OpenStreetMap
I'm currently filling in some of the blanks around Gladstone, Qld from property boundary data. Some of Gladstone was already mapped out, however there is some largish areas that weren't mapped out and need surveying, if nothing else so street names and types can be mapped properly.
I went through last night and filled in a few blank areas using DCDB Qld data in the Sippy Downs area that couldn't be traced from sat imagery because it's out of date, possibly by up to 3 years.
That's the 10 million dollar question for the day.
There is a lot of roads that appear on paper, but were never built and this can be quite frustrating for people who go out to survey a road that just doesn't exist, it's even more frustrating if you consider you may have tried to survey the same road multiple times yourself!
Luckily this hasn't happened to me, but at least one person on the talk-au list claimed to have done this :)
The problem has been compounded recently by property boundary data becoming available for 1/4 of Australia, while this boundary data doesn't have roads it has clear outlines where roads and waterways and other similar features exist in a void between boundaries.
We (the talk-au list) have previously come up a list of suggestions of how to tag non-existent roads without copying the road into the OSM DB:
However with the current dataset we do have a dataset we can copy, it's just a matter of coming up with a useful tag to identify these roads.
So far the tags we've thought up are:
highway=ghost_road
highway=paper_road
highway=gazetted_road
Can anyone think of anything better?
I just received some more grey nomad data, this time for some more NT, however those areas had already been mapped, and for part of western Qld through to the south east.
A lot of the western Qld data hasn't been mapped already so this will also be pretty useful, also the property boundary data is very ambiguous and not very helpful south east of Mt Isa.
osm.org/?lat=-24.15258&lon=144.48909&zoom=16
Also in this area:
osm.org/?lat=-24.23536&lon=144.66226&zoom=16
Unfortunately there is a gap in the GPS data so I've guessed mostly where the road should go, but at some stage will need to be revisited to tweak it.
In any case I think I've been donated about 10,000km of GPS data, just need to find some more grey nomads now :)
There is a "pro" version that is more or less identical to the free version of our POI application for mobile phones, however people want something more if they think it's got more perceived value, than something given away as freeware, which I find ironically funny.
Any way there is 50 free copies being offered on crackberry.com, to win a copy people have to leave comment, and some of the comments are quite funny...
http://crackberry.com/bigtincan-mapper-pro-50-free-copies
Now there is a LOT more people that know about OSM and they're all armed with GPS based devices that have internet access... :)
Well today's the big launch day for BTC mapper, an app we coded at work that allows people easily and quickly to add points of interest to the OSM database from their BlackBerry or Android phones.
The launch is being held at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney with general and tech media writers present, so far reviews of the app has been quite positive, however the big benefit will be giving OSM much greater mind share with people that would normally only be exposed to commercial map offerings.
Another aspect to this app is to do an Australian version of FixMyStreet using OSM data as the base layer, we've called it www.TidyMyStreet.com and so far at least 2 councils have been introduced to the site from people on the talk-au list.
Hopefully later this afternoon I'll be able to report on how the launch went and even some sound bytes from the people present.
After a short hiatus due to bug #3614 in JOSM I'm finally able to continue adding Australian postcodes, this was actually fixed a day or so ago but I was distracted by real life.
This bug was actually quite nasty, any ways joining another way would then cause them not to be displayed, which resulted in me erroneously adding boundaries to OSM that already existed.
I've since fixed those mistakes but there was a number of other people getting tripped up on the same bug so I wonder how much other damage was caused, or if people also thought the DB had been vandalised as a result.
That's the perils for those running bleeding edge code I guess, although I'm not sure how the JOSM team determine when a version is stable. Does anyone know if they put a feature freeze on things before a new stable version is due to be released?
Since David didn't turn up to crack the whip we slacked off for a while talking and then decided to go for an early lunch about 11:30.
Once we got that and a bit more sitting around and chatting out of the way we decided it was time to do some mapping.
I think Ashley headed off to do some bike paths in section 1 of the map cake, while Hugh did section 6, both were on bikes and on such a warm day too. All I can say is thankfully aircon was invented. :)
The saving grace for them was the fact it topped out at about 26C, unlike a couple of weeks ago when it hit the mid 30's, in the winter no less.
osm.wiki/images/6/67/Redcliffe-cake-200909.png
James and myself teamed up, I did the driving while James did the mapping, to do sections 3 and 5 which we managed to do in reasonably short order and continued north to eventually clean up between King, Snook, MacDonnell and the eastern shore line.
Along with street names we marked off numerous park names, bus stops and schools. There was even a few streets either over looked or not built when the sat imagery was taken that are now mapped.
You can see the results from this map:
I'd been having trouble importing larger post code areas, some about half the size of the NT, if I manually downloaded along the border it would take ages needing hundreds of downloads.
However I found a simple way to do it, using JOSM I converted the postcode osm file to a GPX file and then right clicked on the GPS layer and selected download along track.
This takes the hard work out of downloading up to 212 areas just to add the boundary.
Hope this helps someone else, or encourages others to help import postcodes :)
I whipped round quickly late this afternoon to cover another area that was developed since the yahoo sat imagery was taken.
It was very slow going and the area has twists and winds which slows the going down and made it more difficult to work out if I managed to cover all streets.
It was actually a golfing area and there were signs up for "golf cart crossings" all through it, who ever maps these will probably need to tag highway=path, golf_cart=designated :)
I managed to get a way this morning a little earlier than I had to and whipped round the Twin Waters area and mapped out what couldn't be done from sat imagery, although I didn't have time to grab street names.
I've just uploaded the data but the tile server doesn't seem to have updated yet.
It's out of date, possibly by up to 3.5 years. The Sunshine Coast is a reasonably high growth area so all imagery is bound to not cover all the current roads.
