Diary Entries in English

Recent diary entries

This diary post is inspired by the cleaning up after a task manager task. It shows how to do the clean-up steps for a Divide and map. Now. area.

The data quality matters. The proposal in the Johnwhelan ‘s diary is to run duplicated building script and JOSM validator when an area is finished on the whole area. The rest of his diary deals with how to get the area’s border geometry and the OpenStreetMap data into the JOSM.

Here are the steps to download the area’s geometry and the OpenStreetMap data when using the damn project:

  1. Load the area’s geometry by navigating to the area in the JOSM damn plugin, then click Get area geometry button.

    It’s also possible to navigate to the area in the mappy (web) client, right click on arbitrary square and download area geojson, and open the downloaded file in the JOSM. It’s good idea to right click on the created area.geojson layer and Convert to GPX layer to make it read-only, which is the same result as when using the JOSM damn plugin.

  2. Download the data from Overpass API, which is the second tab on Download map data … dialog. You can get the Overpass query by navigating to the area in the mappy (web) client, right click on arbitrary square and area overpass query. Then copy the query to the JOSM’s Download from Overpass API, Overpass query: field and click Download. Be sure you have enough RAM for big areas.

That’s all. It’s kind of fun I’m writing this diary just few days after my damn project developer’s “annual report”, but I didn’t make it sooner.

Posted by SomeoneElse on 2 January 2022 in English.

One example footpath, shown in blue as flooded

In England, the Environment Agency has an extensive network of river level monitors that are used to provide flood warnings such as (at the time of writing) this one.

However, these alerts tend to be only issued when land or property is likely to flood, and there are many paths that flood much earlier. An example is here, where if the downstream station reads just over 1m, you’ll get your feet wet. The Environment Agency doesn’t issue a warning at that level because it’s well within the normal range, and the river’s still well within the levees that have been provided for it for the last 50 years.

See full entry

Location: Huntington, York, York and North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom

I wrote a blog post to show and explain the many improvements to the “Straßenraumkarte” that Alex @Supaplex030 worked on for the last few month: https://supaplexosm.github.io/strassenraumkarte-neukoelln/posts/2021-12-31-micromap-update

With this public space map for Neukölln, Berlin Alex continues to push the boundaries of the level of detail that can be rendered based on OSM data.

The blogpost shows many interesting details like cycleways, turn lanes and junctions and explains how the data is processed to allow this rendering.

One conclusion is, that a collaboration on pre-processed OSM data for streets would be a huge benefit.


Please use this place here to comment on the blog post.

Posted by Johnwhelan on 1 January 2022 in English. Last updated on 3 January 2022.

In the ideal world all tasks would be validated to a high standard but unfortunately this doesn’t happen.

I’ve seen HOT projects with nearly two thousand duplicate buildings, I’ve seen some with two or three hundred untagged buildings. Some are well mapped and have no errors.

So this a method to clean up after the event. Basically you load up the area into JOSM and run the duplicate building script and JOSM validator. It won’t catch everything but it’s a lot faster than validating each tile. The todo and Mapathoner plugin are required.

select the errors then add them to the todo list and work your way through them.

The key is aoiBBOX”: [6.473334,5.172193,6.870011,5.730142] which is found here: https://tasking-manager-tm4-production-api.hotosm.org/api/v2/projects/10756 for project 10756. You’ll need to search the text to extract it.

You can either feed these coordinates into JOSM and download the area directly or feed them into an overpass query or extract them from an off line version of the map. https://osm-internal.download.geofabrik.de/ is one source. If you work with the off line version you can locate the errors then just directly redownload the tiny bit to ensure the map is up to date before you correct the error.

An example of a .bat file to extract the area from an offline file is osmconvert64 e:\downloads\nigeria-latest-internal.osm.pbf -b=6.473334,5.172193,6.870011,5.730142 -o=f:\maps\nigeria10756.osm Just load nigeria10756.osm as a local file into JOSM.

Note this is not validation since no feedback is given in task manager to the mapper. It is recommended it is used when there are no active mapping taking place so a month or so after the mapping has petered out is a good time.

Posted by qeef on 1 January 2022 in English.

It’s two years since the Divide and map. Now. has been published. I would like to summarize the second year of the development.

What is it about? Divide and map. Now. – the damn project – helps mappers by dividing some big area into smaller squares that a human can map.

Why should I care? Divide and map. Now. is proven to handle a mapathon with 200 mappers. There are four clients available for mappers and multiple mapping workflows. There is deployment guide for admins. You may create new or modify existing areas, use RSS to track areas’ changes, and check abandoned or overlapping areas by Python3 scripts.

