It is nice to use RapID for editing. The training on how to use rapid and josm editor tools makes the work easier and faster.

I think it has been 2, 3…. Hmm maybe 4. I kid

It feels good to be on this space again. Having joined in on a training and practiced with the RapID, as well as the JOSM mapwithai plugin, I am delighted to be mapping task #12315 Imagery for Social Good - Bauchi, Nigeria.

The inspiration for this diary comes from the email sent to the HOT mailing list. I must say that I’m not involved in Missing Maps anymore, so I don’t currently use the HOT Tasking Manager (TM). Also, I’m the author of the competing project. That’s the disclaimer.

I will start with the point since when the HOT Tasking Manager became unacceptable for me. That was when mappers began to be forced to provide their email addresses. The reason was: just 4% of the mappers shared it.

The purpose of a Tasking Manager is to divide big area into smaller squares that a human can map. Then, let mappers communicate on what they are working on by changing the states of the squares. So, TM helps with a group mapping management.

However, the changes go to the OpenStreetMap. You don’t have to use Tasking Manager to update OpenStreetMap, but you (must) use OpenStreetMap when working with a Tasking Manager. OpenStreetMap itself provides communication channels for mappers, particularly changeset discussions and private messages.

Changeset discussion is used to discuss changes mappers do in the OpenStreetMap. Private messaging is used to send direct messages between mappers. In both cases a notification is sent by email.

We are almost there. So, why is the communication within the HOT Tasking Manager wrong? Because the HOT TM duplicates the communication about things it does not manage – changes to the OpenStreetMap. Because it allows group and automated messages/emails that are, by definition, depersonalized. Because it confuses beginner mappers about which communication channels are really important.

I would like to end with a proposal for the HOT Tasking Manager developers. Please, keep the functionality of the HOT Tasking Manager non-overlapping with the OpenStreetMap. Please, do leverage OpenStreetMap for the rest.

Barangay Santa Ana Geography and Location Barangay Sta. Ana is the second largest barangay in the Municipality with a total of 810.3 hectares covering 20.90% of The municipal land area. It is bounded in the north by the municipality of Cainta, by the cities of Pasig and Taguig in the west, Barangay San Juan in the east, and by the Laguna Lake in The south. The barangays general topography is generally low lying and flat. Sta. Ana is dissected by the Mangahan Floodway which divides the barangay into two sections—Sta. Ana Poblacion located in the east, and Floodway and Lupang Arenda in the west. The poblacion is drained by Taytay River which flows southwestward towards Manggahan Floodway while Lupang Arenda is drained by Napindan Channel, both of which empties the Laguna Lake.

BarangaySantaAna Population and Density Accordingto the 2015 Philippine Statistics Authority Census, Barangay Sta. Ana has a population of 91, 343. In 2018, through a barangay initiated census, the population Of the barangay is now projected at 110,000, with majority of the population coming from the Poblacion and Lupang Arenda. With its large population size and limited land area, Barangay Sta. Ana has the highest population density in the entire municipality with an estimate of 112 persons per square kilometer.

Lupang Arenda Housing and Settlement In the early 90’s, then President Fidel Ramos declared the area of Lupang Arenda (Presidential Decree [PD] 704) and Floodway (PD 458 and 1160) as government relocation sites for the poor families of Taytay and the relocates of the Pasig River Rehabilitation project. However, the areas were flocked by families from different provinces all over the country, and has now an estimate of 15,000 families.

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Sedeh

Today, I was introduced to RapID editor, it was an interactive session with the tutors across the globe, i see no difference between RapiD and iDEditor. Everyday I learnt something new on cartography, i thank God for the blessings of Uniquemappers Network Team National coordinator Victor Sunday for the opportunity given. If not his blessing, I will just be a cartographer by title. God bless u sir.

What a week!

I have conducted two OSM Help Desk sessions as announced, on February 28 and March 2 where I was able to meet and discuss with a total of five different OSM contributors about the issues troubling them. From the discussion topics and the feedback from the attendees I can say that it was a fruitful conversation for all involved. I want to thank all who attended for the friendly environment.

The OSM Help Desk had to enter a small hiatus just after it had started due to my unavailability because of the in-person meet-up of the Open Mapping Hub Asia-Pacific team in Pokhara and Kathmandu last week. It was a completely different experience, and it was great to meet with the actively engaging student communities of the geomatics engineering departments of Kathmandu University and Tribhuvan University Western Regional College. You can follow what happened (and what’s more to happen) via the Hub’s accounts via Twitter and Facebook.

Discussion Topics:

• How can I be a HOT Validator? Is filling a Google Form enough?

