Due to the corona virus pandemic the annual face-to-face meeting of the OSMF board of directors shifted to what we wryly termed a “screen-to-screen” meeting using the Zoom video conferencing account of our facilitator, Allen “Gunner” Gunn. To our collective surprise, the video conference went fairly well. It was not as good as meeting face to face, but was far better than audio only, and so much so that the board plans to experiment with shifting from using Mumble (audio only) for monthly board meetings to a video conferencing platform.

In keeping with the FOSS philosophy of OSMF, we will try BigBlueButton, an open-source videoconferencing platform. Thus, if OSMF members want to tune in to the next board meeting, watch for announcements that we will meet in a video conference. We will ask that non-members of the board keep their cameras and microphones off, and that only board members have their cameras and microphones on.

Minutes of the “screen-to-screen” meeting remain in process. Bottom line up front: the board has taken on board much of the information in the SWOT analysis, last year’s survey, and the 40+ conference calls I have made to community members, local communities and chapters, and members of our advisory board. We accept all criticism that has come our way and are working on how to address the problems you have identified to us.

In March I flew to Riga for what will likely be the last in-person regional SOTM for a while due to the pandemic, State of the Map Baltics (many thanks and kudos to Rihards Olups for pulling it together and being my host in Riga). My presentation on “Winds of Change in OSM” was well received. I plan to deliver an updated version of that presentation during the virtual SOTM in July, so if you are interested in a synopsis of what I have been hearing from across the community, and my take on it all, be sure to tune in.

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So we organized an online mapathon. I want to share what we planned, how it worked, our feedback, and my thoughts about how we should continue.

When I say we I mean core team. By definition, the core team are people who go to a pub after a mapathon. Maybe, it would be better to say that: The Missing Maps is mainly about mapping. However, somebody has to take care of the mappers…. And that’s we, the core team.

In Prague, there are Missing Maps mapathons every last Tuesday of a month (we have an exception in December), and we were not willing to give up on March’s one.

What we planned

We found that we had about 30 registered participants. We do the introduction to mapping in iD editor, we teach the JOSM basics, and we explain how to validate to advanced mappers.

The plan was to have one global chat, video stream for introduction talk, video chat for mapping groups, and video stream again for final talk(s). All of the communication channels must be accessible without registration for participants. Moreover, video chat for mapping groups should be instantly creatable to maximize flexibility.

We needed leaders of mapping groups. Fortunately, there are plenty of capable mappers in the core team. The idea was to limit the capacity of a mapping group (to about 6 - 7 people) to achieve comfort communication.

We got prepared with Introduction to Tasking Manager and iD editor video (in Czech) and written down mapping process (in Czech, too). The video length is limited to 5 minutes. I think it increases the probability that the participants would watch it.

Now about technologies. We used the Freenode IRC channel as the global chat. Participants can connect easily over Kiwi IRC client, just specifying their names. (You can add server and channel after /next/ in the link.) We used Zoom for the introduction and final talks. And we used Jitsi for video chat of mapping groups.

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March 24: School Work starts

As best as I can tell I’ve only worked my way through 69 schools. It seems far more. There are more than 223 changesets made by myself under this banner, and I was trying to do one changeset for each school or set-of-schools in the same immediate area. I think that what has happened is that the number of schools listed on the section of the page that I’ve worked on have shrunk as I have mapped them.

I began using https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/NG to update all school info within OSM in the NG (Nottinghamshire) postcode on March 24. You can see all postcode links at https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/.

osm.mathmos.net

The osm.mathmos.net site was promoted by a diary post by CjMalone. It gathers info from the get-information-schools.service.gov.uk site on current schools and cross-references those against UK schools mapped within OSM. Each top-level postcode gets it’s own page, and within that page the site lists (in order):-

1. Schools apparently not mapped in OSM
2. Schools in OSM not matched against the official list
3. Schools matched in OSM by location but not edubase ID
4. Schools matched in OSM by edubase ID

School Cadastre

In the last 9 days I’ve worked my way through all the first 3 sets of schools in the lists above. I’ve entered missing Cadastre (the perimeter of the school land parcel), and fixed them where they were wrong.

I also tried but failed to find the govt opensource download for those cadastre. Finally, Christian Ledermann mailed me with the link to his github for his App that contains those Cadastre. Unfortunately his site is broken (logging into OSM gives a Status 500 error back from his site), but it originally did work and put all necessary info on the OSM way. Bugger! Just when I needed it, it is not working.

