Background

CGP Grey made a video about this issue.

Ellis Island (and Liberty Island, formerly called “Bedloe’s island”) sits on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. New York was quite territorial over the river, claiming the entire river as New York territory, such that New York claimed that even New Jersey’s piers belonged in New York’s jurisdiction. New York and New Jersey agreed to a compact in 1834, which set the proper boundary, as one might expect, down the center of the river and bay. The compact also set the other interstate boundaries around Staten Island and into Raritan Bay.

This is the southernmost portion of New York City, which is also the southernmost part of New York City. The New Jersey border is highlighted:

… See full entry

Dear all,

Today, v5.2.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default stylesheet on the OSM website) has been released. Once changes are deployed on the openstreetmap.org it will take couple of days before all tiles show the new rendering.

Changes include:

• Add rendering for man_made=goods_conveyor (#4102)
• Tunnel style rendering of waterway=canal with tunnel=flooded (#4087)
• Remove rendering of residential, unclassified, cycleway, path, track highway areas (#4096)
• Remove rendering of protect_class = 7, 24, 97, 98, 99 boundary=protected_area features (#4113)
• Move place=square to amenity-points layer with placenames text style from z17 (#4085)
• Change wetland pattern initial zoom level back to z10 (#4094)
• Render bare_rock pattern from z13, same as shingle and scree (#4072)
• Restore admin-text rendering for admin_level 3 to 5 (#4126)
• Move aerialways and amenity-line layers text labels to text-line layer (#4107)
• Fix python3 installation for Docker (#4125)

Thanks to all the contributors for this release, including @owahltinez (Oscar Wahltinez), a new contributor.

For a full list of commits, see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/compare/v5.1.0…v5.2.0

As always, we welcome any bug reports at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues

Just to show how forward-reaching & intelligent the Irish are! You will find the OSM map in use at the extreme bottom of this Contact page for Hazelwood College, Newtownabbey, County Antrim:

• https://www.hazelwoodcollege.co.uk/contact-us/

It is a remarkably complicated set of <div>s which, at it’s heart, makes use of 4 x .png images to draw the map. It looks very professional (well done NI mappers!).

…and this map at the bottom of Hazelwood Primary School Contact page (just like buses, huh?):

• https://www.hazelwoodips.co.uk/contact-us

**10 May update:
Having moved on to the HU (East Riding of Yorkshire) postcode, the 5th school I map shows an OSM map at the bottom of the page; hoorah!:

• https://www.northferribyprimaryschool.co.uk/

5 or more occasions each day currently I go hunting through JOSM imagery looking for road roundabouts. I’m not completely mad; they are the best way (short of making GPS tracks whilst personally surveying) to correct the Imagery offsets for Bing & Esri satellite photos.

The above has happened so frequently lately during this Lockdown period (not being able to go out & survey) that I’ve become utterly obsessed with them, spending half the day, on one occasion, hunting out grass-filled roundabouts to map.

I’m currently mapping schools in Northern Ireland, and the Irish have just a bare fraction of the number & variety of road roundabouts that we English have. However, what I have observed them to have is large road-enclosed circles within their fields. Don’t believe me? Well, I’ve observed more than one. Here is the latest, which I mapped (due south of Downpatrick):

• osm.org/way/801402080

What on earth is that about?

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has launched the latest software version 4 of Tasking Manager. It comes with a number of enhancements that will improve users’ experience of collaborative mapping in OpenStreetMap. You can check it out now on the HOT Tasking Manager or watch this video to see it in action and what has changed.

Tasking Manager has evolved: technically and visually. Guided by our community of users, who participated in our user experience discovery, and the HOT tech team listened. We have redesigned and enhanced our user interface using state of the art programming libraries.

What is Tasking Manager?

The Tasking Manager is the most popular application to coordinate mapping in OpenStreetMap. It enables anyone, anywhere in the world to team up with others and contribute to the map. The Software is being built by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) together with a vibrant Free Software community.

A new approach, a new experience:

… See full entry

I set out to use the rapid.ai interface to quickly bring in building data into openstreetmap and I’ve achieved the goal I sent out for. The greater majority of Anchorage buildings have been added.

Along the way I’ve added trails, schools, HOAs and apartment complexes and more features.

I’ll still add things here and there but I’m going to relax the speed and vigilance I’ve done to add features since I’ve accomplished the goal I set out for.

The city had announced their preference to award the contract to the last company that did it. But another company filed an objection. No time to re-tender before the leaves open, so the project is canned for this year.

Who am I?

I am Rahul, a Computer Science undergraduate student from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India. I am interested in writing code and solving problems.

My preferred type of vacation is a trek. My college is on the western coast of India. We have a splendid view of the beaches, that’s why I go cycling once a month😅 (sometimes more than that).

Interesting fact: Most of my projects in 2019 included music in some or the other form. In 2020, my ventures have been towards Maps.

How did I come across OSM?

