Niger:
It has been awfully quiet around mapping these west- african states recently. About a year ago I called the community for help in mapping Niamey- the capital of Niger. The community responded beautifully. Look at the Map now:

osm.org/?lat=13.5257&lon=2.1124&zoom=13&layers=M

We can be very proud of the results.

As most of you know by now we recently got permission to trace over the bing imagery. It seems to be a bit more up to date than the yahoo stuff, so knock yourself out if you got some spare time and do some armchair mapping. Unfortunately Niamey is the only area of Niger where hires imagery exists, so we can only do so much (public domain vmap0 street data and geonameserver have allready been imported by us)

Mali:
Also about a year ago I wrote here:
"I recently got a "call to arms" from some guys from geekcorps.org and other NGOs with an interest in mapping Mali. The bad thing is that there is NO high resolution Yahoo imagery available, the good thing is that at least some GPSses seem to exist in Mali since there are some GPS tracks already uploaded."

I was able to rectify an old public domain map of Bamako - the capital of Mali - and traced over that. Also this summer an NGO- worker brought his GPS when he went to Bamako, so we had some genuine grassroots mapping going on over there. With the Bing imagery we now have an excellent source for tracing ways.

Bamako:
osm.org/?lat=12.6275&lon=-7.9997&zoom=13&layers=M

Another place in Mali that got hires imagery is Tombouctou. This ancient town lied at the intersection of trans saharan trade routes and was once a prosperous city with universities etc. Now it seems to be just another small town at the edge of the sahara. Nevertheless- a very interesting place to map.

Map:
osm.org/?lat=16.7604&lon=-2.9903&zoom=12&layers=M
wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu

According to the news on http://www.openseamap.org , they placed a coop- contract with GEBCO- an organization which has worldwide bathymetry data.
http://www.gebco.net/
Does this mean that we will get depth data in Openseamap?
This would be awesome news...

Christian

Hi, I'm contributing to OSM for almost two years now. After doing my hometown, I switched to neighbouring villages, after this I mapped during my holidays in various parts of the world and so on... you know how it is.

Then I started to sail and wondered about a free map to load on my chartplotter- hey- openseamap.org and freietonne.de are there to the rescue. After reading a bit in the wiki I realized that things on the water are a bit more complicated than "amenity=restaurant; name=Hofbrauhaus".
As true as it may be- the result is disatrous. To properly tag a buoy you have to tag something monstrous like this:

*OpenSeaMap-Tags*
seamark:topmark:shape=sphere
seamark:topmark:colour=red
seamark:radar_reflector=yes
seamark:name=Rostock
seamark:lon=012
seamark:light:signal:period=4
seamark:light:ref=LF-Nr 3448
seamark:light:colour=white
seamark:light:character=Iso
seamark:lat=54
seamark:category=major
seamark:buoy_safewater:shape=pillar
seamark:buoy_safewater:colour:pattern=vertical_stripes
seamark:buoy_safewater:colour=white; red
seamark:buoy_safe_water:shape=pillar
note=Ansteuertonne Warnemünde

Or, since we got two tagging schemes which seem to coexist in parallel worlds:

OSM-Scheme-Tags (from WIKI)*
seamark=buoy
buoy=safe_water
topmark=yes
topmark:shape=sphere
topmark:colour=red
radar_reflector=yes
name=Rostock
light=yes
light:signal_period=4
light:ref=LF-Nr 3448
light:colour=white
light:character=Iso
buoy:category=major
buoy:shape=pillar
buoy:colour_pattern=vertical_stripes
buoy:colour=white; red
buoy:shape=pillar
note=Ansteuertonne Warnemünde

This is impossible for a normal mapper to do. I'm well aware of the fact that the seamarks are wickedly complicated and that there are well known international standards for almost every possible seasigns. On the other hand does the current situation do absolutely no good at all:

… See full entry

Whoever is mapping Ghana and writes unknown town or city all over the place- please stop.
If you are really keen on mapping, please help importing the GEOnet Names Server Data- much more usefull. When someone comes around adding the correct names via import one has to delete all your unknown cities.

Please stop doing this- it adds only marginal value to the map and is a pain to clean up afterwards, when the map gets more complete over time.
Please use your much appreciated enthusiasm in a more sensitive way,

Thanks, Zenfunk

OK, it got a bit quiet in Niger lately. All the freely available datasources, known to us, are imported. This doesn't mean that our map is comlete now- far from it. We just are barely better than Yahoo- maps (which is basically the vmap0 data). Ground survey and more datasources for mass import are needed. Everyone who knows POIs, has GPS tracks etc. is invited to join and help to make the existing map better.

