Here is a brief analysis of trends in OSM edits and spatial distribution using compiled statistics from Pascal Neis osmstats website. The link at the bottom of the page will let you download the csv data (by month, quarter / country, region, continent) and make your own analysis.

Thanks to Pascal who provides such usefull infos about OSM activities. As Organized editing statistics have been added to the osmstas website at the beginning of 2022, we will cover the periods from 2022-04 to to 2023-06.

Trends by type of edition

As illustrated on graph 1, there was a small decline of OSM objects edited during this period from 323 millions objects edited in 2022-Q2 to 314 millions in 2023-Q2. This decline comes from the Organized editing with 92 millions objects edited in 2022-Q2 to 54 millions in 2023-Q2 (his share from 28% to 17%).

Graph 1

Organized edits Trends by Continent

… See full entry

pnorman and stereo analysis of Changesets

Following the temporary interruption of Maxar Imagery Access for OSM edits, pnorman and stereo published in the last few days analysis by changesets of Maxar usage. They used OSM Changesets Data for the last 12 months to make partial analysis from of Imagery usage by country showing a concentration in some countries from Asia and Africa.

Synthetic view of changesets and by Objects edited, 2022

I wanted to react rapidly and present a synthetic view. My excuses if any inconsistancy in resuls. The data I have on hand was extracted from the OSM Planet changeset file ending in 2022 using my own version of changesetMD. Analysis for 2022 is grouped by Continent / Sub-Continent where I divide Asia and America for North and South (South-Asia + Oceania).

The tags variable in the file provides the source and imagery_used keys, both with references to imagery used as source. And you can have sometimes simultaneous references to many images (example: Maxar, Bing, Esri). This can come from JOSM which presents us with a list of all the imageries opened in our session or is simply the fact that the contributor indicates that he used more then one image provider.

What I present is also a brief analysis where I classiy sources as :

1. Maxar
2. Other Major Imageries (Bing, Esri, MapBox)
3. Others (all other sources - hard to classify rapidly)
4. Noref (no source indicated).

Previous analysis were based on the comparison of the number of Changesets by country. I do present results for both Changesets and Objects Edited (ie. no of Nodes, ways, relations edited). The variable num_changes (no. of Objects Edited) better represents the intensity of mapping. A changeset can contain only one building (5 objects edited) or thousand of objects edited.

Analysis by changesets

… See full entry

The OSM Foundation started publication of the results of the The 2021 OSMF Community Survey where we can download a spreadsheet with the Comments received in the survey.

In the second section, you will find extracts of individual comments that I interpret as being related to the Question F1 about Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee and complaints about Systematic Offensive behavior in the OSM Community.

But first, if we look at all comments listed, my perception from the comments is that many participants to the survey are looking at the various actors and politics that are played and want to insist on various challenges facing OSM and often concern about the dynamic with the various actors and the various agendas. Note that this is anonymous data, and that comments below are my interpretation reading these.

The participants comment on the various actors and their actions, plus the impact on OSM. We can observe how they are seing political actions and the various actors and they perceive actions including from volunteers, Data Working Group (DWG), Influencers on Tagging discussion, paid and Corporate contributors, local communities and the usage of AI tools, Tagging of Disputed territories, Mechanical edits and Imports and even Non-OSM-Attribution by dominant Corporate actors. The OSM ecosystem creates great possibilities of collaboration and innovation for various products and answers to various needs.But with such dynamics, there are actors that are more in position of power like the Corporate actors, Software developpers or even small groups that control tagging schemes. Contributors like «tagkeepers» using mechanical edit tools have important capacity of action. Democratic play inside OSM means informations, discussions, and way to progress to concensus. But like any other political play, it is not easy to simply establish the facts, and accept to find solution, share powers with others, or accept that others have power they dont want to share.

