https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kgt8

Writer Jerry Brotton navigates the transformation from paper to digital mapping, from print to pixels, and asks what is being gained and lost.

I have been mapping Nigeria off and on, mainly the north, for some years now, my first traces collected 2003-5 using my original yellow Garmin etrex, which I think I recovered some how and uploaded.

The first Yahoo imagery was poor and very low res. Imagine the excitement summer 09 when Kaduna became high res and a small community of OSM mapped the town in a matter of a week or so, incredible.

Skip forward to Bing which has been available the two years or more, and I have done my best to keep up with mapping the main roads and the capital, Abuja of course which has been waiting for a basic map presence on OSM for far too far long.

Three weeks ago, user Frank Salat contacted me having seen my edits. He is working on a project in the country and has collected extensive GPS traces of his travels, and also converted those into shapefiles.

Frank has uploaded those GPS / GPX traces up to OSM which is fabulous, and I have been loading his shapefiles into JOSM to cross check where OSM has detail, and where we don’t adding it with the help of the GPS traces and the Bing imagery ( which seems to have been added to recently in this region. )

Frank let me know the nature of the work he was conducting in Nigeria, work that is vital and relies on good maps to show ready access to remote villages throughout this extensive area.

The last three weeks have seen some of my most concentrated mapping for some time, I have been concentrating on primary, secondary and tertiary link roads.

The towns would really benefit from some extensive armchair mapping so for all those with a little time on their hands….

Thanks to Frank for the data upload to OSM, may there be more to come. I hope he and his project can continue to benefit from OSM.

Bri G

I have been waiting patiently for a couple of years for high res Bing imagery for Abuja and Zaria and other towns in Nigeria. What little data I have for these areas I have contributed to OSM via GPS traces on my all too brief visits over the years and the extensive mapping of Kaduna ( 2009 ) thanks to Bing.

My patience has been rewarded, thank you Bing / Msoft. Calling all ‘armchair mappers’ please do your best to fill in the gaps here, plenty of work for all and I hope to add names to roads on my next visit while encouraging some local lads to contribute to ‘their’ map of their town.

Bri

I noticed that Guimarães in Portugal is due to be the European City of culture 2012. A quick look on the map suggests that this town could benefit from some armchair mapping and of course some extensive on the ground survey work.

I will make a start on some of the Bing tracing, but I hope some of the OSM team will contribute also. hope to see this part of the map grow a little, and lets hope some of the Portuguese OSM team can add their local knowledge.

cheers bri

Bing has transformed the mapping process no doubt, but there are still many areas that would benefit from high res imagery ( much of Africa for one - Question why is Abuja, capital of the most populated country in Africa still a blur ).

Team Black Sheep seem to have an answer with their amazing aircraft and incredible videos : http://www.vimeo.com/24417184

Still ,if I was to take up a new hobby like this I doubt I would have a dime or a second left for mapping!

Off to Nigeria in August to write my thesis -( I am sure I can spin in mapping with developing small business networks somehow ! ) - with a pocket full of i Blue 747s to see what I can generate while I am there - but wow, do I want one of those stunt planes ( strictly for mapping purposes of course! )

http://www.team-blacksheep.com/

bri

A very interesting article from the E&T magazine The Institution of Engineering and Technology

http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/04/gps-vulnerabilities.cfm

Cheers bri

I wondered given the current situation there how the mapping was. Tripoli appears to be High Res on BING - perhaps a few armchair mappers could make a little contribution during this period, you never know, it might help some one out.

Bri

I wanted to thank François ( VDB osm.wiki/User:Vdb ) of the Chambéry mapping team for inviting me to join them for a very enjoyable evening last Thursday. I look forward to doing it again soon

Bri

With the new BING imagery I have been working in a number of towns and areas that have opened up.

My method of working is to draw a number of roads, then press SHIFT, select them all and tag them appropriately ( ie residential / unclassified etc ).

I have set up two buttons in JOSM which are shortcuts for Tag: Residential Tag Unclassified which is fine, but I then have to manually add the tag source = BING ( which I can do with the entire group.

What I would really like a button which tags the road as a Residential ( etc )with source=BING, a custom button which you can drag and drop the properties you need into it. Of course there may be many other potential uses for such functionality.

What are the chances? It would certainly speed up the tagging and remove potential errors especially when doing a lot of work as BING has now given us a new opportunity to do.

Cheers bri