I recently got a "call to arms" from some guys from geekcorps.org and other NGOs with an interest in mapping Mali. The bad thing is that there is NO high resolution Yahoo imagery available, the good thing is that at least some GPSses seem to exist in Mali since there are some GPS tracks already uploaded.

Whoever got bored with Niger might want to have a look at Mali for a change...

The mapping effort of Niger, one of the poorest countries is humming along nicely. The OSM file is now at 1,4 MB, this is allmost 4 times the size than when we started mapping this part of the world intensively about 6 weeks ago. Thanks for all your contributions.

The vmap0 road data import is basically finished. Please help cleaning up. Unfortunately I Imported one section twice- so a bit of editing is in order. The nature of the vmap0 data is that the ways are not connected at crossings. This has to be done manually.

Also, since I did not know about road conditions and such, I imported the road data as a track. If you know better, please feel free to change the highway tag to the appropriate value.

Happy mapping,

Christian

A couple of hundred mountain tops have been imported from GNS public domain data.
The boundaries of the administrative departments have been imported.
The Geoname Server (GNS) import of about 12000 villages is currently well under way and should be finished in the next couple of days.
The Vmap0 road data is complete in the western Part of the country.

What we desperately need are people who push the villages to their actual place based on the landsat and Yahoo imagery, because the data is sometimes off a couple of kilometers.

Also people who have local knowledge of road conditions/ surface are needed to tag the highways properly. Right now they are tagged mostly by eyeballing, chance and current mood I was in.
Also GPS tracks from Niger are gratly appreciated. Very often the vmap0 data is our only datasource and it is nor avery good one.

Also gps waypoints for POIs are needed to make the map richer (hotels, hospitals, embassies restaurants, post offices, Bus stations etc.). Any donation of data is very welcome.

Happy mapping,

Christian

We started out about two weeks before and got the ball rolling to map Niger- one of the poorest countries on earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_Indebted_Poor_Countries).

Apart from some mayor roads and some mapping of the capital of Niger, Niamey, the Map was a blank canvas.

I started mapping in Niamey, a work that has been nicely picked up by other OSM contributors but which is still far from complete. Whoever has an interest in tracing aerial imagery is very welcome to join.
osm.org/?lat=13.496&lon=2.138&zoom=11&layers=0B00FTF

Another effort was made to import POIS from the Geonames Server dataset which is public domain.
There is a gpx file to be used as an overly for your JOSM session see the Niger- wikipage:
osm.wiki/WikiProject_Niger
User dbusse is currently working on a way to make imports a bit easier, he made many small OSM files from the huge above mentioned database, so you just have to do a quick crosscheck with landsat for an exact position and then you can upload the data.

The vmap0 data import (mostly roads ATM- but also places and rivers etc. available)is progressing nicely, but since its quite a bit of data any help would be appreciated. Again see the wikipages:
osm.wiki/WikiProject_Niger

Thanks for all the contributors,

Christian

The OSM - file for Niger grew over the past couple of days from 353 KB to a whooping 557.6KB. Thanks to all the contributors.

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/africa/niger#breadcrumbs

While it doesn't seem not much in the days of dvd and blueray, try to imagine the footprint of a single POI in the OSM database- about 200 Bytes. That's well over a thousand new POIs, waypoints etc. - bziped!!!!

Awesomeness....

Happy mapping,
Christian

Finished importing almost all of the 50 biggest cities in Niger.

See the list on wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_St%C3%A4dte_in_Niger

The only one I wasn't able to find is "Bagountara" - Nr. 46.

If anyone knows where this town is - drop me a note.

Cheers, Christian

Just a quick praise to the fellow mapper who started mapping the buildings in Niamey the capital of Niger. Awesome.

Soon Niamey will have better coverage than my hometown- LOL. That's from allmost zero to mapping buildings in just a week- OSM never stops to amaze me.

Happy mapping everybody,

Christian

I converted the GNS data for Niger into a gpx file. It contains over 31000 POIs for Niger, mostly names of settlements, but also administrative stuff (district names etc).

osm.wiki/GNS

It can be used as an overlay for your JOSM session. It can be downloaded at:

http://www.flusslinie.de/nigergnspois.gpx

I decided against adirect import, first because it is way beyond my skills ATM, and second it also has a lot of inaccurate and too old data in it.

The overlay gives you an idea where some villages and towns are and how they are called. Together with the Yahoo and Landsat imagery one can pinpoint the exact location, the name of the settlement and roughly estimate the size (village/town?) of it. Also it gives you a hint about where to look for the roads in the satelite imagery.