In order to become a part of the global validator team, one should be an experienced and active OSM contributor (account older than 6 months and OSM activity within the past 12 months) with experience on editing on JOSM and Tasking Manager. There people then are required to take the validation training . Then depending on the quality of both edits and validation, the contributor can be a part of the validator trainee or the global validator team. You can learn about how to become a validator via here. It is also strongly recommended that you enroll and complete the HOT Validation course within the activation training available via HOT Training Center.

• What are the points around the frame of FieldPapers atlases?

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14th March 2022

I am now starting to tackle (mainly my own) fixme’s.

Something like a farm gate and station name is not always readable on my imagery, but even after creating a feature and merging in other sources (like overheads), there are information gaps. A fixme is handy, but I need to action them as well!

I ran a simple overpass query for all node and way fixme’s in a boundary box, then exported it to gpx. I initially thought a Viking moving (GPS) map would work well, but the laptop is on the passenger seat away from my driving vision. I ended up (default) converting the gpx to a Garmin poi file with gpsbabel. set to warn at 800m distance . The “name” is displayed if that feature field is populated, else the node/way number. Additionally if one calls up the POI information on the GPS navigating unit the fixme text is displayed.

Basically I just navigate to the nearest fixme POI using the Garmin GPS display/selection tools. (Note that most of my work is in rural/remote areas, not urban)

I can then drive up close to the “problem” with the dash camera and capture for later editing. I also use the audio from the dashcam mp4 which is me talking into it! Each movie and frame are time referenced to the audio, so it is easy to correlate. I can for example read a fine print sign at a distance that the camera doesn’t capture as well.

Last week, we launched a new OpenStreetMap-based website: “Pin je Punt”.

This application -based on mapComplete- was commissioned by the flemish touristical agency Visit Flanders. The application is a map viewer and map editor, which requests information about charging stations for ebikes, bicycle rental, benches, playgrounds and a few more POIs.

Why?

This project was started for two reasons:

• No one in Belgium does know where all the charging stations for bikes are
• There are five different, provincial touristical offices. They all keep their own database of POI as benches and bicycle rental. ‘Visit Flanders’ (which is responsible for the five smaller ones) wants to unify and integrate these databases. And where better to store all the data then on the biggest geodata repository?

This project builds upon MapComplete, which aims to be an easy-to-use map viewer and editor.

The launch

The project is live since the 7th of march, the (dutch only) project page can be found here

A former radio presentator made an advertisment video as well, which can be seen on youtube (dutch only). As far as I know, this is the first professionaly made commercial which asks to contribute to OpenStreetMap!

There has been quite a few edits done by now too:

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As of today every building in the Toledo District has been mapped.

As of today every building in the Orange Walk District has been mapped.

When I was out do a bit of mapping (mostly house numbers and opening hours) in Clonmel with StreetComplete, I noticed an opening hours sign specifically for autism friendly opening hours. I had seen them before on supermarkets in Ireland, but this time, it led me to start a proposal for a new key to be able to map those, because I was at a loss there. It was a Vodafone shop, but I did some quick online research, and it is not uncommon in Ireland for shopping centres or supermarkets to have them. Some are referenced in the proposal.

The organization behind it is As I Am, a charity supporting people with autism and families with autistic family members.

It means that the lights are dimmed, there is no background music and announcements are kept at a minimum. I’m not diagnosed with autism, but I wish all this was done all the time and not just one or two hours per week.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation runs several services subject to usage policies.

If you violate the policies, you might be automatically or manually blocked, so I decided to write a post to help community members answering questions from people who got blocked. If you’re a blocked user, the best place to ask is in the IRC channel #osm-dev on irc.oftc.net. Stick around awhile to get an answer.

The most important question is which API is being used. For this, look at the URL you’re calling.

If the URL contains nominatim.openstreetmap.org, review the usage policy. The most common cause of being blocked is bulk geocoding exceeding 1 request per second. Going over this will trigger automatic IP blocks. These are automatically lifted after several hours, so stop your process, fix it, wait, and then you won’t be blocked.

If you’re using nominatim but not exceeding 1 request per second, to get help you should provide the URL you’re calling, the HTTP User-Agent or Referer you’re sending, the IP you’re requesting from, and the HTTP response code.

If you’re calling tile.openstreetmap.org or displaying a map, review the tile usage policy. The most common causes of being blocked is tile scraping or apps that don’t follow the usage policy.

To get help you should provide where the map is being viewed (e.g. an app, website, or something else), the HTTP User-Agent or Referer you’re sending, the IP you’re requesting from, and the HTTP response code. For a website, you can generally get this information through the browser’s developer tools. The tile.openstreetmap.org debug page will also show you you this information.

If you’re having problems with an app that you’re not the developer of, you’ll often need to contact them, as they are responsible for correctly calling the services.

Otay… first day in the entry 🤩

To celebrate NYC Open Data Week, a brief introduction to the NYC Department of Buildings Building Information Search tool.

