OpenStreetMap
There seems to be a general problem with mapping rural areas on Open Street Map, in the UK. It ranges from whole towns that almost aren't mapped to small hamlets, and their maze of connecting roads.
Towns I imagine we can gradually get to map - it's going to take a long time as it relies on local people doing it.
The small roads are a very time consuming thing to do, and can't be done feasibly on foot and even by bike would be seriously exhausting.
It's unfortunate that Yahoo seem to be the worst provider of online satellite imagery - the areas that we have the worst coverage directly correspond to those that aren't on the Yahoo imagery at good quality. Look at west Brighton for example, it cuts off exactly along the line of the imagery.
I've been looking at South West England - around Honiton, a town I know pretty well from many holidays near there over the years. I'd love to be able to map it, but there must be hundreds of miles of unmapped roads just within 10 miles of there... Have a look at Google Maps for example...
I'm sure I'm not the first to consider this. Does anyone have any ideas as to how sparsely populated areas are going to be mapped?
Discussion
Comment from Marlow on 19 November 2008 at 02:00
Same story in Ireland. The only way is to take the car and simply drive the roads with a gps logger.
Comment from eAi on 19 November 2008 at 02:17
Well, I imagine the UK is better off than most places. How the hell will we ever map the real remote places of the world?
Comment from Mark Williamson on 19 November 2008 at 02:50
I map footpaths and local roads by bicycle - I sometimes have to schedule a long ride just to get to the area where mapping is to be done. It's slow work but it's satisfying and give me an opportunity to explore and exercise. If I had a car or (probably better) motorbike I would use that for some of the on-road work to extend my range and improve the rate of mapping.
This obviously works best in areas where there is a population centre somewhere vaguely near some unmapped countryside. In places that are sparsely populated and / or that are harder to get around (e.g. Cornwall, Scotland, Wales...) this strategy is going to take longer due to lower density of OSMers and harder work on the ground.
The NPE maps (http://www.npemap.org.uk) are useful too, you can get them as a layer in Potlatch or JOSM and use them to trace over roads you know to still exist. The data isn't as accurate as GPSing but it's not too bad either in my experience. For some data (e.g. obscure place / feature names) it's sometimes the only available source for us to use. We do need to know that the roads in question still exist on the old route before doing this, however. It's ideally best to get them surveyed in person at some point but marking source=npe allows people to do that in future.
It's not ideal that the Yahoo coverage is patchy, it does accelerate mapping a lot. Another thing it's useful for in rural areas is marking out farmyards, field boundaries, etc in areas which are not directly accessible by public rights of way. I've been meaning to do some of this kind of stuff using compass bearings but that's significantly more complicated work than normal GPS-ing...
Comment from njd27 on 19 November 2008 at 07:31
NPE maps work pretty well for rural areas: I've been filling in some gaps in Hampshire and Wiltshire using them and local knowledge.
Eventually it might be nice to have a thing similar to the noname layer so we can print out maps which show the roads which don't have a GPS trace: then we can bag them easily.
Comment from Richard on 19 November 2008 at 09:26
A lot of areas have really good rural coverage thanks to NPE now. I've done lots of rural roads in the Cotswolds, Steve Chilton's done huge numbers of rivers in Wales, and so on.
Best to use the Potlatch layer (rather than the JOSM WMS) if possible as the rectification is much, much more accurate. I'm rectifying a bunch more sheets at the moment, should have them uploaded before too long.
The other thing to do is make sure you take the back-roads parallel to your usual commute!
Comment from Donald Allwright on 19 November 2008 at 10:32
I think the problem will to a large extent remain until a local person in the area gets interested and starts doing 'real' mapping using a GPS. I am unfortunate (if you see what I mean) to live in an area with a lot of mappers , which means my home patch is very well covered and I have to travel quite a way to get rich pickings. I grew up in the area a little to the east of where you're looking and have added a few of the roads I know based on NPE maps, but the problem remains.
