OpenStreetMap
So I show the OSM website to someone at work today, and their first response is "my street isn't on the map"
This is weird - the person lives in Bedford which is within range of at least 2 OSM mappers. So what went wrong?
Well it turns out that they live in an estate that was still a muddy construction site just 2 years ago when the area was last surveyed. Since then it's become a housing estate with loads of dodgy modern houses in various stages of construction.
So I went to visit and made a map of the area. But watch out -- something which is a cornfield one day may be someone's house the next day, and if you only visit the place once you might miss it...
(use osmarender layer to see latest maps, while mapnik is still showing old maps)
Eztabaida
LivingWithDragons erabiltzailearen iruzkina 18 Uztaila 2008 02:27-eann
It looks like a road over the river had been stub-mapped. And was the landuse=construction area already there?
If so maybe someone knew something was going on and the above are sort of notes to revisit the area, if they look at that part of the map again. In can be easy to forget parts of where we live and what's going on there.
Anyway, a vision of OSM is that individual new roads can be added as soon as someone noticed them. Perhaps one day we will be watching the planning applications office like the OS do. Just we'll get it mapped within a day of being able to walk down the road!
andrewpmk erabiltzailearen iruzkina 18 Uztaila 2008 03:45-eann
Still faster than Google Maps (although some streets to the south remain unmapped). It never ceases to amaze me how bad the "maps" created by TeleAtlas/Navteq are. In a few years, they will probably both be forced into bankruptcy.
80n erabiltzailearen iruzkina 18 Uztaila 2008 06:06-eann
This is useful: http://www.planningalerts.com/
OJW erabiltzailearen iruzkina 18 Uztaila 2008 20:39-eann
Well... apparently the commercial satnav devices don't include this estate yet, and people who live there are already having problems describing their location
davidearl erabiltzailearen iruzkina 19 Uztaila 2008 10:59-eann
In the UK, each district/unitary authority has an officer who is responsible for naming streets. I made contact with the Cambridge person who has agreed to alert me when a street gets named, so I can make a survey visit.
I was contacted a while back re Arbury Park: osm.org/?lat=52.23354&lon=0.12019&zoom=16&layers=0B0FTF because new residents were having problems directing visitors, so I'm visiting every few months to keep this large development area up to date. Google's at least 2 years out of date.
As I go round, I've been noting where there are sites in development so I can visit again - but often they take a year or more to complete.