… See full entry

Traduction fr : Un système d’exploitation Ubuntu 20.04 virtualisé / léger sur Windows 10

We dont all have access to a Linux OS, but note for Windows 10 users, that you can easily install a virtualized Ubuntu 20.04 OS. It will work simultaneously with Windows and will require little ressources. See this tutorial on how to install WSL2 and Ubuntu 20.04 https://alessio.franceschelli.me/posts/windows/wsl2-upgrade/

As said in the tutorial :

« WSL2 is the second iteration of the Windows Subsystem for Linux which finally allows running linux virtualized inside Windows. This new version brings real  virtualization using a real linux kernel, but, compared to a traditional virtual machine, it runs on a lightweight hypervisor getting close to bare-metal performance.»

You can even communicate with you Windows PostgreSQL server, replacing localhost by samenet

ie. psql -h samenet -p 5432

If you have problems to communicate through internet, look at your firewall to assure it does not block ougoing links from your linux OS.

Good solution to tests / Develop. While writing test scripts for changesetMD Replication scripts, I was able to use this solution to test easily on my laptop.

Depuis 2010, les contributeurs et développeurs OSM, nous avons réussi à faire d’OpenStreetMap la carte De-facto des interventions humanitaires et à développer des collaborations avec les agences de l’ONU et les ONG, à innover pour utiliser divers outils pour la réponse humanitaire, et même à travailler avec des épidémiologistes dans des contextes difficiles comme la crise Ebola en Afrique occidentale ou avec des médecins se rendant dans les villages isolés du Népal après le séisme majeur en 2015.

Les principales Réponses humanitaires que j’ai coordonnées à partir de 2012 m’ont donné l’occasion de présenter dams divers colloques la contribution OSM dans les contextes de crise humanitaire. Mais comme beaucoup d’autres bénévoles, j’ai moins l’occasion de voyager et de participer à des conférences à l’étranger. La SOTM-2019 à Heidelberg a été ma première participation au SOTM international et je suis très reconnaissant à la Fondation OSM qui m’a sélectionné pour une bourse.

… See full entry

Since 2010, the OSM contributors and developpers, we succeeded to make OpenStreetMap the De-facto Map for humanitarian responses and develop collaborations with UN agencies and NGO, and innovate to use various tools for the response, and even work with epidemiologists in difficult contexts like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa or doctors walking in remote villages of Nepal after the major earthquake in 2015.

The major OSM Responses I coordinated from 2012 offered me the opportunity to travel from Canada to various Conferences and present our results. But like many other volunteers, I have less opportunity to travel and participate to conferences from abroad. The SOTM-2019 in Heidelberg was my first participation to the international SOTM and I am very gratefull to the OSM Foundation which selected me for a scholarship.

… See full entry

Le territoire québécois est sillonné par des milliers de kilomètres de lignes électriques 735KV. De nombreuses routes croisent ces lignes et il y a souvent des sentiers à proximité. Lors du suivi des éditions sur ces lignes électriques, je me suis rendu compte que de nombreux contributeurs ne regardent pas autour d’eux lorsqu’ils éditent et connectent souvent les routes et sentiers aux lignes électriques.

Permettez-moi de décrire un cas intéressant

Il y a quelques années, un parc pour chiens a été ajouté à la base OSM ainsi qu’un stationnement à proximité sous une ligne électrique de 735KV. Sur le boulevard voisin, le tronçon de raccordement entre les deux côtés du boulevard a été déplacé à proximité et connecté à la ligne électrique 735KV. Par la suite, un spécialiste d’un partenaire OSM d’outils de navigation routière faisant systématiquement le suivi de l’édition des réseaux routiers a édité «sans regarder de côté» le tronçon de «highway=tertiary» à «highway=tertiary_link».

… See full entry

There are thousand of kilometers of 735KV power lines over the Quebec territory. There are often trails under these lines and road crossings. While monitoring the edits to these power lines today, I realized that many contributors had again connected roads to the power lines.

Let me describe this interesting case.

A few years ago, a dog park was added plus a nearby parking under a 735KV power line. On the nearby boulevard, the connecting segment between the two sides of the road was moved closed to the Power line and clipped to it. Then a road navigation specialist working for an OSM partner company did narrowly edit modifying highway=tertiary to highway=tertiary_link.

