• Intro
• Installation
• Mapping Buildings :: Startup
• Mapping Buildings :: Basics on using building_tools + terracer
• Mapping Buildings :: More Advanced

One of the keys to using JOSM is to teach yourself to use the keyboard at the same time as you use the mouse. Once you have a small selection of keyboard shortcuts in your head things will go much quicker.

BuildingsTools plugin (Wiki)
Terracer plugin (Wiki)

2 mins tutorial: Drawing Buildings in JOSM
(from the HOT team; a little old, but still accurate)

Most of my time post-survey is spent mapping houses & roads - it is rare that a road is not already mapped, though naturally they always need checking and sometimes correcting. In contrast, it is rare in the areas that I survey that any houses are mapped at all.

Startup Sequence

Here is an account of my current startup sequence after launching JOSM from *menu | Education | JOSM (latest snapshot):–

… See full entry

This weekend my hardworking laptop uploaded my 500,000th ground-level image to Mapillary. This is the single most extensive database of ground-level imagery for Turkmenistan anywhere. Others in the embassy have contributed roughly another quarter of a million images. We still have a few highways to collect but the bulk of major highways in Turkmenistan are now available to mappers anywhere in the world.

• Intro
• Installation
• Mapping Buildings :: Startup
• Mapping Buildings :: Basics on using building_tools + terracer
• Mapping Buildings :: More Advanced

The Operating System (OS) is different on my computer now from when I last used JOSM, so it had to be installed from scratch. Here is a bunch of stuff that should be useful if you need to install JOSM:–

1. JOSM == “Java OpenStreetMap Editor”
2. JOSM Wiki
3. Available for Windows, Linux, and macOS
   (you are strongly advised to use a desktop machine with a large display)
4. Install instructions

The following will be install instructions for Devuan / Debian / Ubuntu:–

This is my OS:–

$ lsb_release -da    
Distributor ID:	Devuan
Description:	Devuan GNU/Linux 2.0 (ascii)
Release:	2.0
Codename:	ascii

… See full entry

Friday, March 8, was International Women’s Day and thus a local holiday. I therefore had a three-day weekend for some exploration. In reviewing the OSM map I found some blank spots close to home, so probed nearby villages that were unidentified, explored unmapped roads, found a couple of farms and a fast food place, identified several factories, updated a town hall, and found a rather large cemetery way out in the boondocks as well as the municipal garbage dump and a satellite uplink station (just how does one tag a satellite uplink station, anyway?) In the process Ann and I gave away several sets of books of American children’s literature the embassy has had translated into Turkmen. The map is in a bit better shape and several Turkmen children have something to read! The three days passed in a flash, but this was one of the best three-day weekends ever.

• Intro
• Installation
• Mapping Buildings :: Startup
• Mapping Buildings :: Basics on using building_tools + terracer
• Mapping Buildings :: More Advanced

At this moment my profile shows 1,822 edits, all done with JOSM, so it would seem reasonable to assume that I know JOSM inside-out. Well, yes & no.

1. The last time I went out surveying was 28 May 2017 (19 months ago)
2. I never completed adding that survey into OSM
   (I got to Chedington Avenue on Spring Lane)
3. After creating another batch of OSM Promotional Leaflets it remains only for me to finish the necessary editing on the last survey. Then I can get on the road again for some more surveying.
4. I fell down dead 20 years ago so I try not to be too hard on myself if I forget things
   (23 February 1999 — heart went into fibrillation — on awakening I did not know where I lived nor worked, and had the memory of a goldfish (’bout 4 minutes))

My OS is different than the last time I used JOSM, so everything needed to be done from the beginning, again. My thought was to make use of this opportunity to give advice to those starting from scratch and trying to learn how on earth to use this programme. Uniquely, I’m both well-experienced and a complete novice in using it at the same time, and that may help give me an insight into what newbies may need to know.

This will be just an introductory post. The meat of the matter will start at the next post.

I do not intend to structure the help too strongly. It will be a bunch of disparate stuff as I come across it whilst editing. I strongly urge others to add in their own useful titbits in the comments, or to correct wrongful info.

Looks like a really interesting thing they have going on here! I can’t wait to learn more!

I started a new HOT task mapping buildings in DRC. The map was messed up; numerous buildings were marked where there were no buildings, and none of the actual buildings were marked. After a long session deleting and adding buildings, the ID mapper stopped working; I couldn’t even save the work in progress.