Only recently, I see at least some new roads emerging on the slippy map. This is great news - thanks to all contributors.

Christian

LOL, just searched the mailinglist archives for "Niger"- no hits...

Seems as if the interest for this country is not this big- probably I'm really on my own here.

But wait- I just checked the map of Niamey (Nigers capital), at least someone else heard the call and started mapping the city too. Thanks a lot for the contribution.

I did some more reading up on the country: extremely poor nation, struggles form desertification, draughts, bandits, the fact it has no access to the sea etc..

No railways exist in the entire country.

About 70 % of the land is desert- the percentage is growing.

In 1996 there where just 10000 km of roads, and only 798 km are paved- wicked. This country must be 4x4 drivers heaven.
The tree of Tenere was the most isolated tree in the world (no other tree within the next 400 km). Unfortunately it got run down by a truck driver- ROFLMAO.

Happy mapping, Christian

Since seemingly allmost noone maps Niger on Openstreetmap, I started recently. Most of the capital city- "Niamey" is now complete, some of the outskirts remain to be mapped. Niamey has high resolution Yahoo imagery.

Niger is a very interesting country from a general as well as from a OSM- Mapper point of view.
Total area: 1,267,000
about 13 million inhabitants
currently the OSM file for the whole country (bzipped) is at 353.6 KB (Germany for example currently has 610 MB)

See Wikipedia for an introduction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger

Also, since about 70 % of the country are desert, pistes and roads are visible even on low resolution Yahoo imagery. So some mapping could be done without gps traces.

To jumpstart the mapping process, I currently think about adding GEOnet Names Server data and VMAP0 road data into the OSM database.
Has anyone any thoughts about an import? Objections?

Either answer here or look at the wikipage:

osm.wiki/WikiProject_Niger

Last night I had a look at the hires Yahoo imagery here:
osm.wiki/Yahoo!_Aerial_Imagery/Coverage

Most of the places are mapped quite well, but I found that Niamey, the capital of Niger had just some major streets drawn in. After burning some midnight oil the map looks much better now, but there is still a lot to do.

Niamey has 700000 inhabitants so there are plenty of streets for everyone to map. Feel free to join me mapping the city. The more the merrier.

Been traching around Auckland NZ from Yahoo imagery. The North shore was shockingly unmapped;). Just kidding of course. The NZ mappers have done an outstanding job so far. There are just too little mappers around NZ it seems. The curse of a sparsely populated country (unlike e.g. Germany). Unfortunately only the very big cities in NZ have hires satelite imagery available. Would have been nice to retrace some of the trips I have untertaken there in the past.

Since I plan to visit northern sweden for another Hiking trip after a long hiatus, I thought it would be cool to get an openstreetmap for this task. Main area of interest is south of Abisko to Kvikjokk. Elevation Data would be from the SRTM project- already finished (thank you US gov for that). BTW, is there a SRTM overlay (WMS etc.) for JOSM?
Next would be to get as much of the landsat data (rivers, streets (surprisingly good to make out), lakes, glaciers).
Thankfully there isn' t much wood up there- mostly barren land and the occational birchtree in the valleys.
Most of the mountain huts are allready in OSM- so thanks for that too.
Finally I need the hiking paths. Some are allready in there, if someone has some trackdata I could use- please donate. Thanks in advance.

If someone has trackdata, POIs or simply would like to help mapping- please feel free to help.

BTW, the extra nice cycle map currently doesnt render highway= path, also the nice elevation data background doesn't go up to northern sweden. Could this be changed? Having a topoish view of the map is soooo nice to look at.

Cheers, Christian.

Success story:
The other day I had to pick up my girlfriend from work. Since we just moved here recently I wasn't too sure about the quickest way. Out came my Etrex Legend and thanks to OSM and http://emexes.powweb.com/osm/ I was routed to my girlfriends work just fine and as I was later told, on the fastest way possible. This is awesome.

Thank you all for contributing to OSM.

Christian

While not having done many GPS- traces recently I thought I could draw some forests in Potlatch - it makes the slippy map so much nicer and is a valuable tool for navigation. The best thing is that you don't need a GPS to do it.
Please have a look at the map north/ west of Salzburg (Austria) to view the results of my efforts.
Fortunately the Salzburg area has hires Yahoo imagery, but I think tracing around woods should also be possible with low resolution images and a little bit of local knowledge.
So if you have some time to burn- map forests...

Cheers,
Christian

Sorry for messing up D11 near Theisendorf south Germany, I hope it is fixed now.

Christian