For people on the Sunshine Coast that are looking for somewhere to map by GPS I've highlighted a few areas where I can see development was taking place on Yahoo imagery, but there wasn't enough done at the time to be able to map roads from:
osm.wiki/Wikiproject_Queensland#Areas_with_out_of_data_hi-res_imagery
I had previously mapped out all the streets of Curra a few months ago, but I find it difficult to do meta mapping at the same time when I'm out mapping by myself in traffic.
So today was a nice sunny day with a gentle breeze blowing so I nipped round and got the street names completed except for one or 2 side roads with no signs, or signs that were vandalised to the point they couldn't be read.
I also pencilled in a new residential development road that has been tarred but it had barriers blocking it so I couldn't map it, it also didn't have any signs up yet either.
After I was finished there I mapped out some all weather roads in the near by state forest:
As well as a couple of other side roads on the Bruce Highway that weren't mapped but are now mapped and named!
Yet another Sunshine Coast town mapped, now all someone needs to do is name them :)
Also I mapped out the University of the Sunshine Coast, however the sat imagery is a little old and things have changed since.
I just finished mapping out Bli Bli from satellite data. This is thanks to Yahoo adding hi-res sat imagery for a number of places outside the Brisbane/Gold Coast areas recently.
If anyone is looking for something to do, there is still plenty left to do on the Sunshine Coast and else where:
osm.wiki/Wikiproject_Queensland#Yahoo.21_aerial_imagery_coverage
I'm slowly going through the Australian postcodes uploaded so far and comparing them with OSM files Franc converted from shape files.
However there is still plenty of work reviewing and importing missing delivery areas.
To make it easier to find out which postcodes have been imported and which have been reviewed I setup the following page:
http://map-data.bigtincan.com/postcodes.php
AusPost lists 2,877 postcodes in a downloadable CSV file on their website. However not all postcodes are "Delivery Areas", some are for post office boxes and some are Large Volume Recipients (LVR) such as Universities and Military bases/ships.
There is actually 2,623 Delivery Area postcodes, unfortunately we only have 2,507 osm files in total, and so far only 948 delivery areas have been imported into the OSM DB. Out of the 948 only 133 have been reviewed to have been imported correctly.
For the curious the 116 Delivery Areas that we don't have shape/OSM files for, are:
0829, 0846, 0853, 2308, 2309, 2398, 2649, 2661, 2678, 2769, 2899,
3063, 3237, 3254, 3267, 3273, 3309, 3329, 3374, 3378, 3385, 3415,
3430, 3432, 3488, 3489, 3506, 3565, 3572, 3576, 3583, 3596, 3607,
3617, 3663, 3704, 3708, 3715, 3718, 3751, 3755, 3760, 3762, 3864,
3873, 3893, 3903, 3957, 3967, 3979, 3990, 4353, 4372, 4375, 4376,
4378, 4384, 4406, 4461, 4471, 4479, 4611, 4697, 4704, 5139, 5150,
5220, 5263, 5273, 5310, 5414, 5455, 5493, 5630, 5651, 5660, 6077,
6078, 6079, 6180, 6181, 6182, 6209, 6211, 6223, 6240, 6243, 6252,
6313, 6327, 6351, 6357, 6384, 6393, 6403, 6412, 6413, 6414, 6419,
6422, 6424, 6428, 6446, 6447, 6452, 6466, 6467, 6480, 6504, 6506,
6509, 6512, 6564, 6571, 6574, 6605, 6613, 6614, 6625, 6628, 6631,
6632, 6639, 6712, 6733, 6762, 7119, 7139, 7151, 7174, 7175, 7176,
7183, 7187, 7257
Some time during the weekend before the FOSS4G conference there is going to be a mapping party in Sydney, so far it seems to be the first one in Sydney.
I'll post more information as detail become clearer.
There is several good reasons why a local chapter, or more importantly a legal entity needs to be established in Australia:
* It makes it easier to deal with large companies, other non-profits, NGOs and government agencies as it is no longer a few hobbyists doing maps but an organisation.
* A legal entity is able to receive/own donated goods and services from companies, and companies are more likely to donate to a legal non-profit entity rather than hobbyists.
* A legal entity might be able to get DGR (deductible gift recipient) status with the ATO, so donations might be tax deductible for those giving.
While it may be possible to work under the OSM-F to achieve the same benefits, it's easier if there is a local entity and the board of OSM-F may not be willing or able to cope with Australian issues because they are based in the UK.
Could those wishing to financially support such an organisation in Australia please add their names to this wiki page:
osm.wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Australia#People_who_would_be_willing_to_be_financial_members
Current OSM-F guidelines suggest a minimum of 20 people should be interested in setting up a local chapter.
I've setup a brief outline for setting up an Australian chapter page here:
osm.wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Australia
I've also taken the association rules from the Wikimedia association of Australia and modified it for use with OSM-F.
osm.wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Australia/Draft_Rules
I'd appreciate feed back, or suggested changes or ideas in general.
I figured it was time I stopped pestering the talk-au list and pester everyone else instead :)
Thanks to some grey nomads donating GPS data I've mapped out several areas in Australia where there was absolutely nothing before hand.
Like the road from St George to Mitchell in QLD, all current maps show this as dirt but it's now paved. osm.org/go/ucYlwCm--
These tracks to the south west of Darwin osm.org/go/tvHxUA@ and these tracks to the north east of Darwin osm.org/go/tvZLl@a
There was also 1 or 2 short tracks added in the Kakadu national park.
I was also able to realign small parts of the Stuart Highway that were poorly drawn.
They're thinking about coming back along Highway 1, which so far has only been drawn from low res sat imagery so this would allow the way to be drawn much better.