Is this a common problem?

I want to do more sidewalk / crosswalk surveying, but most of the sidewalks are still 2 feet deep in snow. OSM is giving me ample excuses to get out of the house and go for walks, but the weather is just not going to have it.

Lucky for me, it’s been sunny the past few days. Maybe it’ll clear up in time for Spring Break.

There’s so much mapping to do in this town…

A lazy saturday with some hours behind the keyboard.

Roundabout ramblings

At one point I got interested in making “Nasjonal Sykkelrute 7” connected all the way, there where some breaks in the line. During this I also found out that a roundabout should not be segmented, why would it need to be that?

I found out a little later that this is probably because the different segments have different relations. Relations to bus routes, bicycle routes etc. So after commiting my well meant simplifications I went back and tried to clean them up. It made me more aware of how the route relations are built up.

Route me township

Inspired by this rudementary understanding of bus routes I scoped out the town where I grew up; Ulsteinvik. To my delight/horror there were practically no bus stops, nor routes mapped. So I chose a simple one and made the route=bus. Added the ways it covers, and the next step will be to add the stops.

Some people asked me about how to receive notifications when new changesets match a filter we have setup in OSMCha. So I decided to write a tutorial with some options of how to receive updates from your OSMCha filters.

We can set a filter in OSMCha and save it to later use. If you have never saved a filter, see the documentation.

Each saved filter has an unique ID and a RSS feed. The RSS makes it very easy to receive notifications. After you saved a filter, you can get your RSS feed link at the right side of your filter name, on the top of the page.

RSS Reader

The easiest thing you can do is to subscribe to the feed with some RSS Reader. There are plenty of options, both web based or to install on your computer. Nowadays the most popular web based option is Feedly.

IFTTT + Telegram

… See full entry

I’m taking my very first steps in OSM.

Plans for 2019

My work is mainly based on facts on the road. Photographing with my garmin montana 650, my samsung s6 mobile phone, various printed osm worksheets, walking on foot, cycling where it is allowed and asking people with more local knowledge. various information about newspapers, websites and information from city hall is a reference point for the dynamic rapid changes in the city.

highway infrastructure

• checking the geometry
• verifying on the ground
• speed limits
• lane numbers
• lane directions
• traffic signs

bike path infrastructure

• checking the geometry
• verifying on the ground
• gps-tracks
• photos

bus route infrastructure

• checking the geometry
• verifying on the ground
• gps-tracks
• bus stop
• changes (often changed bus routes.) up to date

road intersection

• checking the geometry
• verifying on the ground
• gps-tracks
• traffic signs
• photos

foot path

• pedestrian crossing
• photos

The upload scripts are a part of the open source OpenStreetCam platform that are probably not as widely known. You can use them to upload images to OSC that you capture using something other than the Android / iPhone app or a OSC Waylens camera. My colleague Bogdan will publish a blog post going into more technical detail on the ImproveOSM blog soon, but I wanted to share my initial experiences using just the basic uploading functionality.

I don’t want to go into the script setup steps here, but if you are having trouble with that part, I am happy to help out.

Detour: Collecting and preparing my images

If you are just interested in the upload scripts, you can skip this part…

This is the setup I use to collect OSC images when I don’t use the app or the Waylens camera:

It consists of:

… See full entry

I plan to start tagging more disputed administrative boundary lines in OpenStreetMap with tags for disputed=yes (but will leave the existing dispute=yes alone), adding disputed_by=* on disputed ways, and adding claimed_by=* on their relations to support multiple points-of-view.

I will use a combination of the iD editor and JOSM for this sprint, and use the #disputed_by_claimed_by tag in comment messages. My OSM username is nvk should anyone else want to help out or discuss, please say hi :)

I don’t propose changing default tags for administrative boundaries which already use OpenStreetMap’s on the ground rule – I only propose adding additional tags on the country and disputed features to indicate they are disputed (many are already are tagged this way), and to indicate which countries dispute &/or claim the boundary.

I will follow the schema used in Kashmir for ways and relations tagged for India, Pakistan, and China country boundaries. I will clean up a few errors in Kashmir (missing tags or incorrect country codes), and will then focus on expanding the use of this tagging schema to other disputed areas around the world.

