Sharing my reflections about certain responses to the recent “A Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behaviour in the OSM Community”.

I am worried by those who claim to treat everyone equally while discriminating against those with fewer edits and other kinds of contributions to the OSM project.

I am also perplexed by those who claim to dislike identity politics, while taking pride themselves in being a craft mapper and long-time contributor, which is also an identity.

I think and feel that it is important for us OSM folks to collectively reflect on what we mean by “free and open” and move it away from simplistic and monocultural ethos and philosophies. Let’s do it.

Whose freedom? Whose openness?

Hello, world 🌎🌍🌏. I am writing this from Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. A masjid (mosque) in our neighbourhood was attacked by a white supremacist terrorist last Friday. Why did the attacker think that Aotearoa (New Zealand) is his land? We are grieving for our muslim brothers and sisters, and the event should make us rethink our worldviews, geography, and mapping. But who cares? Please read the following carefully.

Cartography, which includes geographic information, was and is part of colonisation, christianisation, imperialism, exploitation, dispossession, and domination. On the other hand, our present life relies on modern cartographic practice and mapping technologies, both of which inherit and reproduce the mistakes of the past.

I’ll give a petty indicator. Millions of people live in Oceania, but there is no emoji of the Pacific. 🌎🌍🌏 ?

How can we make sure that cartography, including the present trend of crowdsourcing geographic information, is careful and caring? What should a #caretography mean?

I’ve been reflecting some more on how to do research about and for OpenStreetMap recently. Here’s my latest brain dump:

One of the reasons I’m afraid to do my PhD research is because ethnography and mapping are not a usual combination in both the academic and professional spheres in GIS. Mapping is used in doing the usual ethnographic studies. But the ethnography of mapping itself seems to be rare. It flips the gaze around - instead of the mapping professional observing the place and people, it is the mapping professional who is being observed.

This method lays bare many of the values, assumptions, and interests that we the mapmakers have when performing the social, technological, and scientific work.

Please let me explain further. My favourite metaphor is about restaurants and food. Some people are only interested in the food itself - how it tastes, etc. Others are interested in what happens in the kitchen - the recipe, who the chef is, etc. Others are interested in what happens to you after you eat it and go home. Only a few are really interested in how the ingredients were farmed; the ethics of the farming labour; how much water was consumed and carbon dioxide released in farming; lost food mass in transport; energy used in trucking; what happened to the budget of the customer; the news and gossip that went around because of the eating experience; the number of likes that the food blogger got, etc. In contrast, we are only usually interested in what is served in front of us. In other words, I just want a nice meal. I just want to have a good map in my hand.

… See full entry

Hello, fellow OSM contributors. I’ve been thinking about how to properly conduct research regarding OSM. Here’s a summary, thus far:

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In dealing with challenging issues such as disasters and climate change, crowdsourced geographic information is useful in mapping for and with local communities at risk. In the Pacific, this was done broadly through OpenStreetMap (OSM), a project by a global community of online and local volunteers who make, use, and share a digital, editable, and free map of the world. Also, there is a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) that combines crowdsourcing and community mapping through a project called Missing Maps.

But at what point and under which conditions does the crowdsourced geographic information become useful in community mapping, and for whom?

In approaching the problem, I am using representational, pragmatic, and ethical approaches to understand the quality, usability, and equity of the information. Such approach will not only extract, examine, explore, or evaluate the information, but also embed it in situations that are simultaneously social, spatial, and scientific.

To accomplish the research, I will continue to engage as an OSM volunteer with online and local communities that were hit by major disasters and assisted by HOT, and the broad OSM community: Tacloban (Philippines) and Christchurch (Aotearoa New Zealand). Tacloban is still in the process of rehabilitation after it was hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Christchurch is updating community-based strategies about resilience after it was devastated by powerful earthquakes in 2010-2011. A third engagement elsewhere in Oceania is possible.

… See full entry

Finished tracing most of the buildings, including houses, in Kepulauan Ayu. Thank you to the other volunteers who traced the coastline, settlement, and roads. :)

I’ve been tracing roofs in the main island of Yap. I’ve traced almost all the buildings. So my next step is to check the data quality. I’ll also reach out to a local organisation if they are interested in continuing the work, especially in enriching the attributes.

