OSM processes over 3.1 million feature changes per day. With the help of OSMCha and the ever-vigilant OSM community, many low-quality changes are found and corrected. However, sometimes low-quality labels are not detected and slip into the map.

Towards ensuring a high-quality map, I have been applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques to detect low-quality labels. Part of applying these NLP techniques requires:

1. Defining low-quality labels and understanding their properties
2. Determining the motivation of a user who submits a low-quality label

First, towards defining a low-quality label, we typically think of labels that include profanity, such as the following (also! 🙂, all of the screenshots you see below are examples of low-quality labels that I have found with my filtering logic):

Profane label says: “The Shit”

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The workshop: Orientation and Consultation on Geographic Information System (GIS) and its Applicability to Social Welfare and Development of the DSWD GIS Unit was conducted on July 18-20, 2018 in Quezon City. It was attended by the Planning Officers and Technical Staff from the Central Office, Field Offices and Attached Agencies of the Department.

The program consisted of several talks from various resource speakers of different sectors (academe, social/community development, environment, Indigenous Peoples, disaster response, and private sector).

Being one of the main sources of free spatial data, OpenStreetMap was briefly presented by OSM mapper advocate, Ms. Jen Ayco (@jenjereren). She encouraged the participants to sign up for an account to increase visibility of each of their communities, and raise diversity (gender, ethnicity, PWD’s) on the map. Surprisingly, few participants were already mapping volunteers of OSM! :)

During the afternoon break, I found myself surrounded with the three women mappers/resource speakers we invited. They’ve shared experiences in the field of GIS and discussed the importance of an integrated and free geographic data source in the country. There is an existing one though, PhilGIS.org, but still needs to be populated and updated.

Ms. Kail’s remark on this topic was something to ponder about: “No one owns spatial data. Nobody can have copyrights on your location.”

Maybe the act of gathering location information (purchasing of tools and investing effort) gives data collectors the right to own it. Giving proper credits to data collectors would facilitate sharing of data. And there are still privacy issues. It’s still a case to case basis. And maybe, spatial data can be also be tagged as “special” data depending on its purpose.

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In 2012, the ‘new’ public_transport scheme was voted. What seemed like a good idea at first, has not led to unification though. I was not smart enough at the time to see how this would develop, but today with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it it’s apparent that we are on the wrong track.

The way the wiki formulates it at present, even though I have tried over the years to keep it in check, we should supposedly map 2 objects for each and every stop and then add both of these to the route relations.

I’m sorry, but that is unacceptable! For one thing, I need a SINGLE object, preferably a node where all the details of the stop go. That has always been the way we do things in OpenStreetMap. The node that gets the stop_position tag is NOT suitable for that purpose, as it is not immediately apparent on what side of the street the stop is.

So, over the years I have tried to work with public_transport=platform and stop_position tags on the stop nodes I’ve been mapping. The idea was that, in time, highway=bus_stop would be replaced by those tags. Only that is not possible, for one thing, those nodes we’re mapping to represent the stops, were not supposed to have a mode of transport on them. So it is utterly impossible to drop highway=bus_stop from those nodes.

OK, let’s step back for a moment: highway=bus_stop is here to stay, wait for it… it’s coming… the conclusion: public_transport=platform tags are NOT ADDING any information. highway=bus_stop says it all. Sorry that it took me a few years to figure that out!

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இந்தியா என்பது ஹிந்தியா அல்ல. பாரத் என்று இந்தியாவை குறிப்பது தவறு. இந்தி தேசிய மொழி அலல. India என்றிருப்பதே சரி.

India is not Hindia. Please remove the word “Bharat” (1000km) in hindi from osm. Indians speak 100’s of languages. Hindi is not a national language.

There is a lot of prepared and approved SVG icons for OSM-Carto just wainting to be added, but there is unfortunately also lack of people ready to add these new features. We would like to invite you to improving default OSM style.

Here is a task list: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/3298

Coding instruction links:

osm.wiki/Standard_tile_layer

https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/DOCKER.md

You can also ask for any help in certain tickets and PRs :)

I have been OSM mapper since February 2015 and got enthusiastic about the change I was making in #MapLesotho. Being the spatial planner I realised the importance of OpenstreetMap data and how it would be useful in my job.

Being number one mapper in Lesotho opened doors for me, and in September 2016 I won a scholarship to study in Ireland doing MSc in Spatial Planning at Dublin Institute of Technology. I adapted easily in Ireland & met Ireland OSM community and also continued training school kids to map, and also how to use different Phone Apps such as mapillary, OSM Tracker, street complete and maps.me.

