The Mapping Project in Celbridge in County Kildare commenced about three weeks ago. It has probably been one of the most interesting tasks of my internship and an excellent learning opportunity for me.

My mentor, DeBigC presented the project to and explained that a Local County Councillor was keen to have Celbridge mapped to an exceptional extent. The locals seemed enthusiastic and were aware that a high quality mapped Celbridge would bring many benefits to the town.

My first duty was to go out and find mappers who had a knowledge of Celbridge or locals who would be more familiar with the town. I reached out to those I could find, approaching them with a friendly message explaining we needed urgent help to improve the town. A total of four people showed interest and were happy to help. DeBigC and Vanessa, the CC who initiated the project attracted more locals and, in the end, we had 13 members involved.

As soon as we gathered the group, the next step was to plan the stages of the project. After a few discussions with my mentors, I drafted a brief plan to aid one of the OSM board members with the wiki page for the project.

Subsequently to the plan being published we could finally be mapping Celbridge! My mentor created a task for the town which split Celbridge into squares, making it easier for both beginner and advanced mappers to have a go at it! I used OSM analytics to create a visualization of what buildings in Celbridge were tagged ‘buildings = yes’. That current images shows the remaining buildings and will hopefully be tagged accurately in the second task!

So far, the progress of the project has been unbelievable! Without the enthusiastic locals, the board members of OSM putting in great efforts or Vanessa’s eagerness and motivation, the project would not have advanced so far in such little time. There is still a little bit to go, adding the finishing touches to Celbridge to ensure it is of high quality once it is completed.

I’ll publish my next diary soon with hopefully the finishing details of the completed map of Celbridge!