Those people should look around. It is quite dangerous to edit this way. If QA is done so automatically by humans, should we add some artficial intelligence in the editors to detect such problems, and why not give a mild electric shock to contributors!

… See full entry

Talking of the OSM Contributors, we often see the Big Numbers. In this Diary, my objective is to focus on the OSM Contributor profiles, to try to measure the impact of various groups on the OSM Edit Contributions.

Since 2005, there has been an explosive growth of new OSM Registered members from 500,000 in 2012 to 1 million in 2013 and 4.2 millions at the end of september 2017.

Pascal Neis and Alexander Zipf study in 2012 showed that only 38% of the registered members at the end of 2011 had started editing the database and that only 5% (24,000) of all members actively contributed to the project in a more productive way.

Activityworkshop.ne published in july 2013 an interesting analysis of contributors «Joining and leaving» as participants. It shows the volatily of OSM contributors with a high volume of contributors starting and stopping contribution shortly after. As we will see below, a high percentage of people that start to contribute stop the first day or after a short period.

… See full entry

HOT successful growth over the last five years is recognized by the various medias and humanitarian organizations. HOT was successful to develop projects in partnership with various organizations and to mobilize developpers and mappers volunteering or contracting in supporting different programs and actions. There were Projects in Indonesia, Haiti, Africa, and Local community development actions. To support these activities, Tutorials, Software development were other dimensions of this action. The Tasking Manager is the example of a tool developped with the support of volunteers and contractors, experimenting with various partners. The Activations and other Programs have contributed to develop workflows to better respond to various problematics in the humanitarian sector. This was possible with both the support of skilled volunteers, staff and the synergy with the partner organizations. As we progress to develop projects with the partners, it is essential to assure to maintain a good coordination with the HOT community, A great part of the dynamism and success of HOT comes from this ecosystem with these highly skilled mappers and developpers that develop tools, orient projects, interface with humanitarian organizations to adapt to their needs and find ways to collaborate.

OSM is now the DeFacto map for international humanitarian responses. But for HOT to grow successfully, we should surely not count only on dedicated Activation leaders, Developpers or Staff. The same with the Board of directors or the Partners. We need to work together. The Board of directors represents the membership and assures the management of the organization with the support of the staff. They cannot surely report all actions or detail of contracts and staff management. And they have to delegate some responsabilities to the staff.

… See full entry

My journey at OSM / HOT

The Haiti Earthquake in january 2010 let me discover what it was possible to do remotely to support humanitarian actions. I jumped in rapidly and used my various skills to support this first HOT activation. I remember these updates where we saw first Schuyler and Tom Buckley and then Nicolas Chavent and Robert Soden in action, the interviews in the tents, the HOT kits, the workflows built with the UN agencies.

On the steps of these initiators of HOT Activations, I started at the end of 2012 to coordinate a serie of major activations where the core coordinators we supported remotely the international community. With the rebellion in the Kivus, north of the Democratic republic of Congo, hundred of thousands of people were fleeing on the roads. Nicolas who had worked previously for the UN Agencies (WFP and UNJLC/Log-Cluster at inter-agency level) organized the contacts with OCHA and asked Claire to assure the liaison from Kinshasa.

We had the objective to professionalize our activations, to gain confidence of the various international organizations and convince them to collaborate with OSM and HOT, to make OSM the Reference map in the context of disasters.

In parallel of the Congo Activation, I started The Mali activation two months later. Andrew Buck then joined in and Severin started activations for the Central Africa Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. At the same time, Jorieke and other Eurosha volunteers in CAR had to move out rapidly because of the insecurity.

With the Activations, the support of local communities and discussions, collaborations with the Red Cross, MSF, Eurosha, Espace Francophone projects, a place of innovation and experimentation was gradually implemented. We also proposed Design improvements of the Task Manager to adapt it to the context of Activations, offered various Daily exports, looked at using mobile devices for data collect, contributed to software experiments, design, development.

… See full entry