I wanted to be able to map more than what #MapLesotho taught me, so simaltaneous to moving to Ireland for town planning scholarship and internship I started mapping Ireland. I adapted to different ways of mapping and started mapping things in Ireland that aren’t there in Lesotho such as the coast and heritage sites, different tags for different road uses, such as bicycle lanes, bus lanes, footpath etc. It was also fascinating to map high buildings because they are frequent in Ireland using maps.me and the sudden change when editing height of the buildings using the app was entertaining as well. Streetcomplete is another app that always got me curious because the more I used it the more I got different kinds of stuff to edit which I would say widened my experience with Tags also.

Being in a new country of course I wanted to get out and about, so I turned my curiosity into mapillary trips in all 32 counties and I became number 2 mapillary contributor in Ireland. The truth about me is when I do mapping stuff I make sure I do it well and conquer, hahah😊.

In June I became mapper of the month and that took me by surprise when I was contacted by a person I have never talked to before Marc Gemis because I never thought there are people out there who notice the effort and the changes I was making.

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Thanks for the ongoing discussions about gender in OSM. At SOTM, we will build on our shared efforts to make improvements. Your support and participation is most welcome. At SOTM we will host the Open Gender Monologues. Our allies, GeoChicas, are also running a session on diversity.

Three ways you can become involved in the Open Gender Monologues:

1. Submit your experiences (optional to be anonymous) for us to read at SOTM on July 28th. We want to be sure that your voice is heard, even if you can’t join us in person. add your experiences here

2. Join us in person on July 28th to share your experiences. Just let Heather and Kate know so that we can add you to the agenda of speakers. SOTM - Open Gender Monologues session

3. Be an ally - share this diary entry on your local/topical mailing lists and social media. We want to reach as many people as possible.

Thank you and see you soon

I took a tip from Dexter from the City of Detroit Office of Innovation, and started on the Detroit Mapping Challenge by browsing City of Detroit Open Data. What open data could help make OpenStreetMap Detroit the best map in the world? BikeShare locations looked like a useful and straightforward starting point. And now OSM Detroit has very accurate MoGo bike share docking stations. There turned out to be a few surprises getting there, and lessons to absorb for mapping all of Detroit.

The data looked decent on quick inspection, and is licensed public domain. Maybe a very small human supervised import is in order. I browsed OSM to see what was already there, and turned out this already all 43 docking stations were already added by mapper175, with the changeset comment Added nodes for MoGo Bike Share system stations (resurvey needed for most of them). Are they in the right place? Is there something a remote mapper could do here?

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Mural by Ukuu Tafari of feeding crows art

If any of you all live in/around Richmond/Greater Richmond Region/Central Virginia (or any other localities in the commonwealth) and are interested in collaborating on open data/open mapping/civic tech/etc., email me: albert@bowdenweb.com.

Yesterday I had too many other obligations to travel far, so I took about three hours of Saturday afternoon to cruise parts of Ashgabat I’d not visited for a while and to collect Mapillary imagery where there were gaps (uploads currently underway). The dacha community north of the Karakum Canal on the far east end of the city is gone. It was apparently demolished in the past months and has been bulldozed. I had no idea, but will have to revise the map. The road into the community has been blocked with a dirt pile. This is why ground truth is so important.

I have completed corrections to the A-381, P-1, P-15, P-16, and P-18 national highway routes in Turkmenistan. I have consulted with local sources to nail down exactly which roads are part of each route and think these five are now pretty accurate.

Cet article est également disponible en français : osm.org/user/jbelien/diary/44358

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Article written for open Summer of code 2018

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First of all, there is absolutely not doubt about the fact Google Maps is a good product and the Google Maps tools (API, JavaScript library, …) work quite well and are easy to setup but …

Google is in charge

When Google Maps started more than 10 years ago, everything was completely free to use. These last few months that has changed drastically.
The first decision made by Google was to limit the free number of requests per day. It didn’t really impact the small users that were still under the limit but some big players decided to switch to other solution like OpenStreetMap (for instance Foursquare and Pinterest).
The latest change (June 2018) has much more impact : Google decided to reduce the limit of free requests (25000 map display per day to 28000 per month - that’s around 1000 map display per day, so 25 times less) but also made it mandatory to give your credit card number even if you do not go over the free limit !

