One of my cycling goals this year is to mix up the roads I ride and fill in my 2019 Personal Heatmap on Strava. I wanted a way to see unvisited roads on my Garmin while I was out so I decided to make a custom map overlay using some of the great tools available to the OpenStreetMap community.

I started by using the Download from Overpass API feature in JOSM to download the complete road network for my city and saved the layer to a file. Then I opened all my cycling GPS traces for 2019 and started pruning any road from the network that I had already covered.

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

BuildingsTools plugin (Wiki)
Terracer plugin (Wiki)

In the previous post I showed the basic steps of using the building_tools and terracer plugins together to map buildings with JOSM on to the OSM map, so make sure to read that if you get lost at all during this post. This section will give a pot-pouri of how to perform more advanced tasks using the same two plugins. It will start with 2 Bradstone Drive.

Drawing an L-Shaped Detached House

For some reason these are very common in England (this particular house is a 2-story modern house — built in the last 5 years — but bungalows in this style have been built like that since the ’20s). As a detached house, adding the L-shape can be done either before or after using terracer, but for all other houses any changes to the basic rectangle of a terrace must only be done after terracing the building.

1. Draw the main frontage of the building, using (in this case) Esri World Imagery as a template
2. Press ‘s’ and select the building just drawn
3. Press ‘b’ and place the X-hairs above the common corner-node for both frontages and click
4. As you now draw the side frontage, the mouse is shaping a box anchored on the common corner node.
5. Shape the new box to the side-frontage, and click when complete
   (There are now 2 building rectangles positioned over all external borders of the house)
6. Press Shift+j
   (“Join overlapping areas”)
7. Remove the redundant nodes from 2 sides of the house
   (there are likely to be 2 nodes on top of each other on each side to be removed)

That’s it - an L-shaped house. A similar procedure can be performed for buildings with rear-extensions, etc.

Drawing Twin Garages

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Jack had this great idea to find the locations of solar panels and add them to OpenStreetMap. (Why’s that useful? He can explain: Solar PV is the single biggest source of uncertainty in the National Grid’s forecasts.)

I think we can do this :) The OpenStreetMap community have done lots of similar things, such as the humanitarian mapping work we do, collaboratively adding buildings and roads for unmapped developing countries. Also, some people in France seem to have done a great job of mapping their power network (info here in French). But how easy or fast would it be for us to manually search the globe for solar panels?

(You might be thinking “automate it!” Yes, sure - I work with machine learning in my day job - but it’s a difficult task even for machine learning to get to the high accuracy needed. 99% accurate is not accurate enough, because that equates to a massive number of errors at global scale, and no-one’s even claiming 99% accuracy yet for tasks like this. For the time being we definitely need manual mapping or at least manual verification.)

(Oh, or you might be thinking “surely someone officially has this data already?” Well you’d be surprised - some of it is held privately in one database or other, but not with substantial coverage, and certainly almost none of it has good geolocation coordinates, which you need if you’re going to predict which hours the sun shines on each panel. Even official planning application data can be out by kilometres, sometimes.)

Jerry (also known as “SK53” on OSM) has had a look into it in Nottingham - he mapped a few hundred (!) solar panels already. He’s written a great blog article about it.

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

BuildingsTools plugin (Wiki)
Terracer plugin (Wiki)

Nottingham City Council maintain an Adopted Highways Register which is fantastic for confirming both adopted & un-adopted streets local to me + house-numbers and, on occasion, housenames. The info comes from Ordnance Survey and therefore has a Crown Copyright. Because of that, it is important that I point out that I use the site to confirm my earlier survey results, rather than copying from it.

Adopted Highways register
A highway and a public right of way mean the same thing; they are both a “way” over which the public have a right to pass and repass at all times of the day and night. The term highway includes all carriageways (roads), streets, footways (pavements), footpaths, bridleways and byways. A highway may also include the adjacent verges.

This site shows which highways are adopted. If a highway is adopted it means it is maintained and repaired by Nottingham City Council. It also shows public rights of way (footpaths, bridleways and byways) both adopted and un-adopted which are recorded on the Definitive Map and Statement. This is the legal record of public rights of way in Nottingham at the time the Map and Statement were last updated (the “relevant date”).

You will therefore understand that the above is also the legal status that allows OSM surveyors in the UK to both survey and photograph from those highways anything that they can see.

Map Attitude

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• 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):–

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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

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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

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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:

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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).

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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:

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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:

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