Further work could support which other countries recognize (or have opinions about) the disputed_by and claimed_by points of view. But there isn’t yet a consensus in OpenStreetMap about which approach to take, and the existing tagging scheme I plan to reuse for the basic claimants is also compatible with the main tagging discussions that are still under way for the complicated case. This will allow the OpenStreetMap community and Tilezen in particular to prototype support for making maps with this data (see the Why section below for more background).

… See full entry

I’m genuinely pleased when people tell me about bugs or improvements related to OpenSnowMap map style by emailing me or by openning issues in github1,2. So, the least I can do is to try to fix them.

I’m happy to announce that a new style is being rolled out on OpenSnowMap that address some of them.

Here is an overview of the visible changes. For a better knowledge of the technical background, suffice to know that the piste database is now powered by Imposm instead of Osm2pgsql, and that the style is written in cartoCSS instead of bare mapnik XML.

Nordic and Crosscountry Skiing - Can I ski there ?

As the maintainer of OpenSnowMap, one thing I don’t want is to send your reckless grandma in an icy, treacherous slope. I’s also like to avoid to invite you to try an un-groomed backcountry piste you spot on the map with your skates.

So now, if piste:difficulty or piste:grooming is not mapped on piste:type=nordic ways, the piste shows a ? question mark on the map. Also, if not fully tagged, the more you zoom, the fainter the piste become. The goal of making the map less nice-looking is to ensure that lazy mappers will look twice at their contributions.

On the other hand, if you map properly the grooming type, icons and a dashed pattern will appears to distinguih between:

… See full entry

Taking the opportunity to scratch some things from the endless to-do list, I asked MapTiler if they could host some layers for us, the Brazilian OpenStreetMap community.

I explained our needs and our limited resources (people, time, infrastructure, financial, etc.) and they accepted!

They were very solicitous, attentive and open in helping us (and thus, OpenStreetMap), and they deserve our thanks!

Nowadays we have the IBGE map of urban areas, which usually meets our needs in order to get the name of some street.

But we also know that in some places there is no data, lack or illegibility of names, etc.

For example, here in Londrina we can see that there is no name in several streets in the urban areas layer:

… See full entry

I started by installing the QuickOSM plugin.

I clicked on the green looking glass in the new toolbar that appeared.

Query

Key: highway In Brussels

Run Query

It downloaded every highway in the zip code 1000 Brussels.

Now I want to show labels for the street names.

On the middle layer (the one with a horizontal line), I press right mouse button, then Styles / Add,

named it Streetnames.

Right Mouse Button on the layer, then Properties.

Labels

Single labels

Label with: abc name.

Size 7.0000

Color: Blue

On the nodes layer, remove all those red dots by going to Symbology and making them smaller.

Project Create Print Layout

Layout/Layout Properties

Add a new map to the layout.

Under Item Properties, it’s possible to set the scale.

I need a larger sheet of paper, if I want those street names to be readable.

Not sure where to set the paper size. All in all not very complicated, but I guess reading the manual wouldn’ t hurt.

tl;dr the release notes 🙂

✨This is a big one✨ We redesigned MapRoulette to make some things easier to find, improve the workflow, and hopefully make it look prettier 💎 as well. We hope you like it!

First of all you will be greeted by a new homepage. This landing page introduces new users to MapRoulette and suggests some challenges to start working on.

Dashboard

An entirely new section of MapRoulette is the Dashboard. This is your personal window into MapRoulette activity. You can see things like your own recent activity, popular challenges and your tracked tasks here. As with almost everyting in MapRoulette, the Dashboard consists of widgets that you can move around, resize, add and delete to create the layout and information display you desire. You can even switch between multiple layouts.

… See full entry

Yes, 10 years ago was the first documented public commit to Vespucci

This seems to have marked public availability including the wiki a couple of days later.

10 years is methusalem age for Android apps given that the first commercial Android device became available at the end of 2008, Naturally both functionality and code base has developed a lot since the beginnings.

In any case thank you to all the developers that have contributed, lots of them long before I became involved and special thanks to Marcus for his contributions and for continuing to provide the access to the google play store.

Version 13

Back to current times, version 13 is nearly ready for a beta release that I expect in a couple of days.

Some of the highlights:

Support for multi-polygon, improved area and turn restriction rendering and improved styling configuration

… See full entry

Agriculture amenities are rarely shown in osm. So you having a tag for soil testing lab was impossible. I just uploaded 2149 points with amenity=laboratory and type=soil_testing. All have addresses and some also have email,phone and postal code.