Yesterday I cleaned up some map data by removing unnecessary email and unrelated details from several objects. I am learning and trying to follow proper OpenStreetMap mapping guidelines.

[This is a work in progress, IANAL and this isn’t legal advice]

Lots of data is Switzerland is produced by the cantonal GIS offices (while it might seem to originate from swisstopo it often doesn’t), for example the hiking path/trail data is all cantonal and we can only utilise such data, even when using the data distributed by swisstopo, if the cantonal terms are compatible with our license.

In the following I’m using open in a hand wavy, “close enough” fashion here, and not applying the strict definition as per the open defintion. Class A refers to the federal ordinance definition for generally accessible geo data¹.

To set the scene: Switzerland does not have sui generis database rights regulation or anything similar, nor does it adhere to a sweat of the brow copyright doctrine. Between non-government entities any (minimal) protection available is based on contract and fair competition law. The big exception is geo data where the federal government has written in to law rights that are essentially a “data copyright light” and many of the cantons have followed suit.² There is no relevant case law that I know of and how any of this would work out in an actual dispute is, well, open.

The cantonal regulations are, being nice, quirky. For example Appenzell Ausserrohdens reference to federal copyright law that is going to put any lawyer that needs to determine if access is possible in to a tail spin. And while referencing GeoIV Art 30 (the federal ordinance) as Luzern does, would superficially seem to be good given that we have access to swisstopos data, it actually rules out use in OSM.³ Most of the No entries for otherwise “open” data are due to downstream attribution requirements. In some cases the “ToU” or similar are available in separate documents or are distributed with the data, obviously I can’t make any overall statement in such cases.

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My name is Chukwuemeka Emmanuel Nwosu, a 300-level student of the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Port Harcourt. This diary documents my Industrial Training (I.T.) programme as I undergo it.

After careful thought, deliberation, and counsel from my mentor and my brother, I decided to carry out my I.T. programme at the Mapathon Center of the Unique Mappers Team, University of Port Harcourt. I officially resumed on Tuesday, the 11th of May 2026.

On my first day at the Mapathon Center, I had the pleasure of meeting several interesting individuals who, like me, were present for their Industrial Training. Among them were Matel, who serves as our I.T. representative, and Wisdom, both students from the Department of Geology, Rivers State University, and two of my coursemates from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management: Rania and Obasi Emmanuel. I also learned of a few other trainees I had yet to meet in person.

Notably, I was able to complete a part of the week’s assigned task on this very first day. The task required me to create a map of the University of Port Harcourt, situating it within the context of Rivers State and Nigeria as a whole, while clearly indicating the locations of Abuja Park and Delta Park within the university.

On the quiet early morning of 18 July 2018, pilgrims from the Mega Arafah Hajj Guidance Group (KBIH Mega Arafah) gathered at the Mega Arafah office near Gedung Sate.

Their first stop was West Java Regional Police headquarters (Mapolda Jabar Gedebage), where pilgrims from across Bandung had assembled.

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I made a small JOSM plugin called Fillet Tools (fillettools.jar).

It adds an interactive mode for rounding corners of ways, similar to a fillet tool in CAD software. The motivation is simple: in the real-world, many objects are not designed with sharp corners. Roads, sidewalks, residential landuse areas, sports fields, running tracks, and other planned infrastructure often have smooth, consistent curves. Mapping these curves by hand usually means placing several nodes one by one, which is slow and often inconsistent. Fillet Tools is an attempt to make this specific editing task easier in JOSM.

You can find the project in the GitLab repository, and download the first test jar from the v0.1.0 release.

How it works:

• enable the Fillet Tools mode from the toolbar or by pressing v;
• move the mouse over a way or inside a closed polygon;
• small handles appear near available corners;
• drag a handle to preview the radius;
• release the mouse button to apply the rounded corner.

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Tornadoes

Tornadoes are very complex natural disasters involving many shapes and sizes. For a tornado to be on the ground, Look for rotating dust on the ground. The funnel does ## NOT have to touch the ground to be considered a tornado.

Notable Tornadoes

The most notable tornado is the May 22, 2011 Joplin EF-5tornado because it was the deadliest tornado in over 70 years. Not even 3 days after, one of the strongest and most notable oklahoma tornadoes happened, May 24, 2011, El Reno - Piedmont EF-5

Hiking has become a popular choice for many outdoor enthusiasts. Especially since the spread of COVID in the early 2020s, hiking has gained widespread popularity. Even people who previously rarely or never went hiking began to see it as a healthy and enjoyable activity during the pandemic.

In response to this continuing trend, an idea emerged: what if we at Kaart invited the OSM contributor community in Bandung to hold a joint activity? Besides serving as a recreational gathering, the event could also become an opportunity to learn about the tagging system related to hiking trails. We first shared this idea in a limited group in Bandung, but it was enthusiastically welcomed by two YouthMappersgroups: UPI YouthMappers and UNJ YouthMappers. Despite the long distance from Jakarta, UNJ YouthMappers showed particularly strong enthusiasm.