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Top ten fifteen mappers in my country are not even locals. There’s a need to form a new rebel alliance! We shall rise, silently and slowly. Currently, we are just tired.

Right now, I suspect that Tesla gets its speed limit data from OSM, but I can’t prove this.

(Subject says it all) If the GPS that got uploaded was accurate, I would be running off road, across driveways, on sidewalks that are not yet built.

I drive a Tesla Model 3 around Canberra suburbs. When it uses Traffic Aware Cruise Control, it apparently relies on OSM data rather than the speed limit signs. This can lead to situations where TACC will use an incorrect speed limit (eg. 80 km/h in a 60 km/h zone). See osm.org/way/668268353#map=19/-35.24389/149.13545&layers=TD How can such speed limit data be kept accurate and up to date? This is what I aim to find out.

See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9kMHt_Pf6A

The Frei-Otto-Straße of Munich, 80797, Germany has been operational for the last couple of weeks. Please find the addresses here: Straßen-Umbenennung in Frei-Otto-Straße_2020-01-16.pdf

Hi All,

I thought it was about time I started my diaries and put some public thoughts out into the world of OSM.

I recently joined HOT to take on the role of Director of Technology and couldn’t be happier to be a part of it. I am by no means replacing my predecessor, Nate, rather doing my best to carry on and evolve the astounding legacy (and huge shoes to fill).

In the spirit of openness, you can look up my background here > https://www.linkedin.com/in/bopercival/

My HOT profile is here > https://www.hotosm.org/people/bo-percival/

the tldr; I’ve always worked in non-profit, NGO and community development and have worked over the past 7 or so years specifically on digital development, ICT4D or whichever turn of phrase you’d prefer. Over the last 5 years, I also worked alongside a couple of OpenSource projects in this space namely DHIS2 and Moodle. Things I care a lot about; design, inclusive technologies, gender & LGBTQI+ groups, transparency and universal access.

I’ve been a long time user of OSM in a recreational capacity (finding and contributing mountain bike and hiking trails while living in and around Asia), but I’m new making contributions in a professional capacity.

I have two personal mottos. i) ‘support the superstars’ and ii) ‘the best opportunities in the best interests of others’. My main goal is to facilitate and support the team at HOT as well as everyone in the OSM community to ensure all voices are heard for HOT’s contributions.

This article sums up me and combines my work life with my non work life > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-development-backcountry-guide-way-bo-percival/

Feel free to reach out to me on slack or email, I’m always open for a chat, feedback, ideas, anything you’d like :)

One of the main feature I love to map while hiking are abandoned houses/isolate dwellings. It’s full of them in the parks I usually go around and they are more often than not in a good state. Leaving aside the fact that after a few years I’m STILL not sure what the exact tag should be (locality? isolated_dwelling? abandoned:isolated_dwelling?) the main “problem” I have is with the one I don’t reach: there are so many abandoned places marked on OSM that have no road/path leading there. I suppose most of them come from mass import from public data-set or maybe someone copying data from other maps, but it baffles me how many un-mapped way are there in the mountains. I love exploring and I would love to complete some zone, but it seems like an effort so huge that feels impossible.

South and east of Torsetvannet a new diagonal was opened winter 2019/20 that is not currently in opensnowmap. This now added. It does not yet have a name so noe has been added. The track is groomed with classic tracks on both sides and a narrow skat section in the middle, thus taged as classic and skate.

I saw a tender put out for new aerial imagery for Regina. It looks like the city is keeping with their recent pattern of re-imaging the city every 2 years. The images are usually acquired early to mid April before the tree leaves open.

Should be available for JOSM editing in a few months to add buildings constructed in the past year.

Many places around the world right now are experiencing community lock downs to help mitigate the spread of CoVid-19. Non-essential travel is restricted or banned, including even exercising outdoors.

That’s our new normal here in the Philippines, especially those villages, towns, and cities in Luzon under “community quarantine”, or the more restrictive “enhanced community quarantine”, in other words we are staying at home as much as possible, and most us are online doing many other things, trying to keep our minds of from worrying.

In fact, I recently enrolled to an online language course, to brush up on my Nihonggo, which I took up many years ago, but never really got to use except, for my perfect “Wakarimasen” replies. 😉

Last week, the OSM community in the Philippines kicked of a re-formatted MapaTime initiative. In our previous normal, MapaTime events are mapathon sessions held in venues where people physically gather to contribute, learn, map, exchange ideas about specific themes, or initiatives. It’s a term we use, instead of the jargon “mapathon” which many people may not understand, based on feedback we received from past sessions.