In February, I was at a 36-hour hackathon with a team of 3. Our idea involved maps. It was our first time working with Maps, and we decided to use Google Maps API and started with the app.

We implemented with most of the functionality without facing significant hurdles. When we decided to improve the app and involve a few more features, billing struck us hard. We did not have enough time to set up APIs that required billing. I was searching for alternatives. That’s when I first came across OSM. It was too late at that point to switch, so we ended up not using it.

GSoC’20 Project: Add search suggestions on openstreetmap.org.

The complete project proposal can be found here.

OSM’s main search engine Nominatim can not directly support search suggestions for partially written words. Thus, we aim to set up a database to handle suggestions. Moreover, this database needs to meet the following functional requirements:

1. It should be derivable from the Nominatim DB.

2. It should handle various input languages.

3. It should be regularly updatable.

The following are a few non-functional requirements:

1. Accurate suggestions.

2. The Database should be as small as possible.

3. The service should not be overwhelmed by the requests.

… See full entry

I’m astonished at the quality of Herts. schools and, so far, all in close proximity to Ware.

This is a 400 acre site for a co-educational, Catholic college originally established in 1568. It was founded on that date in Douai, France, as a seminary to train priests and (later) also a Catholic school for boys. It transferred to the current site in England in 1793 to escape the depredations of the French Revolution. Girls from the adjacent Poles Convent were first admitted into the Sixth Form in 1975, and the College became fully co-educational in 1986.

St Edmund’s uses the founding date to claim their school as “the oldest Catholic School in England”.

I’m hoping to be able to construct a relation of all the site features, as with Haileybury and Imperial Service College, and have left a message on their answerphone. I’ll bring this little missive up to date if they respond.

Ermine Street

I seem to keep mentioning in these diaries schools that are close to Ermine Street.

… See full entry

This is now the 5th month since I began mapping schools as something useful to do during this wretched Covid-19 Lockdown period. 1,000s of schools updated with both Address & Contacts tags, and still I’m having problems with the Operator tag (the second item in the Preset).

Shortly after starting the mapping I got (rightly) slapped around the face by someone butt-hurt because I had wrongly mapped a school Operator that he had previously mapped, but he could not tell me the correct operator for that school anymore than I could tell it. Clearly, I should have left it blank rather than guessing. I thought in my innocence that, after some more experience, I would learn to know where to find the school operator. That hasn’t really happened. Hence this Diary entry.

These are the types of schools that I’ve currently come across (below), plus my best estimate of the operator to use. Do not hesitate to pitch in if you believe me to be wrong or know the operator:–

… See full entry

I’ve added a new page to the switch2osm guide: “Manually building a tile server (20.04 LTS)”. At the same time, the old “with packages” instructions has been retired from the list as that depended on Ubuntu 14.04, which has now dropped into Extended Maintenance.

Ubuntu 20.04 (“Focal Fossa”) has now been released. There are actually very few changes from the 18.04 version - mostly just updated versions of software (including postgres 12). Following these instructions shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours for small areas - the longest period of the setup is waiting for the shapefiles used by the style to download.

As before, the page is designed to be “the least you need to do” to get a rendering server working to create tiles like the ones that you see at openstreetmap.org. If it still sounds a bit complicated, don’t forget that you can try things out with Docker very quickly - and that should work anywhere that Docker is supported.

I’m working on mapping our Minneapolis neighborhoods. My approach is to map one neighborhood at a time. I initially started with random edits around my house, but have decided to intensely cover a a specific neighborhood until it is finished.

Here’s my definition of finished:

• confirm all roads and alleys
• add all sidewalks
• add all houses, apartments, garages, and buildings
• add addresses to all houses, apartments, buildings
• add businesses, churches and schools

Here’s my editing approach:

1. Add or adjust all buildings and label them as houses, apartments, garages, etc as best as I can tell
2. Print out a survey sheet
3. Walk the survey sheet and collect addresses, business church and school names and a take photos of signs with hours or other details
4. Add address numbers and other details to the entities

I’m finding that adjusting everything BEFORE taking the survey and entering details really speeds up my process. Changing from data entry to making building adjustments takes more time.

What do you think?

8452 - COVID-19 - Sangarara, 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 hour mapping buildings and roads.

https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Sarsai_City_Bus_Stand

Sarsai City Bus Stand Is A Bus Depot Sarsai Nawar, Bharthana Uttar Pradesh India

From: 內政部地政司全球資訊網 ll2@land.moi.gov.tw
Subject: 意見信箱-回覆通知
Date: Fri, 01 May 2020 09:43:35 +0800

積丹尼 先生(小姐) 您好：

　　您於 109年04月23日 寄給本司的電子郵件，提及 北屯路過界疑點為例， 追查怎麼有差異1事 一事，茲，答覆如下：

　　早年為配合國土資訊系統基礎環境建置需求，本司前於88年至92年間將行政區域界線展繪於膠片圖上分送各直轄市、縣(市)政府及鄉(鎮、市、區)公所查對確認，並作為93年至96年間編印各級行政區域圖之基礎圖資。其後為解決部分行政區界不一致問題，本司復於102年起委託國土測繪中心協助辦理行政區域界線清查及釐整更新工作，並完成圖資向量成果產製。