I wonder if there's scope here for organising 'out of region' mapping parties, to cover towns/villages in such areas - and trying to publicise it locally as much as possible. The main aim of such a party would be to get locals interested, and give them a bit of a head start by letting them see how it's done, as opposed to actually getting blanket coverage of the region. However I'm not really an expert in publicity matters, so don't know how best to go about this. Having been to the Bury St. Edmunds mapping party in August, I would love to see a similar event in say Yeovil (near where I grew up and which I know well) which is a similar sized town and notable for its lack of detail in OSM.
Comment from eAi on 19 November 2008 at 11:21
Donald, I'd be interested in joining such a mapping party.
I don't know if anyone has looked at publicising OSM on a local level and trying to get people involved. Using real-world advertising might be successful, but obviously it would have to be well targeted as very few people have the equipment necessary to take part.
Perhaps targeting walking groups etc would be one route to go down.
Alternatively, targeting schools etc, as way to learn about geography and map-making. I know I'd have loved to have done some OSMing while at school, and I think teachers would be keen on it too.
Neither route would get everything, but schools could probably map towns and villages easily (and safely). Walking groups could map some of the more obscure roads, but a fairly small percentage - I'd guess.
Comment from chillly on 19 November 2008 at 13:18
Rural coverage in the UK does vary, but is improving. It seems to help to create a Wiki page for an area - I created one for East Yorkshire which is a large rural county. The list of villages and towns came from Wikipedia which has proved fairly accurate and gives a target to aim at and a list for people to check if they are thinking of going somewhere. Many of the rural roads were mapped by people taking an alternate route to a normal destination. That said it will take a determined effort to cover every part of the county - and probably some petrol too.
Comment from RichardB on 19 November 2008 at 13:47
I'm pretty sure that all of these places will eventually get covered by 'proper' surveying with GPS, eventually. The amount of data in the database has grown dramatically over the past couple of years. Two years ago, when I first joined the project, most areas of the map were still largely empty. Of course it takes time, but actually, the coverage in all areas, urban or rural, has improved dramatically. There are now nearly 75,000 mappers out there. When I joined in 2006, there were under 5,000.
It will happen eventually, but of course a mapping party is a good way of helping along progress in an area.
Comment from Donald Allwright on 19 November 2008 at 14:20
OK to start the ball rolling I've added initial county pages on the wiki for Devon, Dorset and Somerset. Still a lot of detail to add, and I haven't looked up any lists of towns to add. That's a job for a long winter's evening!
Comment from eAi on 19 November 2008 at 14:26
This morning, I've mapped a small area of rural Devon that I know pretty well, using the out of copyright maps. The maps are pretty good for rural areas, but not so good for towns as the detail just isn't there.
Luckily towns are feasible to do on foot or bike. I guess doing things roughly with the old maps, then verifying on the ground is the best method.
Comment from eAi on 19 November 2008 at 14:33
I've added a list to the Devon talk page, of villages and towns in Devon. Not sure what the next step is, nor whether we can use the list legally...?
Comment from barrieu on 19 November 2008 at 15:46
I am in the process of doing just that. I walk and cycle to get bridleways and footpaths in the remote areas. It just takes eons, often times traversing the same stretch of paths to get further and further out. I am fortunate in living in South Cumbria insomuch as I have hundreds of miles of paths and tracks, some hardly passable now and many unsignposted. Obviously I need to refer to other maps for research, each local authority retains a 'definitive map' of rights of way which gives very detailed information on rights of way. Without this information you would quite literally be lost (and much of the time be technically trespassing).
One thing that does niggle with me is that some mappers do not seem to tag the remote routes correctly, the fact that you cannot see a route on the ground does not mean that it is not a bridleway (although many bridleways would require the horse to use crampons and ropes to ascend and in some cases require a snorkle!). Some paths 20 foot wide are still only fotpaths.
It is amazing how quickly you can fill up a white area and the thrill of tagging a remote track across open moorland 15 miles from the nearest road is awsome. Also you only realise how many rights of way we have when you have to actually pass them with the aim of tagging them - until then they are not even lines on the map.