This initiative is referred to as “WeMap”, a portmanteau of “Wednesdays MapaTime” , where we plan to organize sessions every Wednesday night, hoping to reach out to online volunteers who are keen to contribute to positive efforts, with tangible outcomes during the lock down.

The “pilot episode”

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8218 - COVID-19 - Santo Tomas, Cusco, Peru

HOT is mapping Cusco region in Peru at the request of regional government to support their COVID-19 response efforts. The maps will be used to provide cash transfers to families who are prevented from working by the quarantine and State of Emergency in Peru, and to provide nutrition and sanitation assistance.

Additionally, in parts of Cusco, over 75% of children under 3 years old suffer from anaemia. This means that their brains will not develop as quickly as other children, and once they start going to preschool and later school, they will often be tired, unable to concentrate or to learn effectively. The regions which suffer most from anaemia are usually the most remote, hardest to reach areas, where data available to local authorities and NGOs is minimal and access to health services for women and their children are limited. The Regional Government in Cusco wants to combat this by geo-locating where children under 3 live in order to improve the medical attention that they receive.

Spent 1.5 hours mapping buildings, roads and paths.

Labeled Meridian Kennels.

Labeled and described 4870 Will-T RD. -SM

Praying for the world !! Hope everyone is safe out there .. God Bless

Talking with the Community

I recently reached out to the OSM Iran community on Telegram, who are normally writing in Farsi and have made some incredible map improvements lately. I first came across their work in 2019 when I noticed the community on Twitter showcasing incredible detail on pedestrian paths and gardens in Iran. I’ve always wanted to visit Iran, but found myself instead getting second hand stories about the landscape and culture, and frequenting Persian restaurants when living in places like California.

In the recent weeks, I began reading about the extreme strain on the medical system in Iran in reaction to COVID-19, and I asked a fellow user who was relaying information from his family and friends there if he could tell me what areas appeared most affected. His tweet response set me off on a mission.

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In these days of social isolation, at least here in Belgium, we’re still allowed to wander in our neighborhood. One way to make that a little more interesting: collect all the paths! I mentioned this on Twitter, and was asked to make a tutorial. So here goes.

The general idea: make a map showing all the paths in your neighborhood. Then go and visit them all, and visualize which ones you have visited. Over time, you’ll see what direction you should be heading to add more paths to your collection.

Collect the data

No dataset contains as many paths as OpenStreetMap. You can see them on your smartphone (e.g. on Osmand, on the main OpenStreetMap website, or on whatever style of map you like.

For this project, we want to download the data itself. Assuming we’re just downloading a little area, we can use the awesome Overpass Turbo for this.

I’ve prepared this sample query for you. Just move the map to your neighborhood, and click Run. Don’t zoom out too much, as loading all this data might crash your browser. Here’s a lighter query (in case you get a timeout; this one doesn’t exclude private roads).

Now you have a clear map of your data. But you can’t edit it here. So first, let’s download the data. Just click “Export”, then “Download as GeoJSON”.

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Obtain UK Schools info

Above is the link to a recent Diary from CjMalone with info on using osm.mathmos.net to obtain a list of all the UK schools mapped in OSM within a particular Postcode, ordered by how well they correspond to the UK gov.uk site.

I’m a pensioner and am supposed to slowly rot within my home without any socialisation with any other human. So, no change there. However, whilst we are in that Lockdown state — I’m over 70, and therefore have been instructed by the government to stay isolated at home — I may as well do something useful. I’m currently working my way through NG, and have just completed the 28 Nottinghamshire schools that osm.mathmos.net could not match up with a school at all. That has taken me 3 days. Phew! I’m either superb in my coverage or (far more likely) just very slow.

f12|Remote Control:

If using JOSM, then a useful shortcut is to enable Remote Control (Preferences: f12|Remote Control (LHS vertical column icon)|click in tick-box for 'Enable Remote Control'). Within your Web Browser, be sure to disable all Script restrictions for OSM, else there can be no inter-connection. Then, with JOSM launched, and whilst logged in to your OSM account in a browser, and with the relevant part of the map active (for me at this instance: osm.org/way/55316126), click on the browser Edit drop-down and choose Edit with Remote Control. You can now switch to JOSM and that Way is waiting for you to edit it. Be sure to disconnect the Remote Control facility after use unless you want your computer to (possibly) be open to the internet.

ref:edubase:

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