Diary Entries in English

Recent diary entries

Posted by Mapanauta on 14 October 2017 in English. Last updated on 15 October 2017.

—English Version—

Early September we were facing some of the strongest hurricanes in the Caribbean ocean over the past decades, the humanitarian mapping team [HOTOSM] (https://www.hotosm.org/projects/hot_activates_for_multiple_disasters_hurricane_irma_and_maria_mexico_earthquakes_and?utm_source=Bolet%C3%ADn+Mensual+de+SocialTIC&utm_campaign=2f37c5d580-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ade63aa0ff-2f37c5d580-139103741) was already collaborating full speed to help creating maps in the areas were data was limited or nonexistent. Suddenly the Southern states of Mexico were hit by the first earthquake, Oaxaca and Chiapas are well know for being states with a large marginalized population, in the OpenStreetMap community we have been discussing in the past the need of creating detailed maps for these states among others who lack of this data. Volunteers in the Mexico community requested help to HOTOSM to create tasks to map valuable data for buildings and roads in the towns where help was needed the most. One of the cities more affected was Juchitan

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NSDI Field Data Collection workshop

NSDI Sri Lanka is conducting five workshops for government field officers representing Agrarian Services Department, Land Use Policy Planning Department, Archeology Department and Local Authorities. All five workshops are conducted as two day sessions.

In this training participants have been trained on basic concepts of Spatial Data, GIS and some open source data collection tools. First day training is on theories and some applications. Second day training is on how to use OSM for field data collection and management.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1347594545368784&id=1132399976888243

Location: Town Hall, Cinnamon Gardens, Slave Island, Colombo, Colombo District, Western Province, 00010, Sri Lanka
Posted by 3vivekb on 14 October 2017 in English.

South Bay OSM Table at C4SJ ## In Attendance: * SF Sarah * Neocobalt * Minh Nguyen * Luke W * 3vivekb * Nick * Betsy

Project Selection:

As a group moving forward we all agreed to continue to support and finish San Jose sidewalks import but if a Santa Rosa fire mapping project spun up we would all shift focus, at least temporarily.

Minutes:

We discussed some reverting issues from the National Day of Civic Hacking.

3vivekb went into detail about how he set up the sidewalks import and processed the data and all the help Minh Nguyen provided.

We talked about keyboard shortcuts in JOSM (6 to zoom in on issues, hitting M to merge points) to speed up the sidewalks project.

Minh talked about phone books and coverage % as well as about the coming SOTMUS conference.

Location: SoFA, San Jose, Santa Clara County, California, 95113, United States

For full meeting details, read here - https://www.freelists.org/post/ilugc/ILUGC-monthly-meet-Saturday-14-Oct-2017

Indian Linux Users Group, Chennai [ ILUGC ] October Meet - 14 Oct 2017

Venue: Classroom No 1, Aerospace Engineering, Near Gajendra Circle, IIT Madras. Link for the Map: http://bit.ly/iitm-aero

Time : OCt 14, 2017 3.00 - 6.00 PM

Talk - 2

Mini workshop using a TelegramBOT to translate strings for OpenStreetMaps.org

We are dreaming about Maps in Tamil, for long time.

Imagine your mobile phone or GPS device, shows the maps in Tamil, displays the roads, interesting places in Tamil, It shows routes and says the street names and directions in Tamil while driving.

The dream can come into real as we have most of the required technologies. OpenStreetMaps to provide maps, many apps like streetcomplete, osmcontribute to add streetname and interesting places, Tamil TTS to say everything in tamil.

The major thing we need is we need all the strings in Tamil. OSM supports language tags and we can give any string in any language, along with its translation on other languages.

To enable the translation process of existing strings in OSM, we are working on a telegram bot. Now, it is easy to contribute to OSM via translation, with mobile or with web browser.

The bot will be released for public tomorrow with its source code.

It will ask for your osm username, and then for translate or verify. The strings will be translated by google translator as first step. That is not perfect fully. so, we need people to verify it,

You can see a string with its translation. Then say it right or wrong. once three people confirmed a string it as right, it will be confirmed. The incorrect strings will be displayed for translation.

Once the strings are completed, they will be uploaded to OSM using a bot account.

Will release the bot tomorrow.

Come with

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Posted by DenisJu on 13 October 2017 in English.

