IT task. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7329531711480926209 ![ ]

On 3rd May, We got back to our Map Nigeria Monthly Mapathon to sustain active OSM community participation in Nigeria, especially as we have mapping projects being coordinated in collaboration with TomTom one of Unique Mappers Network partner https://tasks.openstreetmap.us/projects/815#coordination . Volunteers joined from across the states and universities in Nigeria in a virtual coordinated mapathon, especially, the Unique Mappers Team we recently established in Abuja,Kaduna.Ile-Ife and Enugu.

In the first quarter of 2025, we have mobilized,signed-up and trained more than 100 newbies coordinated in a new whatsaap group of the community whatsaap group for orientation purposes. However, mapping contributions has been quite slow as the recent high increase in internet data subscription in Nigeria makes it more difficult for both old and new OSM volunteers to sacrifice the high cost of internet for voluntary mapping in OSM. You can hardly find free internet broad band access to engage volunteers in Mapathon.

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Today 12th May 2025, I got to the place i’m suppose to do my IT, [INDUSTRIAL TRAINING], As at 10am in the morning when asked to come. I met 2 other people David and Ngozi, they welcomed me while i waited for the National Coordinator DR VICTOR .N. SUNDAY of unique mapper. After was, the National Coordinator DR Victor sunday came in, with out wasting much time, another person enter named chika i guess so, so he introduced OpenStreetMap to all of us that were there together. He said a lot of things about the OpenStreetMap, As what we use in carrying out mapping and it’s also free, like a volunteer thing. It was exciting to have DR Victor Sunday, the coordinator teach and talk about the OpenStreetMap, Me been introduce to OpenStreetMap, its not my first time but i was able to get a clear picture of what an OpenStreetMap was all about, which it was intresting, Now i can say i know how to map a building. yoooo!!! With everything that went on, everyone had to practice for themselves on learning how to do the mapping there self, which was cool and right now we are done with the classes on mapping as at 1:56PM, Everyone is expected to sign up with OpenStreetMap and map out at least 10 buildings showing you have learnt something for the day, hmmm its really a lot today though, i’m happy to have come here today and i’m ready for it. This is my passion, This is my dream,for the next six [6] months i will be here, i hope to achieve a lot, and thats it.

Manila

The State of the Map Call for Proposals deadline is approaching fast, and I know that feeling - staring at a blank page, wondering if your OSM experience is “conference-worthy.” Here’s the truth: if you’ve ever mapped something, solved a problem with OSM data, or helped someone learn about OpenStreetMap, you have a story worth sharing at State of the Map 2025!

Photo from SotM 2024, CC BY-SA 2.0

What to Present On?

I think that often, the biggest hurdle isn’t writing the proposal - it’s deciding what to propose.

Talk About What You Know: Your OSM Journey

The best State of the Map talks come from personal experience. Think about:

• What tool or technique do you use that others might not know about?
• How has your mapping journey evolved?
• What do you know now that you wish you’d have known when starting?

Share What You Learned the Hard Way

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Day 1) Home

We know OpenStreetMap is one of the most powerful and collaborative geospatial databases in the world. It relies on contributions from everyday users, developers, humanitarian workers, and mapping enthusiasts to keep data accurate and up to date.
But like any open data project, OSM faces issues. And understanding the types of issues we encounter is essential to maintaining map quality. One simple and effective way to think about OSM data problems is, to divide them into two broad categories:

1. Existing Issues: Errors in the Map

These are problems that exist within the current OSM data. The features are already mapped, but something about them is incorrect, inconsistent, or outdated.

Common examples:

• Incorrect tags: A residential road tagged as a motorway.
• Geometry errors: Buildings that are misaligned, roads that don’t connect properly, or rivers overlapping with buildings.
• Outdated features: A shop that closed years ago but still shows up on the map.
• Inconsistencies: Using different tags for the same type of feature in nearby areas (amenity=school vs. building=school).

2. Non-Existing Issues: Missing from the Map

These are features or data that should be on the map but are completely absent. The problem here is not about fixing what’s wrong, it’s about recognizing what’s not there at all.

Common examples:

• Unmapped buildings visible in satellite imagery.
• New roads or paths that haven’t been digitized.
• Missing POIs like schools, hospitals, or shops.
• Lack of metadata such as opening hours, accessibility info, or addresses.

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Why This Distinction Matters

Thinking in terms of “existing” vs. “non-existing” issues helps:

… See full entry

This article is also available in Taiwanese Mandarin (台灣華語) and Taiwanese Hokkien / Taigi (台文)

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In 2025, OpenStreetMap Taiwan Community has started to cooperate with Wikidata Taiwan Community to organize Street View Tour again, and in April, the tour was to Huwei and Tuku townships in Yunlin county. The funding source of this tour was Wikimedia Association of Taiwan, and the lunches for the two days (4/26 and 4/27) were sponsored by TomTom company.

The tour gathered outside the Yunlin High Speed Rail station in the morning of 4/26, and then set off to Huwei and Tuku townships to take photos of various temples related to Yunlin Liufang Mazu religion. Even though this was a street view tour, there were a lot of problems with the 360 camera this time 🫠, the one in the author’s car was always crashed (overheated?), while the one in the other car was never able to connect to the cell phone. The one on the car I was driving was always crashed (overheating?), while the one on the other car could not be connected by cell phone. Nonetheless, 53,854 street photos were uploaded to Mapillary this time (including both flat and 360 panoramic photos, some of which have not yet been uploaded at the time of writing this diary).

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Is it difficult to present your project for the world community among so many paid and/or in person events? We have a special invitation for you!