Comment from RichardB on 19 November 2008 at 18:25
barrieu: Do you really need to look at maps for reference. I mapped every single footpath, bridleway, byway, road and track in this area at the start of this year.
osm.org/?lat=53.4624&lon=-1.989&zoom=14&layers=B000FTF
I didn't refer to another map once. I just followed the signs as they were on the ground. Most of the time, it was easy to follow the route between waymarks. At other times, it wasn't as easy - and yes, I did make a couple of mistakes in the route I followed - but the map at the end should be pretty much correct.
Comment from eAi on 19 November 2008 at 18:28
Impressive :) Pitty that the area to the North West is almost blank :|
Comment from Mungewell on 19 November 2008 at 18:55
Pretty much the situation in rural Canada, only the distances are larger. You just have to keep mapping....
Great news that the GeoBase data (for Canada) will be usable and imported in good time.
Comment from RichardB on 19 November 2008 at 23:32
To eAi: It is a pity that no-one has done Staylbridge and surroundings indeed. I'll point out now that I was doing the area around Hadfield for a specific purpose, and I didn't venture much outside the area that I was meant to be mapping for that purpose.
All I was saying is; it's not as difficult as you think to get a considerable amount done - but someone has to just go and do it. It can be done.
When you next go to Honiton, take a GPS with you, make sure that you put a few roads on the map, and perhaps get out walking one day and put a few footpaths on, or get on the bike etc. You don't have to do everything in one go. If every OSMer who visits Honiton or the surrounding area does the same, then eventually it'll get finished.
Comment from barrieu on 19 November 2008 at 23:33
RichardB : I do have to refer to other maps because the rights of way are often not clearly not defined on the ground either through lack of use or because short cuts have been taken or because people have strayed following sheep tracks etc, they may well be worth mapping but a whole fell-side would then be one great mass of track, not much use to navigate by !
These signs, waymarks, sounds very useful.
Many footpaths particularly in more populous areas are very clear but here I would could venture very far without my sighting compass, full weather gear, emergency bivvy blanket and stock of Mint Cake.
I use a wrist mounted gps but only to collect data not to navigate by.
Comment from RichardB on 19 November 2008 at 23:33
That should of course by Stalybridge, not Staylbridge...
Comment from Mark Williamson on 20 November 2008 at 00:53
barrieu: out in the countryside I generally avoid looking at other maps to avoid "contaminating" my brain with preconceived ideas about the paths. Otherwise I do sometimes get into "Would I have figured it out if I hadn't seen an existing map?" which makes it harder work to remember what I /really/ saw on the ground.
Mapping the path first and comparing to an existing map if necessary works for me but I understand it's different where you are. I'm fortunate in being around fairly well signposted (relatively) tracks but even so I sometimes lose the thread. I often find it can help considerably when a path is ambiguous to go find the other end and backtrack.
Aside from the path route itself, which I generally figure out from what I see on the ground, I also have to figure out what kind of Right of Way it is. For this I generally look for signs - these's usually one *somewhere* along the route that I can use. And if there isn't a sign then I think OSM recommended policy is to choose the lowest it could possibly be e.g. footway (and make a note against the way, perhaps). If you can only get the type-of-way from a restricted copyrighted map, then I think the consensus is that's not usable (annoyingly)? I've been wondering if it's legitimate to double-check these with the local council's definitive map but I'm not actually sure if I can since I guess it make be based on OS data...
To be honest, it sounds like all the paths you're seeing could be useful, unless some of them are legally / physically unpassable. Does the area have specific rights of way, or is there a general right to roam? In the former case, I'm disappointed they're not better signposted :-( but in the latter case, I guess any paths that are there could be useful to someone :-)
I certainly understand your eagerness not to stray too far off the path though; aside from the risk of getting lost, I have had an "interesting" encounter with an unfriendly farmer this year and I'm not keen to repeated it!