More accurate informations for the city of Shkodra:

  • buildings: validation, number, level, update (new/old object)
  • highways (more accurate) improvement, names, categories, speed limit, validation, update (new/old object)
  • bicycle line (update)
  • parking area (update)
  • update tourism category (hotels, hostels, guesthouses, camping, attractions, hiking/biking routes around Shkodra)
  • update the POI’s (new entries)

More accurate information for “North Albania” (touristic villages like Theth, Valbona, Curraj Epërm, Lëpushë, Vermosh, Bogë, Vukël, Nikç, Tamare, Razëm, Prekal, Shala River, Mazrek, Drisht, Velipojë, Shirokë, Zogaj, Rrjoll, Zadrimë area, Ana e Malit area, around Gashi River):

  • new/update hiking/biking routes (more accurate type of hiking routes T1-T5)
  • new/update guesthouses
  • attractions

no and yes vote icon of OSM Wiki votings

From time to time I participate in the voting of tagging proposals. Even if I lack the necessary knowledge in the field the proposal is about (e.g. I have limited knowledge about electricity or fire hydrants), I check a few things before I cast my vote. (The following is my personal opinion)

Avoid changing heavily used tags

A proposal should always avoid to change existing tags which are used a lot. There are some reasons for a change of the tagging but they are rare. Changing American English to British English just to have British English is one example if there is no other benefit. Changing from or to namespaced keys/values is another.

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Posted by wille on 12 October 2017 in English.

Recently we released the new version of OSMCha, an application to help the OpenStreetMap community to review the changesets in the map. In this new version, the frontend was rewritten, we changed the backend to serve the data as a REST API and we have added some new interesting features. Let’s talk about some of the new possibilities that came in with these changes.

The REST API allowed us to build a faster and more efficient frontend and it opened up avenues for other applications being able to use OSMCha data. Yes, It’s now possible to build a JOSM plugin to update the status of a changeset or a feature in OSM. The API documentation to make this happen can be found here → https://osmcha.mapbox.com/api-docs/

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OSM PH-izza

As always, the local OSM community in the Philippines is keen in finding ways to engage, and expand the community of OpenStreetMap contributors in the country. Many mapa-thons and hacking events are fueled by passion, and pizza. You can help drive the passion, and we’ll take care of the pizza.

We just launched a new program: the OSM PH-izza Challenge that offers to send free ph-izza for mapathon events in every possible part of the country - especially those outside Metro Manila. If the mapathon proposal is selected, the PH-izza is on us!

We’re hoping to select at least one event every month - and we’d like to hear your proposal!

If your group or club would like to send your proposals, please fill-in this application form so we can evaluate your them: https://goo.gl/forms/si06mto1fOkeY3652

P.S. We would also be very happy to hear from pizza-hearted sponsors who would like to help us expand this program!

Posted by nammala on 11 October 2017 in English. Last updated on 16 October 2017.

If you have been a daily user of OSMCha, you have already started using the new version. Wille has been working with Mapbox on new developments of OSMCha. We have been testing the stack stability, and collecting feedback from Mapbox data team and community members for few months now.

I would like to use this diary post to introduce few features in the new version of OSMCha and talk about ways we can use them for validation.

Introduction

The development challenge has been to make OSMCha easier to use, faster to review changesets, and a robust tool for filtering OSM edits. We needed to add contextual information on mappers & changesets, improve the user-friendly UI, add keyboard shortcuts, and a lot more using an API driven frontend.

Along with a brand new design, a lot of things have been improved in the new version. Here are some of the new features.

Sidebar

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Posted by PierZen on 11 October 2017 in English. Last updated on 16 November 2021.

Pulse Talking of the OSM Contributors, we often see the Big Numbers. In this Diary, my objective is to focus on the OSM Contributor profiles, to try to measure the impact of various groups on the OSM Edit Contributions.

Since 2005, there has been an explosive growth of new OSM Registered members from 500,000 in 2012 to 1 million in 2013 and 4.2 millions at the end of september 2017.

Pascal Neis and Alexander Zipf study in 2012 showed that only 38% of the registered members at the end of 2011 had started editing the database and that only 5% (24,000) of all members actively contributed to the project in a more productive way.

Activityworkshop.ne published in july 2013 an interesting analysis of contributors «Joining and leaving» as participants. It shows the volatily of OSM contributors with a high volume of contributors starting and stopping contribution shortly after. As we will see below, a high percentage of people that start to contribute stop the first day or after a short period.

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Approximately 50 MIT students and OSM’ers from the Boston area participated in a 4 hour Mapathon on Sunday afternoon 10/8/2017.