In 2021 I’ve refactored the server and load tested it. There is the API documentation that is stable for more than half a year now. The web clients were also refactored: the light is text-only web client for beginners, the panel is for advanced mappers and looks like it’s integrated into the iD editor, and the mappy web client has square-based graphical interface. The web clients include improved statistics that can show OpenStreetMap contributors that haven’t used Divide and map. Now. when mapping in the same area. The damn JOSM plugin was updated to the new API and loads temporary data stored in the server when available.

I’ve got inspired by the Tanga Building Footprints Import, mapping highways’ radars and mirrors, and documented the mapping workflows available in the different clients.

I’ve implemented Python3 client with the scripts to find abandoned or intersecting areas based on the potential HOT tasking manager improvements and looked at the competing HOT Tasking Manager and SimpleTaskManager issues from the damn project point of view.

I’ve created the finished areas read-only service and announced the policy for finished areas.

See full entry

My annual diary post from last year is here, for which the summary of the targets set back then is now:

  • I definitely stayed in the top 10 #osmIRL contributors for the whole year. There was more to that of course, as in 2021 I contributed more mapping days than ever before, missing only 16 out of 365.

  • In August 2021 I reached 200,000 contributions in 60 days, this is the most intense contribution to OpenStreetMap I have ever achieved, and i wrote about that here

  • I undertook “as an extra kick” to build a tool to visual osm for the whole island. This is here, but needs a bit more work, especially a process to keep it up to date. Thanks to Rusty and Amanda for helping plan and execute this.

  • I set myself a “not hard target” of raising my mapillary contributions to 1.5 million. While I did add around another 100k images mapillary changed a load of things about their upload process and web app in the year, making it nigh-on impossible for me to report exact numbers, and also leaving me with an upload queue that I carry into 2022.

  • I met my StreetComplete Target of raising myself to be #3 in Ireland. For most of the year I was #2 with huge early progress in the first #8 months. I am now #3 so this target is achieved.

  • I didn’t clear up all the gaps I mentioned, because a demon keeps asking me to help with bits of rural Ireland. However, I addressed a huge number of gaps in buildings that I didn’t already know about. From now on this task has the gaps and if you feel like helping me jump in there :)

My rating: Looking at these, using mild re-interpretations of the targets I am giving myself 4.5 out of 6. I didn’t fail completely in any area.

See full entry

Location: Botanic Garden, Glasnevin A ED, Dublin, County Dublin, Leinster, D09 VY63, Ireland
Posted by JanetChapman on 29 December 2021 in English.

2021 has been a challenging year in many ways, but Crowd2map’s amazing volunteers have kept on mapping, for which I am extremely grateful.

Over 1000 new mappers joined us, and added a further 15,700 km of roads, an additional 435,000 buildings and over 3,300 schools. This means almost 17,000 volunteers have added over 5.4 million buildings to date. We continue to give feedback and train new mappers via our Slack channel, which anyone interested is welcome to join.

As we approach the year end here are some of our highlights.

Although opportunities for face to face meetings were few, we continued our twice weekly training sessions via zoom and managed to speak at HOT summit and various other online conferences including SOTM Africa, where Herry Kasunga talked about our Health Centre mapping project

We were delighted that many of the groups we have trained were awarded microgrants from OMDTZ in June, and we are continuing to work with them in mapping areas such as child labour at informal mines, school gardens to improve nutrition, and gender based violence projects.

The Digital Champions programme we started in 2019 in Serengeti has now been extended to the neighbouring districts of Butiama and Tarime. There is a FGM cutting season in progress now in Mara and these activists have been vital in protecting the community and the maps necessary to find girls at risk quickly. Cutters continue to escape across the porous border into Kenya, highlighting the need for better mapping and cooperation.

In November we celebrated our 6th birthday, with an amazing range of speakers, as you can see here. The recording is here.

In December we celebrated the graduation of our first cohort of interns. Eight women from Tanzania and 3 other African countries joined us for a 12 week training session with HOTOSM interns, as part of the Everywhere She Maps Youthmapper project.

So thank you to everyone who has helped us in 2021 and Happy Mapping for 2022 and beyond!..