　　經查本司95年所出版臺中市北區、北屯區之行政區域圖界線，係當時2區公所查對確認，迄今亦無變動，且與國土測繪圖資服務雲109年3月之鄉鎮市區界線圖層之界線一致。至於您所提門牌為臺中市北區北屯路28-1號之建物，其實際位置卻坐落於臺中市北屯區 行政區域圖內之疑義，宜由臺中市政府查明情況後，並依據相關規定辦理門牌號變更或行政區域調整作業。

以上答復，供您參考，(希望能有助於解決您的問題)，您若仍有其他疑問或不明瞭之處，歡迎隨時來電洽詢，感謝您的來信。

案件編號：1090479384181
本案聯絡人員：呂建興
聯絡電話：02-23565279
敬祝　身體健康　萬事如意
內政部地政司　敬啟

I’ve been an editor for many years but I’m not too prolific. I’ve done schools, churchs, streams, and corrections to directionals on roads when they’ve led me astray. Two of my favorite additions are two high schools in the Ceres Unified School district: Ceres High School and Central Valley High School. Another entry that I enjoyed was the significantly revised interchange at SR99 and Pelandale Avenue in Modesto, CA.

The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic is changing everything.

… See full entry

Discussion on insufficient attribution of OpenStreetMap, in particular by large data users, has been a hot topic in the OSM community for quite some time and the OSMF has not only been fairly slow in taking substantial actions on this (to some extent understandable because of other urgent matters but overall this has been dragging on way too long) - most of their work on that has so far been centered around policy drafts largely influenced and even written by corporate lobbyists of exactly those data users that often fail to provide appropriate attribution.

As an attempt to provide a counterweight to that i have tried to summarize what seem to be the basic expectations of the hobby craft mapper community regarding attribution as they have manifested in discussions over the past few years. It is my hope that this will either help bringing the OSMF back on the ground of the interests and expectations of the hobby craft mapper community that forms the backbone of OpenStreetMap or - in case that fails - provides a starting point for alternative guidance on attribution that is not dominated by short term corporate interests.

The document is also available on the wiki.

Community attribution advice

This document is an attempt to summarize the expectations the OpenStreetMap hobby craft mapper community has for OSM data users regarding the attribution required by the OpenStreetMap license.

In line with the general culture of OpenStreetMap it does not try to provide firm and inflexible corset of step by step instructions how to attribute but instead gives advise on how the community views attribution and allows data users to meet these expectation under their own responsibility.

… See full entry

Seems as if I never wrote a diary entry on 14.1 that has been available for a couple of months now. The release notes can be found as always on the Vespucci documentation site.

Obviously version 15 is quite far along at this point and major parts of the work have already been completed. In particular the migration to the AndroidX libraries and re-targeting for Android API 29 have been finished and, as a consequence, support for Android versions before 4.0 has now been completely dropped.

I’m not planning on adding major new functionality in this release, after major internal changes a shake-down period tends to be required due to device specific issues that are only exposed when the app gets actual use. Changing too much just compounds that. There are however a number of small changes (for example indicating the number of pending changes for upload on the main menu bar) and performance improvements, that will make the user experience more pleasant.

Work on the release can be followed in the Vespucci github repository.

… See full entry

As some people have noticed last week I edit lots of Asda stores across the UK. I have been adding branch specific contact:website as well as brand data (brand=Asda brand:wikidata=Q297410 brand:wikipedia=en:Asda). The stores that didn’t already have address data, now should have data provided by FHRS Open Data.

Across the way I’ve made some mistakes, when I started I was also adding brand social media (contact:facebook=https://www.facebook.com/asda/ contact:twitter=@asda). trigpoint pointed out this is wrong because some (most?) Asda branches have there own social media accounts that would be more accurate, and user agents can still get the brand accounts via wikidata.

Throughout this project I have been prioritising adding the the specific webpage rather than a generic homepage. This has multiple benefits.

• The most obvious being users get precise data when they click the link.
• Another benefit is that the Asda website supports microdata, to publish metadata.
  • User agents can use this data to get more up to date or missing data than OSM provides, even though relatively few Asda stores have contact:phone that data is now available and can be used. The same goes for opening_hours, addresses and even the GeoCoordinates.
  • Mappers can use it similarly to improve OSM.
  • Data scientists can now easily compare OSM data to Asda data.

While doing this I was careful not to use data from the Asda website, due to copyright concerns. So I ignored opening_hours and contact:phone, this data is valuable and I would love for it to be in OSM but I didn’t want to compromise OSM. For addresses I used another source, FHRS Open Data, it is an amazing data set and in my opinion every OSM mapper in the UK should know about it. Using it in OSM has some awesome benefits.

… See full entry