I’ve spotted a new building in Brooklyn that’s missing in OSM. My goal is to add this building to the map, keeping parity with New York City’s established tagging practices for buildings.

NYC had a full import of building footprints in 2013-2014. In addition to building=yes, all buildings were tagged with height (in meters) and nycdoitt:bin (the city’s Building Identification Number, or BIN for short). Buildings with only a single address were also tagged with addr:housenumber, addr:street, and addr:postcode. For buildings with multiple addresses, a node for each address was placed inside the building perimeter.

The building I found has just one address: 1021 Bedford Avenue, 11205. I’ve added the addr: tags, but I’d also like to know the height and BIN so this building will be as well-tagged as those around it. So let’s look it up in the Department of Buildings Building Information Search (BIS for short), which can be found at the following arcane url:

https://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/bispi00.jsp

Here’s the initial search form:

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Happy end of Feb all! (yes, I realise it’s already mid March)

After 2 long grounded years, hot_tech is starting to take off again - both figuratively and literally. Our team is now turning our attention and efforts toward working alongside hubs, contributors and users to test and evolve existing and potential humanitarian OSM tools increase access, usage and contribution to OSM.

Full blog post here »

Tldr;

• hot_tech are leaving the comfort of our home offices and engaging with hubs, contributors and users around existing and future humanitarian OSM tech.
• We are building some experimental workflows for conflating AI generated data with OSM data, which we plan to share for all to see and scrutinise around May.
• OpenAerialMap design research is underway in partnership with Kontour (of Disaster Ninja fame) - Look out for opportunities to get involved.
• The Harvard Tech for Social Good team continues their work as they connect with users and community members interested in Galaxy.

# Announcements:

• We have kicked off a redesign for OpenAerialMap (OAM). We will be working closely with users and communities who use and depend on OAM to discover needs, wants and wishes to be included in the next version of OAM. If you’d like to be involved, please reach out to Cristiano or DK.

• Omran Najjar played a starring role on a webinar hosted by Omdena, where he talked though HOT’s evolving AI-assisted workflows. You can rewatch the event here »

• We will be welcoming a new senior engineer to the team in March. They are a passionate, experienced and dedicated OSM contributor and we are really looking forward to officially welcoming them next week!

• We are contributing to the improvement of OSMSeed in collaboration with Development seed. We will share more on this soon, but the short version is, together we hope to improve the flexibility, accessibility and usability of OSMSeed for other users in the ecosystem.

# Project updates:

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Live Validation:

Live Validation involves real time data cleaning conducted during a mapathon. It aims to give feedback to mappers as soon as possible after they mark a task in the Tasking Manager as mapped.

How Live Validation is done:

1.A validator joins a mapathon (either remote or in-person) accompanying the mapathon trainer. Ideally the validator gets a chance to introduce themselves near the start of the session and explain their role.

2.Once mapping has started, the validator uses Tasking Manager to focus on most recently mapped tasks: Within a project in the Tasking Manager under the ‘Tasks’ section select tasks that are ready for validation and sort by ‘most recent’. Carry out validation using JOSM and give feedback in the Tasking Manager.

3.After main training elements are covered - validator gives verbal feedback while screen sharing during the mapathon. It tends to be more polite not to mention mapper names - participants typically recognize the task they have been working on when you share your screen.

Advantages:

1.Capture data quality issues very early to prevent further occurrences by giving mapper feedback to improve.

2.Live validation helps the trainer to identify recurring issues where the mappers might need more guidance during the mapathon. The trainer can then adapt quickly and focus their training on those issues.

3.Live validation gives the validator the chance to give verbal feedback while also sharing those issues visually on their screen - this is an impactful way to give feedback, particularly compared to the typical method which only involves text-based feedback.

4.A validator gets the chance to demonstrate feedback channels (Tasking Manager notifications) with mappers to make them aware of where they can find feedback after a mapathon - this improves communication between the mappers and validators.

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After just under five months of hard work, I have completed my project of giving every single body of seawater in Canada an area definition. I have experienced some pushback from other editors who had issues with this project, including my practice of only giving one point of seawater a single name, as well as questioned whether area definitions were even necessary and saying that point definitions would have sufficed, as well as how I was defining their extents. However, mapmaking is as much an art as it is a science, and my own preference is for area definitions over point definitions in this case. As well, my “one point, one name” rule had one intent and one positive effect: The intent was to minimize interference with coastline edits, and the positive effect was that I was able to minimize as much as I could the number of ways in each relation, not just for bodies of seawater in a sort of “divide and conquer” strategy, but also for islands as well as for the mainland coastline of Canada. Sure, there were some outliers with thousands of ways, such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Labrador Sea, but there are very few of those, and I would estimate the average number of ways in each relation over this whole dataset is only about a few hundred.

it can descibe the exact place and location where you come from

What I did in OpenStreetMap in January 2022

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