After participating in the Missing Maps in Antwerpen, I went to the one in The Netherlands yesterday. Big thanks to Philip for making this possible for me!

The people from MSF/AZG/DWB/Red Cross had 2 Tasks in mind for us.

A though one in Africa where we had to add natural wood and rivers, as those are the (breeding) habitat for tse-tse flies, which cause sleeping disease. The beginners using iD had to abandon that one, as it’s impractical to zoom in far enough to work and still see the bigger picture. With JOSM one can draw a general contour of the wood at low zoom, then refine it by using the Improve Way Accuracy mode zoomed in a lot further. It’s still a daunting task to get it right though. What can be considered wood/forest? How does one recognise wetlands?

The other task was in Haiti. It was not easy either. A densely populated area and MSF wants to know how many buildings there are. (It’s explained better in the description…)

It peaked my interest for 2 reasons:

1. They used a drone to create superior aerial imagery
2. The Red Cross drove around with a smartphone used as a dashcam. The pictures were uploaded to Mapillary. Press that little play button and enjoy the ride.

This allows to go and have a look around and see what’s actually there. The width and state of the road, the state of completion of the buildings and so on.

Coverage is more limited than what can be seen from above, but it’s possible to read the name of a school and then it’s clear as well that it is a school.

The great thing about Mapillary is that the barrier of entry to contribute yourself is a lot lower than say, fly a drone to create excellent imagery…

All you need is a smartphone with a descent camera and GPS. Bonus points if it has a electronic compass, but that information can also be gotten from the GPX track. (electronic bread crumbs trail of where you’ve been).

I’ve been doing this for Geofort, somewhat surprised that I was the first one to do it. We’ve also covered a good part of the way over to Geofort from Belgium. Interrupted between Brasschaat and Breda because of a drizzle.

Only It’s so Funny did the same. I had expected to see all the roads to the geofort from all directions. Now I feel bad for not having mentioned it on the Meetup group beforehand. Mapillary still seems less known than I had expected. Hence this diary entry.

Let’s give Google Streetview some competition and do them one better! There are so many places their survey cars can’t reach! And hopefully one day, they decide to be even nicer than they claim to be and give us permission to look at their Streetview to improve Openstreetmap. One can always be optimistic :-)