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Send your submission and be in with a chance of having your story published as a chapter in a book to be released in 2026.

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We would like to inform you that part of the projects from the lusophone countries, presented at the Mapping Projects Exhibition of the III Workshop on Participatory Mapping and Social Cartography - MPCS 2025 will be selected for publication as a chapter in the second volume of the book series Case Studies in Collaborative and Participatory Mapping, to be released in early 2026 under the IVIDES publishing lable.

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Information on submitting proposals for the event, 100% online and free and open to the community, can be found on the official website.

https://ivides.org/workshopmpcs2025

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Applications for the mapping project exhibition will be open until May 20, 2025.

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Groups and collectives external to the universities can also take part. Proposals will be assessed in the same way, according to the criteria established and made available on the event’s official website.

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Initiatives developed in Portuguese-speaking countries can be sent in Portuguese language: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor.

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The organisation would like to thank FAPERJ and the company IVIDES DATA for their sponsorship and the partnership with the laboratories Lageot-UFF Campos, GeoCart-UFRJ, LiGA-UFRRJ, the Postgraduate Programme in Geography at UFRJ, the Participatory Mapping Observatory (IVIDES.org and GeoCart) and the Association of Brazilian Geographers (Campinas-SP Section).

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oh well, imgur doesn’t seem to work.

It was a beautiful day for a hike, so I set out early at 8am sharp. I headed back to Ely, trekked some of the trails in Plymouth Great Wood, cut through the park in St Fagans, passed through Western Cemetery, then over to the iron-age hillfort in Caerau. All was going to plan — until, that is, it wasn’t. While taking some snapshots at the hillfort, I fell and sprained my ankle.

I’ve no idea what happened – I was taking my time, walking along, and then I was flat on my face. I remember hearing a squeaking sound, the kind of sound a gym shoe makes on a squash court (so I either slipped on a root or a rock, or I killed something cute and fluffy).

So there I was , stuck in the middle of field with nothing to help me up. Great. And I somehow had to get back down a very steep hill. Brilliant. And then I had to get home. Jolly-well fantastic.

After, looking up at the sky for an hour, I managed to get to my feet. I couldn’t put weight on my over-turned ankle, so the trip back down took an age. With the aid of my trusty hiking pole, I finally got to a bus stop.

At least I got what I wanted to get — a clearer picture of the woodland trails and the layout of the roads in the cemetery (all in the name of improving Open Street Map). I also now have the perfect excuse for buying a new pair of trail boots.

Although the sprain is quite bad, nothing seems to be broken — the swelling is fairly minor, and I’m not in a great deal of pain. I won’t be strolling about for a while, but I’m hoping that the ‘while’ is a short one.

Hello all, to start with, I’ve always been interested in open software and collaborative projects. I actually made an OSM account way back in 2012, as you can see on the HDYC website. I can’t really remember why I made it to be honest. I may have found it via Wikipedia or something.

But it was three years ago today that I did my first changeset. I had yet to learn about all the mapping resources available to me, especially the GSImaps/pale layer from the Japanese government. This in combination with the JOSM areaselector plugin has been really useful for quickly mapping buildings in Japan. There are a lot of hiking trails on there too, and I can see now that I didn’t really need to use my GPX track to map the trail up to the Kamiyahagi Wind Farm and the observation deck up there way back in that first edit.

I’m grateful to this community for providing me with a useful hobby to do and that I have fun with. It perfectly compliments my outdoorsy walking and hiking lifestyle, my detail-focused mindset, as well as my tendency to hyper-focus (yay ADHD!) and being comfortable with sitting on JOSM and just meditatively mapping. It’s wonderfully calming. I greatly enjoy that I’m making an impact on the world through what I love to do.

I have been making an effort to direct people to OSM resources on r/BuyFromEU as much as I can, as there’s been an increased interest in switching away from US tech companies to services like Mapy and Magic Earth and I see it as a great opportunity for more people to join and improve the map. There are so many services that use OSM, but I think a lot of users aren’t even aware that the map can be edited or that improvements are welcome. I sometimes see references to “the official OSM app,” which is referencing OSMAnd. I think for some, the concept of it just being a database that the various apps get the data from can be hard to understand. But overall, I’m really glad to see more people get on board.

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I want to talk about how to name the trails in Catoctin Mountain Park, a US national park in Maryland. The available information about trail names is a bit inconsistent. This post serves as a way for me to organize my thoughts and document the conclusions I’ve reached.

Background

Catoctin Mountain Park, as I mentioned, is part of the US National Park system. It’s located in Maryland, at the northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the outer perimeter of the Appalachian Mountains. It has a number of hiking trails. The trails are split between the east and west sides of the park; each side’s trails are interconnected, but the two sides don’t connect directly to each other.

I recently hiked most of the east side trails. It’s those trails I’m primarily focused on. I haven’t (yet) been to the west side, so I don’t personally know the ground truth there.

Ground Truth

On the ground, trails are designated by colored blazes on trees. The blazes use a number of different colors and several different shapes. Some distinct trails use the same colors as each other, but use different blaze shapes. There are sections where two trails overlap; those sections uses blazes that are half the color of one trail and half the color of the other trail.

There are no trail names posted, with one exception. A trail between the visitor center and the Lewis Property part of the park is both blazed with white rectangles and has regularly-placed signs saying “Gateway Trail”.

The park generally uses rectangular blazes for longer trails that form the core of the east side’s trail network. Triangular and circular blazes are used for shorter trails that either form shorter connections or have a specific purpose. For example, there’s a short nature trail with signs pointing out local plant species. That trail is blazed with triangles.

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