Location: Kyambahi, Serengeti, Mara Region, Lake Zone, Tanzania
Posted by Dannyoung on 27 December 2021 in English.
              MY GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) JOURNEY

I am AKOR DANIEL ENECHOJO, an under graduate student of Geography Department, University of Nigeria Nsukka, a volunteer at humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOTOSM), a member of the YouthMappers, Unique Mapper Network (UMN) and Lion Mappers Team(LMT) Nsukka Chapter. Due to my quest and passion for GIS and it application after my first and second semester GIS courses which I took at my undergraduate course modules, in the year 2020, I enrolled for a GIS training with Mr. Malachi Eze a GIS Expert and I also applied for GIS online courses which sharpen my knowledge of GIS and gave me an in-depth understanding of geospatial application into diverse field. June 2021, I came in contact with Mr. Anointing a GIS expert who introduce me to some tool of GIS, OSM and geospatial analysis during my Industrial Training (internship) at the Nigerian Meteorological Agency Yola –Airport, I undertook some visual training with him (Mr. Anointing) during the training he recommended a visual seminar which I attended, Theme “World Youth Day”, it was so amazing, an eye opening workshop that led me to know about “Unique Mapper Network”, at the cause of the workshop I introduce myself and my interest to join the Unique Mapper Network which I was guided by Mr. Victor N. Sunday ( Team Coordinator) on how to join the team. Due to my passion for OSM, after the workshop I opted for Unique Mapper Network, am happy to be part of the member of organization.

See full entry

Location: Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria
Posted by rene78 on 23 December 2021 in English. Last updated on 15 April 2022.

Recently I have worked a bit on the web app “Latest Changes” (https://rene78.github.io/latest-changes/) in order to make it more mobile-friendly. Hope someone finds it useful.

Quick reminder to the ones of you, who don’t know the app yet. The purpose is to check recent OSM changes within a certain cartographic boundary, for example your home town. It is very simple and powerful:

  1. Open the Latest-Changes web app.
  2. Zoom to the area of interest
  3. Check and validate the changesets of the last 7 days (1 day, 3 days, 1 month).
  4. Bookmark the URL to regularly come back and monitor your area of interest.

The link on top leads to my version of the app. The original one can be found under https://tyrasd.github.io/latest-changes/

Screenshot of "latest changes"

Recently, I added a new category, which shows all heritage protected items (at least those, which are tagged correctly in OpenStreetMap). Additionally, I created a web-application which helps tagging heritage protected items in Austria (and Berlin, Germany). I blogged about this here.

Screenshot of OpenStreetBrowser, showing the "Heritage Protection" category.

On 11 December 2012 LionMapperTeam Nsukka, in collaboration with UniqueMapperNetwork Nigeria, hosted a webinar on Volunteerism and Membership, Talking about Volunteerism a person who works for an organization without been paid for it, because they want to do it. A volunteer is someone who offers to do a particular task or job without been forced to do it. A volunteer Member is a person who is or has been designated by the governing board of an organization and who is faithfully and actually performing volunteer service in that organization. example of a Volunteer Member@ UniqueMapperNetwork, LionMapperTeam, YouthMapperNetwork etc. THE BENEFIT OF VOLUNTEERISM can never be overemphasis it opens opportunities, it Connect you to friends and experts, Create networking, Resume and CV advantage, improve professionalism and develop skills(Soft and Hard skills) expose individual to different skills, give one the advantage of presenting at different summit, workshop, training and seminar.

See full entry

Today been 27 November 2021, I lead a talk with a team of Lion Mapper Nsukka, Nigeria. on the discuss of OpenStreetMap and HOT Tasking Manager as a tool for free open data mapping and it is free user approach for individual and organizations. OSM and HOT came into existence as an open data source due to lack of data availability about a location, on how to solve environmental issue was a challenge in the 80s. Created in 2004 by Steve Coast in the UK, who initially focus on mapping United Kingdom to help in free and widely distribution of data for everyone to use. OSM is a community owned and supported by OpenStreetMap foundation located in England and Wales. OSM provides geographic data with over 2 million users across the world. OSM and HOT Tasking Manager is open for volunteerism, were Mappers and individual can team up to contribute to open data mapping of their community by providing information about an unknown location via mapping (Mapathon) to be known. Volunteers here in OSM and HOT Tasking Manager help to contribute in open data mapping about disaster management and response of a location, were in turn aid disaster response team and organization to have access to that particular location. Data is save in OSM and HOT Tasking Manager database for future use by Government, NGOs and private organization who are thrilled and concern about the human and natural environment in response to any disaster or environmental challenge about a place which require a location based information.

Posted by John Stanworth on 22 December 2021 in English.

Strava has recently published its annual report. Like last year it reports a huge increase in users - globally 2 million people join every month, here in the U.K. 17% of the population now use the app. I can’t find a thank you to OSM mappers in the report but nevertheless I think we can take a lot of the credit for its success. The app and all its runners, walkers and cyclists are dependent on the paths and roads that we have mapped and are still mapping. They must surely be one of the biggest groups of OSM users.