The UNJ and UPI YouthMappers community event was successfully organized and ran very well. The program took place smoothly in a series of activities beginning with the arrival of participants from Jakarta on the evening of April 17 and ending with everyone’s departure on the morning of April 19. The number of participants nearly reached the expected target. A total of 17 participants attended, consisting of 2 representatives from Kaart, 10 members from UNJ YouthMappers, and 5 members from UPI YouthMappers.

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Twin Ports Warehouse & Storage

I got into looking into maps and understanding where everything is. I’m at the point where if I’m at a location I’ve never been before, I will start looking all around me and then using my brain to put everything into OpenStreetMap. I love this website. It’s like a passion project when nothing else sounds fun. Anyway… The point of this Diary is all the changes I added to different locations around the northern parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Here is what I wanted to update users past and present on what changes I made.

– 05/09/2026 – Location: 46°44’03.6”N 92°04’46.8”W

I want to thank the community for not deleting @MidwestMapGeek’s building outline. Today, I came here to fix what is the updated version. My goal is to help Semi Drivers and anyone trying to get to this company’s site. You are amazing @MidwestMapGeek <3

• Used Bing Maps Aerial to redraw buildings

– Changes – -Deleted outline of the building -Reworked the new outline for the company -Added another outline for a building next to an existing building -Reworked the rail system so it is clear the the train goes through (underneath) the building -Reworked the road leading to the building site (TPWS) -Added the scale shack that the site has -Finally added a “point” for anyone that is going to TPWS -hours, website, and location are added // note: the address that was given to the company is technically another access point to get inside but from what I heard, you can’t access from there and have to go underneath the bridge near Graymount

– Changeset Number: 182447332 –

Generally speaking, Lifecycle Prefixes mean that when something is no longer in use, a tag such as amenity gets changed to disused:amenity. That should be straightforward, but sometimes disused=yes creeps in.

This example overpass query for nwr["amenity"="fast_food"]["disused"="yes"]({{bbox}}) finds a couple of examples. In these cases we can have a look at the tag history and (as seen in the picture at the top) notice that the FHRS ID changed recently, and the disused=yes actually corresponded to the name of a different business on the same site (in fact that that one has the full set of such tags: ["amenity"="fast_food"], ["disused:amenity"="fast_food"] (which don’t make sense together) and ["disused"="yes"]. In these cases you can often look through the tag history and see what the current status is supposed to be; if the last changeset comment was “this has now closed” it’s fairly obvious.

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Welcome to my first entry in OSM.

I have been quite interested in being here every once in a while, it actually helps the fact that there’s a map that needs constant updating and can actually do something.

So far, from what I’ve done within my local city of London, Ontario, I finished up:

1. New Plaza at Fanshawe/Highbury
2. Bus routes
3. Road classification
4. Fixing of OSM notes
5. Coveted new developments at the South and West sides of the city.

Im not surprised that theres alot more for me as an individual to explore, nothing much and thats just all.

Silos. Map ‘em. As many as you can. Lovely round, tall silos. Almost never singular. Search for them in farmyards, along railroads. Bonus points for mapping the elevator, truck scales, other assorted buildings and even adding operator.

I love OSM being first. So I went straight out to take GPS trace of new roundabout on our town’s bypass, almost as soon as bypass re-opened.

Probably need to go back and do a bit more work on the exits, but at least it is there!

osm.org/changeset/182400633

Today marks three years since I joined the OpenStreetMap community in May 2023. I am posting this diary entry at the exact time I published my first changeset, which I still remember clearly for its simple message: “add more data.”

It’s a straightforward phrase, but over these three years, it’s really shaped my journey as a mapper. What began as a tiny contribution has blossomed into a deep commitment to mapping my area in as much detail as possible.

Main Objectives

Right now, I’m focused on two main goals for our region:

• Power Grid: I’m mapping every single power line in Tulcea County, from the high voltage transmission lines to the medium and low voltage lines which provide power to every town and village.

• Improving Every Town: Besides the infrastructure, I aim to enhance the data for every town in Tulcea County. This involves cleaning up geometry, adding missing POIs, and making sure the map accurately reflects our local communities.

Once I’ve improved every town in Tulcea County and wrapped up the power grid, I intend to shift from regional to national efforts. My aim is to take what I’ve learned here in Tulcea and apply it to bigger projects all over Romania.

There’s a lot to tackle, but as I’ve realized over these three years, the best way to map a country is one node at a time. The upcoming changesets will make OpenStreetMap one of the most accurate maps of Tulcea, providing a level of detail that other commercial map services simply cannot match. I can’t wait to see the map evolve even further.

Removed Plateau Peak Trail. During SAR search (Dec 30) it was discovered the trail was no longer visible on the ground. Parallel trail still visible and provided access to Plateau Peak as verified by GPS.

So here are my experiences in installing Panoramax instance OSM-HR. I’ve made this from notes taken at a time, so hopefully I did not miss too much. Let me know if I did.

There are several ways to install, and I’ve decided to go with docker compose, and with regular OSM Oauth2 login.

We bumped into few issues during the deployment, but we reported them at appropriate repos, and they were fixed so nobody should be bothered by them anymore. Please do the same if you bump into some of your own!

