One of the contributions could be used to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap is by importing existing datasets. However, if you don’t pay close attention, you may end up doing bad imports. Here, we collected some suggestions to guide you to import existing dataset into OSM correctly.

1. Type of data import

According to documentation in OpenStreetMap, only these physical features can be imported into OSM. They are:

• Point: locations that can be presented by a single dot on the map, for instance, bank, restaurant or post office, etc.
• Lines: the feature can be presented as lines, for instance, roads, trails, bike lanes.
• Polygons: can be defined as a closed line, for instance, buildings, farmlands.

In the following picture, you can see how all the physical features that show and can be rendered on a digital map.

2. Data format for OSM

… See full entry

Ethiopia’s main economic activity is Agriculture. Smallholders in Ethiopia farm around 37% of the lands and the rest 8% goes to the large-scale commercial farms. Large-scale commercial farms produce crops such as rice, maize, coffee, tea, cotton, pulse, rubber, and palm oil.

Invest in agriculture is the most important and most effective strategy for poverty reduction in rural areas. As part of Ethiopia’s development strategy, the Ethiopia government has set out to attract more foreign investment in large-scale commercial agriculture as outlined in this policy.

Mapping Commercial farms with the World Bank

… See full entry

In last November 2017 there were around 700 educational institutions in OpenStreetMap, most of them in urban areas and nothing in rural areas, the information about educational institutions present in OpenStreetMap was incomplete and we really couldn’t know how many educational institutions exists in a place, or which places don’t have any schools.

Bearing in mind that many educational institutions do not exist in the map and with the purpose of having the complete information of all educational institutions of Peru in OpenStreetMap, knowing that this information will allow the government to make better decisions such as: Improve access to education, better educational politics as well as services and the quality of education in the country.

As part of a collective effort we made a coordination with the Ministry of Education, to be able to use the data of educational institutions that they manage through SIGMED’s portal and can use all data of schools and kindergartens for import into OpenStreetMap.

The import process was carried out following the import guidelines set in OpenStreetMap.

Process of School’s import

Step 1: Prerequisites

Before to start the import process of import, we identified the categories of the database of SIGMED, these categories includes categories such as Basic regular education(EBR), Basic alternative education(EBA), and productive technical education(ETP), for this process we just selected Basic Regular Education, this category includes 3 levels of education:

• Initial
• Primary
• Secondary

Step 2: Community Buy-in

We talked about the import schools, in the last SOTM, this event was made in last November in Lima.

Step 3: License approval

… See full entry

In response to the 7.8 Eartquake in the province of Manabi on April 16, the data team of Mapbox decided to help mapping the zone with the objective of improving the map of the affected zone.

###### http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/1796

During the mapping time we were able to trace more than 16,000 buildings and 450 streets.

… See full entry