Traced buildings in Fiji and Palau. Also, this arrived in my OSM inbox today (Jan 18):

MY DONATION TO YOU,

I am Mrs Esther Séve Moses I am 52 years old . an aging widow suffering from long time illness. i am currently admitted in a hospital here in Abidjan cote d’ Ivore, I have some funds I inherited from my late loving husband Mr.Tom Moses The amount of ($5million dollars USD) which he deposited in one of the clearing house Here in cote d’ivore and I need a honest and God fearing person who have the feelings of human that can use this funds for God’s work and 15% out of the total funds will be for your compasation for doing this work of God. I saw your email from internet and decided to contact you. Please if you would be able to use these funds for the Lord’s work kindly reply to me.

May the Grace of our Lord the love of God and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and your family’s Amen. Nurse help me to write this email.

If you are interested Contact me for more details. through my private email:( estmos201@gmail.com )

Your Sister In The Lord.

Mrs Esther Séve Moses

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If those 5M USD are true, then I’d love to give that to OSMF hehe. But seriously, folks, please be careful and wary of the scammers.

Tracing settlement features in Tongkil Island. I was also looking at several islands in the Andaman archipelago the other day. Lingering thought: what if they don’t want/need to be mapped?

Tracing settlement features of Banguingui in southwestern Philippines. These houses are on stilts, so it would be interesting to use tags that denote that the area is both residential and above water. Also, I noticed that one could use the tag “bridge=boardwalk” for the main paths that connect the houses. Maybe, it’s possible to elevate such features in the hierarchy of thoroughfares in OSM?

I’ve been reading and writing about how research on data quality about OSM can be done. What I found so far is that there so many ways to measure data quality because of various goals, expectations, values, and contexts that we the users have when we interact with OSM tech.

Here’s my latest research question: at what point does OSM become useful, for whom, why, and under which conditions?

About braided rivers in New Zealand, i.e. Waimakariri. I wonder how these features could be mapped reasonably, since such features change faster that other features. Shall we map that main channel, river banks, or river reach?

I had a short chat with the folks in OSMPH about a mapping conference this year. We were talking about sponsoring young mappers and students, so they can join. Also, I was told that there were plans about a joint Asia-Pacific SOTM. That’s very exciting.

Still tracing buildings in Lake Tekapo town.

Traced buildings in Lake Tekapo town. The imagery is not as clear as those in major cities like Christchurch, but it’s still good enough.

Browsing through the major cities and towns of Aotearoa NZ. I panned through Christchurch, Invercargill, Dunedin, Queenstown, Wellington, and Auckland.

The data quality varies per settlement and type of feature. For example, it seems that most buildings in Wellington have been traced. Meanwhile, in Christchurch there’s still a lot of buildings to trace. Also, it looks like most of the cycleways and bus routes across the settlements have been mapped already.

From a certain scale, the map is good.

I say that in terms of data availability per se in comparison with what we have in the my home country, the Philippines.

But how about the smaller towns? And what about the place names and other attributes?

Started to trace buildings in Akaroa, NZ. The imagery from LINZ so very crisp and clear. I wish we had access to such image quality in the Philippines.

I added a residential area southwest of Marawi City. As far as I know, there are so many settlements around Lanao Lake. Maybe, students in the local state university can be asked to help complete their local map.

I traced residential areas in Ligao City. I think that even if the imagery is not good enough to trace building footprints, it is still useful for tracing general land use categories. This can be very useful, if done for the whole Philippines.

I intended to check areas of Biri group of islands, but I focused on the San Antonio barangay/village (in Tinau Island). Many buildings are not aligned. Imagery is poor, too, like for other settlements in the Philippines. I think that if in the foreseeable future we are not going to obtain clearer imagery, the volunteers can focus on residential area.

So for now, I adjusted the extent of residential area.

I checked Homonhon island. Like in Suluan and Sulangan, the buildings seem to be complete. However, when I switched through the images, I found a new open-pit mine near the school. This is an issue that has to be mapped properly, so I digitised the mine.