OpenStreetMap
I am the Chairman of West Cork Tourism a non profit group that promotes sustainable tourism to West Cork.
I really think that OpenStreetMap would be a great way to help tourists and small tourism business in West Cork.
Any ideas on how I should proceed?
Discussion
Comment from 42429 on 4 December 2008 at 16:55
This very rural area has not been mapped yet.
First, you need some GPS loggers (e.g. i-Blue 747). They are sold at ebay for roughly 35 Euro. Second, you need some hikers or bikers or motorists (or, even better, a postman who knows all the ways) who carry these GPS loggers in their bags. Third, you need a skilled computer user to upload these tracks to OSM. Fourth, somebody has to draw these streets and ways according to the GPS track. Then you will get a beautiful map of your countryside.
If you do not want to map the area yourself, you may offer a discount for mappers who promise to map this area.
Yours FK270673
Comment from AndrewMcCarthy on 5 December 2008 at 10:29
Getting help from the postman is an excellent idea. They are likely to cover nearly every road, good and bad, and produce the GPS "trails" from which maps can be produced. With a GPS logger there's very little actual work involved — just leaving it on the dashboard of the van should be fine. If you know any local hikers or hill-walkers, they can do the same to produce trails of off-road paths.
You then copy the trails off the logger and upload it to OpenStreetMap. From those trails alone we can draw a fairly good map showing the network of roads and paths themselves, but it will require additional local knowledge afterwards to add the extra details, like street names or route numbers (R123, etc). Adding this "metadata" isn't too hard — anyone can do it through the web interface on openstreetmap.org. Just remember not to copy an Ordnance Survey map because (a) it's copyright, and (b) it's not always correct anyway!
Once you have a reasonable street/path map, the second stage is to decide what other features you want to gather for the map. I'm guessing that, particularly for tourism, you'll want to include hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, shops, churches, Garda stations, and so on. Through the web interface, you can just click to add these details at approximate locations, which is a good start. For more precise locations, most GPS loggers have a button to record points-of-interest which will show up as marks in the trails (you just need to remember yourself afterwards why you clicked the button at the time :).
Comment from AndrewMcCarthy on 5 December 2008 at 10:31
I should also mention that, if you do get as far as making GPS trails, there are probably a few people willing to do some armchair-based work of drawing roads to match. Contact the talk-ie mailing list at http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 5 December 2008 at 13:13
It's great to see you interested. OSM has some great potention.
OpenStreetMaps is not just limited to simple roads, the goal is to produce a free map of the world. As AndrewMcCarthy mentioned we can map hotels, B&B and the such. But we're not limited to that.
The Map Features page ( osm.wiki/index.php/Map_features ) shows some of the features we normally map. e.g. Tourism features: osm.wiki/index.php/Map_features#Tourism , Parks and other leisure items: osm.wiki/index.php/Map_features#Leisure . We have a flexible tagging system that allows us to tag anything we want. For example someone recently started tagging Holy Wells: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ie/2008-September/000202.html .
Comment from LivingWithDragons on 5 December 2008 at 17:27
Organise a mapping party!
It's normally a weekend or a day where existing mappers meet up (some will travel a little way), divide the area up into sections, each map a section, then come back to socialise together. With a bit of publicity you can invite new people along to learn how to map for the first time.
With an organisation like yours behind the event you could help providing a venue, and providing sandwiches for lunch, then you might be able to get someone from the ie mailing list to organise it for you. The OpenStreetMap Foundation even has a number of GPS receivers that can be borrowed by new commers.
Comment from AudaxHuffer on 5 December 2008 at 20:16
Wow this is an amazing response,
FK270673 - thanks for the set up info and I really like your postman idea.
Andrew - regards what we would need mapped - anything that would help people visiting this beautiful part of Ireland so Hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, shops, churches, beaches, graveyards, ATM's, pubs, battle sites, castles, forts, waymarked ways, etc
rorym - I am amazed by the flexibility of the tagging system. Sometimes it's the little things that make a tourism experience. There is a mass rock in the woods near my house here in Castlehaven that almost nobody knows about. I have seen people moved to tears when I have shown it to them and told them some of the local stories. However, things like this will probably never show up in Yahoo/Google maps
LivingwithDragons - I like the idea of a mapping party or maybe a series of mapping parties. Keep an eye open for 2009!
Thanks for all your suggestions thus far and we would love to see you all in West Cork next year.
Conor Buckley
Chairman
West Cork Tourism
http://www.westcork.ie
Comment from LivingWithDragons on 5 December 2008 at 20:50
Here's a link about mapping partys...
osm.wiki/Mapping_Weekend_Howto
Also I remembered another plan to get people to come and map the place out (don't know if this has been done much):
osm.wiki/Weekend_mapping_projects
Comment from b-unicycling on 5 October 2021 at 07:49
Having visited West Cork on public transport recently, that’s another feature which could be useful - adding the local bus routes. You have to take the bus and track the routes and bus stops (talk to driver to find out where the official ones are, bc there are rarely signposted). They will show up on the two public transport layers at osm.org.
And you’ll be happy to learn that there is a tag for mass rocks. I’ve done a video about how to map them: https://youtu.be/DcWBZSwsCJQ. likewise for mass paths.
Feel free to contact me if there are any more questions.
Anne
Comment from DeBigC on 5 October 2021 at 07:56
Hi There- Hope you don’t mind a post several years late. Sorry for the years late reply :)
What should you map? We have given more thought to Tourism, what with the routes mostly well done around the country, and with your great work on visitor amenities, the next thing they want to know is places to stay, and amenities. Since Covid has now disrupted which businesses are still open this is the right time to start that. To do that it helps to add the buildings in each town. Look at how we are doing that using a co-ordinated task, this aims to populate the wild atlantic way: https://tasks.openstreetmap.ie/project/84
Let me know if there is anything I can assist with.
Gemerally there are two good things to do - reach out to local people already mapping and organise a party to train new mappers (all said above) > https://hdyc.neis-one.org/?shiftee
Comment from AudaxHuffer on 5 October 2021 at 08:28
Hard to believe it’s 13 years since my first post. Anyway, I am no longer directly involved in the tourism industry but I have evolved from an occasional mapper to someone who makes regular edits on OSM and I am even on the OSM Ireland Telegram group.
All still using the online editor I confess - still have not made the jump to JOSM.
My interest is heritage mapping, primarily in the parish of Castlehaven and Myross as I am involved with the history group there.
We have our first Loginm Zoom meeting tonight and we have great plans to map Cuas(es?), Pools, rocks, fieldnames, hills etc
We are very lucky locally in that we have loads of minor toponyms still with their original Irish names. We believe we will capture and record up to 1,000 minor placenames within the parish over the course of the next few winters.
Anne you will be happy to hear I watched your video a few weeks ago and mapped my first mass rock. It’s a beautiful location and I only wish I could embed a picture on the map.
Thanks for all the helpful suggestions over the years.
Conor