So mostly I followed official instructions here: https://docs.panoramax.fr/backend/install/tutorials/running_docker_osm_auth/

with some preparation first as outlined in: https://forum.geocommuns.fr/t/deploying-a-panoramax-instance-the-pre-flight-check-list/1892

and info about storage needs: https://forum.geocommuns.fr/t/storage-needs-for-a-panoramax-instance/3205

Hardware

First actual hard step was getting the appropriate hardware and place to host it; see that pre-flight check list for other things like checking the law etc.

http://openit.hr/ kindly donated the hardware, and https://carnet.hr/ the place and Internet to host it. Much thanks to them!

We got quite a beast: 4U Super-Micro cse-847 server with 2 * Xeon E5-2680v2 (40 CPU threads @ 2.80GHz), 256 GB DDR3 RAM, 2x1TB SATA SSD, and 34x3TB SAS HDD (54 TB of usable HDD space after RAID6 partitioning), Nvidia Tesla P4

You can get with (much) lower specs, depending on your needs. But we have a good-hearted sponsor so yay!

Creating Oauth2 app

So firstly, I went to osm.org/, logged in, clicked on menu / “My account” / “Oauth 2 Applications” / “Register new application” and created Oauth2 application as described on: https://docs.panoramax.fr/backend/install/tutorials/running_docker_osm_auth/#creating-our-osm-oauth2-client

“Name” was set to Panoramax HR and “Redirect URIs” to https://panoramax.osm-hr.org/api/auth/redirect

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this is very intriguing I will try to keep up to date.

When I first arrived at DTU, I was surprised to discover that the map quality was largely inferior to the one back in my home country, France, and was lacking a lot of details, the most crucial being emergency-related appliances and infrastructure.

I would have expected a leading engineering university to have correct, if not excellent, mapping across its campuses, but seemingly that is not the case. I was a bit disappointed because if Denmark values inclusive design a lot, at least on paper, there is very little activity to make these accessible infrastructures easily reachable by their main targets. I guess full support for these features might also be lacking across the variety of apps using OSM data (without considering that these apps are not used by the majority of people), but yeah, a bit of a disappointment here.

So I randomly started mapping around DTU campus, sometimes raising awareness among people around me, sometimes being told to “get a life” (jokingly), but in my opinion, volunteering for something collaborative, be it a charity or an online collaborative map, adds a lot of value to one’s life. You don’t do things for yourself only. Okay, it might be a bit addictive at some point, and you might make changes that are so niche that no one cares besides yourself, but hey, the whole point of collaborative initiatives is also to embrace individual particularities, not to merge them into a bland and vague thing. By looking at the map in different places, you can notice tiny subtleties and tiny additions that show people cared. Even 11 years ago, people cared. Who knows, maybe this contributor passed away since then? Nevertheless, their work is still there and will continue to be refined further. And that is truly beautiful, in my opinion.

That’s all for today. See you later, maybe! 💚

~ Louis

Making the Map of India Even More Accurate! 🇮🇳📍

I am proud to share that I have successfully completed 100% of TomTom’s project: “India – POIs Located Not on Buildings.”

The primary objective of this project was to correct Points of Interest (POIs) that were not situated within the accurate footprints of buildings. An accurate map not only enhances navigation but is also absolutely essential for emergency services and local businesses.

Project Highlights:

Mission: Data Improvements

Total Contribution: Successfully fixed 631 out of 734 tasks.

Status: 100% Complete.

It has been a fantastic experience collaborating with the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community to make the map even more reliable.

Mapping isn’t just about finding routes; it’s about helping the world. 🌍📍

I am proud to contribute as a volunteer with United Nations Mappers. I recently achieved Level 5 (Off the Charts). This journey is not merely about statistics, but about reaching out to the communities that need assistance the most.

My Mapping So Far:

Total Swipes: 562+ (For data accuracy)

Total Area: 87 sq. km (Mapped territory)

Projects: Contributed to 9 humanitarian missions

Supported Entities: 2 major organizations

As a volunteer, every swipe I make and every kilometer I map helps facilitate relief operations during times of crisis. 💪

Alright, after successfully updating the boundaries in Bali, now, I’m shifting my focus further east across the Lombok Strait. Next stop: Lombok Island.

For those who don’t know, Lombok is a gem in the Lesser Sunda Islands, famous for the Mandalika International Circuit and its world-class surf breaks. It’s a new major tourist hub that definitely deserves some love on the map. I’ve already spent some time mapping the natural=* and landuse=* in the smaller islands.

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Baiklah, setelah berhasil mengupdate batas wilayah di Bali, kini saya alihkan fokus saya ke arah timur melintasi Selat Lombok. Selanjutnya: Pulau Lombok.

Bagi yang belum tahu, Lombok adalah permata di Kepulauan Sunda Kecil, terkenal dengan Sirkuit Internasional Mandalika dan ombak selancar kelas dunia. Wilayah ini bisa jadi pusat wisata baru yang layak mendapat perhatian di peta. Sebelumnya, saya telah memetakan natural=* dan landuse=* di pulau-pulau kecilnya.