The task was to map buildings from satellite photos taken before Hurricane Maria

Dewey Library

The event went off without a hitch. The facilities at the Dewey Library were fantastic. I was surprised that this event, organized just a couple of days ago was so well attended. The student organizers spread the word and the community responded.

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Location: 42.361, -71.083
Posted by mvexel on 6 October 2017 in English.

Here is how Wikipedia defines “Trunk road”:

A trunk road, trunk highway, or strategic road is a major road, usually connecting two or more cities, ports, airports and other places, which is the recommended route for long-distance and freight traffic. Many trunk roads have segregated lanes in a dual carriageway, or are of motorway standard.

‘usually’.. ‘many’.. Adverbs that serve to muddle the definition: I still don’t know whether a specific road can be classified as a trunk or not.

The OSM wiki has this to say:

Use highway=trunk for high performance or high importance roads that don’t meet the requirement for motorway. In different countries, either performance or importance is used as the defining criterion for trunk – see #International equivalence and Highway:International equivalence for guidance on road classification in different countries.

Hmm. Equally noncommittal. But there are reference to places where more specific references are to be found. I am interested in the United States. So let’s look there. The ‘International Equivalence’ section on the highway=trunk page says:

Surface expressway: A relatively high-speed divided road (at least 40 MPH with a barrier or median separating each direction of traffic), with a limited amount of intersections and driveways; or a major intercity highway. This includes many U.S. Highways (that do not parallel an Interstate) and some state highways. Wikipedia reference

..whereas the separate ‘International Equivalence’ page says for trunks in the United States:

Limited access highway with occasional grade level intersections, or major intercity highway where no motorway exists.

Not precisely the same, but I am starting to see a pattern. The definition of trunk, according to the people who wrote the wiki pages, seems to be a mix of technical and functional road classification:

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Posted by tyr_asd on 6 October 2017 in English. Last updated on 9 October 2017.

Tomorrow is the 10 year anniversary of OSM’s API version 0.5. This is the version of the OSM-API that first exposed (among other things) the version number on all OSM objects, making it possible to access the full history of every object modification from this point onward.

This means that very soon, the full history planet file published on planet.osm.org will contain more than 10 years of editing history which can be investigated, evaluated and analyzed (using tools like the OSM history database oshdb that’s currently under development at HeiGIT on the University of Heidelberg, which I presented earlier this year at the State of the Map).

Of course, OpenStreetMap as a project exists for a bit longer than that (about 13 years now) and there was already quite some data mapped before the OSM API 0.5 was introduced 10 years ago.

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Location: 49.419, 8.676
Posted by ff5722 on 6 October 2017 in English.

On 24 June 2017, a big landslide occured in China’s Sichuan province, burying dozens of villagers alive. Although pictures from the ground clearly showed that most victims didn’t have a chance for survival, satellite imagery shows the scale in one glance: (source: ESA Copernicus Sentinel 2. 19 February 2017 and 7 September 2017.)

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Location: Xinmo, Lianghekou, Diexi, Mao County, Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, 623200, China
Posted by silver mapper on 5 October 2017 in English.

Walked the northern half of Ipsden today on the latest stage of my parish-by-parish walks in the Oxfordshire Chilterns. It was magnificent, with a mixture of woodland and superb open views on a gloriously sunny October day. It surpassed anything I had walked to date. We are blessed in this part of Oxfordshire with the sheer number of Public Rights of Way that give us an endless choice of walks. It caused me to think as I roamed: I remember the road atlases that displayed a green ribbon alongside roads considered to be scenic. I imagined such a feature in OpenStreetMap, seeing the views along the various paths today. I have to satisfy myself with viewpoints, perhaps. I express my gratitude to the Chiltern Society for the work its officers, path representatives and maintenance teams do in helping to provide such a beautiful environment. I offer my thanks, too, to Woodhouse Farm for making available a permissive footpath and bridleways that so enhanced my walk today. I invite anyone who can access this area to do so. You will not be disappointed.

Location: Keepers Cottage, Ipsden, South Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, England, OX10 6QU, United Kingdom
Posted by RicoElectrico on 4 October 2017 in English.

Here’s another analysis made with ChangesetMD. I looked at average changeset count in each hour of the week for Poland. Week begins on Monday (pn).

Some trends are quite interesting. For instance, on Friday evenings people would rather party than map ;)

Also, we can see a little drop on business days around 17. I guess that people are going back from work? Does this imply they’re mapping at work shortly before? :>

graph