Comment from eAi on 20 November 2008 at 00:57
The issue is that just because there's a path on the ground, it doesn't mean it's the right of way. Farmers often move paths from year to year to suit their fields (without permission or otherwise), or paths can get blocked and people find their own way around. I assume that OSM should be mapping the rights of way rather than the paths...
I've been on many walks that have ended up being impassable along the 'official' right of way, and equally I've walked on many footpaths that aren't rights of way (some being permissive, some just exist)...
Comment from Mark Williamson on 20 November 2008 at 04:52
eAi: some people advocate the philosophy of "map what's on the ground" but it's very useful to know what's a real right-of-way on top of that. Ideally this information comes from signposting or maybe could be derived from NPE. In the absence of those, the question is what sources we can legitimately use to determine whether a path is a right of way. I actually don't know what the answer is here - my normal practice is to determine that at the scene if possible, so I avoid any and all potential copyright issues with reference to other maps. Not ideal :-S
Comment from alv on 20 November 2008 at 08:29
Just a comparison of the amount of roads... (numbers from wikipedia so I don't know if GB number includes all forest tracks accessible to cars - for Finland it does)
Km of roads, population, land area (km²)
453 000, 05 300 000, 338 419, Finland
398 350, 58 000 000, 209 331, Great Britain
roads/person: 85 meters (FI) vs. 6,9 meters (GB)
roads/sq.km: 1,33 vs. 1,9 km
(actually 1,49 for Finland as 10% of land area is lakes)
roads/local OSM user: 1058 km (FI) vs. ?
sq.km/local OSM user: 790 km² vs. ?
And then just guess how much unmapped roads we have here outside the biggest cities...
Comment from barrieu on 20 November 2008 at 10:11
I think we agree on most things and I sense that you guys are as agonised on occasions as myself when trying to determine the status of a way.
I certainly do not use other maps to 'copy' and the layer that the county councils use is generated by public bodies so as a reference tool I believe is ok, all my editing is done directly from GPX traces.
I think that there should be more types of way renderable maybe even taking into consideration the state of the surface and topography but this would be a nightmare as at different times of the year the going changes so much and is also so subjective.
I am optimistic that eventually all the ways will be mapped and comprehensively tagged and as OSM is a living map will truly reflect the geography of the country (world ?).
As an aside are you guys aware of Free-Map, the rural rendering of OSM. I don't know too much about it, I think its just one chap who has to fit it around the rest of his life so it isn't updated as frequently as the more popular renderings. Maybe he could do with some assistance - it seems niche corner of OSM so maybe we should help ? What do you think ?
Comment from eAi on 20 November 2008 at 10:28
Well, I certainly think that the current rendering for OSM are not well suited to rural areas. I like Ordinance Survey's renderings, and I'd like similar options available for OSM. I'm not sure this is feasible with the renderers available though.
Looking at Free-Map it uses osmarender by the looks of it, which unfortunately makes the resulting maps rather ugly!
I think it's certainly valid to have a separate rendering targeted at rural areas. Ordinance Survey 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 are poorly suited to urban areas (lacking street names for example), while A-Zs are ideal. I think OSM is currently more of an A-Z or route planner. To attempt to go walking in an area you don't know with OSM currently would be frustrating.
Footpaths on Osmarenderer for example are rendered as being almost roads, rendering them as dashed lines makes more sense. Ditto with bridleways...
I generally find all online renderings rather ugly to varying degrees. I think OS maps are partly hand rendered - as in someone human guides the rendering to some extent (placing names in areas that aren't going to obscure important intersections for example). Perhaps OSM needs something like that - a layer above the raw data, to produce accurate, readable and pleasing maps!
Comment from RichardB on 20 November 2008 at 19:00
The renderings of paths on Osmarender *used* to be;
Yellow way = footpath (coincident with yellow waymarks on UK footpaths)
Blue way = bridleway (coincident with blue waymarks on UK bridleways)
Red way = byway (coincident with red waymarks on UK byways)
The red and blue still exists - but someone changed the one for footpaths to a dirty brown/grey colour...