Impact on Belgian Prime Minister website :

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I have found an authoritative but slightly out-of-date list of provinces, districts, and municipalities in Turkmenistan, have corrected and updated it based on recent press releases, and posted it to the OSM wiki:

osm.wiki/Districts_in_Turkmenistan

I am also working with my embassy’s motor pool to identify the national highways, which are either not tagged or are in some cases mistagged. This will be a bit of a project over the summer as we research the Turkmen national highway system and bring the OSM map up to date. My ambition is to have a complete map of Turkmenistan’s national highway network, all properly tagged.

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I have an application which I am developing. I am not sure it is of general interest, yet. I track some relations in it. I am interested in cities and counties in California and I am recording their ids and other information about them.

I just implemented code (in java) which reads the relations, and then recursively reads the ways and nodes of it and verifies that the lines therefrom are connected. The obvious implementation is taking a rather long time to do the job. I am hoping there is a better way.

Any suggestions?

I will post more about the application when I have it running on my colo.

thanx - ray

My last diary entry, which linked to some initial results from the survey, generated a comment about different contributors undertaking different types of mapping activities and the impact this could have on the data produced. The content of my most recent conference presentation with Peter Mooney at AGILE 18 in Sweden, discussed exactly this.

The results of this particular analysis showed that although women are more likely to be engaged in mapping for humanitarian purposes (i.e. HOTOSM), the prescriptive nature of these tasks mask the natural mapping behaviours and interests of those that complete them, i.e. many women.

Please see below for links to both the paper and powerpoint presentations.

http://www.cs.nuim.ie/~pmooney/websitePapers/AGILE2018PM_ZG.pdf

https://www.slideshare.net/ZoeGardner1/investigating-gender-differences-in-openstreetmap-activities-in-malawi

Our ongoing slum mapping project is part of a large-scale international collaboration entitled the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research Unit on Improving Health in Slums. Our research unit will focus on health services in slums.

Our objectives are:

1. To map current health services and facilities and understand how these are used in nine slums across Asia and Africa.
2. To build on these maps to identify costs associated with how health services run in each site including informal providers, such as traditional healers, and the quality of these services as well as identifying costs to the patient and their households.
3. To systematically update our knowledge on: a) Disease prevalence in slums; b) Current healthcare provision models in slums and elsewhere in cities to include services which help to prevent disease; and, c) General literature on financing and the design of health services in low and middle income countries.
4. To generate viable options for health service delivery in slums and cost these options relative to likely benefits.
5. To work with decision makers and slum communities in designing the models of health service delivery, with a view to a subsequent evaluation of effectiveness and costs of viable options.

Further to the above plan of work we aim to:

1. Build a research programme which survives after our NIHR funding ceases; and to create a platform of funded activities into the future.

2. Develop capacity and communities of practice by involving people who can change things in slums, including politicians, civil servants and people who live in slums.

The following are some links to the project:

1) Brief summary of the project: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/funding-and-support/documents/global-health/units/RLilford-Plain%20English%20summary.pdf

2) Website for the slum mapping component of the project: http://blogs.cim.warwick.ac.uk/slummapping/

3) Slum mapping team at the University of Warwick:

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I have noticed that as soon as highway=path is tagged together with bicycle=designated and foot=designated it turns the highway into a cycleway. Must be a programmer’s dubious preference!

During making documentation of OSM tools and software it is frequently useful to add screenshots. Especially tutorials are often featuring multiple ones. I always disliked that such images are frequently getting outdated. It may caused by interface changes, map style changes and edits to OSM data.

Sometimes it requires more significant update of documentation, sometimes updating images is enough. But it may be very time-consuming.

When I was making my Overpass Turbo Tutorial for newbies* I wanted to find a way to make such images easy to recreate.

I found an interesting solution. Selenium is a software usually used for testing websites. It has plenty of features but interesting here is is that one may write a simple script that will

• open a website
• wait for it to load
• take a screeenshot

This way it may be possible to generate and recreate screenshots without manually taking them.

There is plenty of way how Selenium may be used, I am using Python bindings connected to Firefox using geckodriver.

Time-saving code is relatively simple.

imports:

from selenium import webdriver
import time
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

Lets say that I wanted an example of a simple website. This code will take a picture of googling results and save it to a specified file.

driver.get('https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wetland+OSM+Wiki&ia=web')
driver.save_screenshot('wetland-search-results.png')

Following code sample will modify vieport size and interact with page to hide irritating banners, then take a picture of site (note that such use is also subject of Tile Usage Policy like other automated tile downloading, but for regular tutorial updates use will be not higher than human doing the same):

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