To all developers involved in an application which uses OSM data, either for smartphones (OsmAnd, MagicEarth, Maps.Me…) or online (Qwant maps…).

OpenStreetMap is a great database containing many type of information. All of the software I’m aware of seems to focus on explicit data (e.g. “There is a picnic table at this exact position” or “There is a rest area here”) to search for a POI, display a map or for navigation. Those explicit data come from tags directly on the POI or on a relation. But there is more to do whenever we think of what can be deduced from those explicit data to infer implicit data (e.g. “There are picnic tables in this rest area”). This would require to take into account tags on other POIs based on geometry.

What is the interest to deduce implicit data?

Imagine a family on the road looking for a place to stop: Kids will want to go to the restrooms, the driver will need some coffee and it’s time to have lunch and wait a moment we also need to refill the car. Not all rest areas/service areas propose all those services. Looking for each of those POI on a map can be quickly cumbersome (cluttering, filtering…). Now imagine if one can, when selecting a service area or rest area, have in addition to the name and opening hours of the area, a list of services available there then the decision will probably be more efficient.

Another use case is if I’m looking for a park to bring my kids. I would love to know at a single glance if a given park has some sport fields, playgrounds, toilets, ice creams… depending of what I’m looking for without zooming and panning everywhere on my map.

So how would it works?

… See full entry