Mary Magdalena’s skull.
Diary Entries in English
Recent diary entries
I used to enjoy making edits on OSM, but now it is so cluttered with every little detail in some areas that you can’t even zoom in to see anything but symbols. I don’t know how to cancel my username. Sorry folks, but I am outta here!
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OSGEO Hokkaido team and SotM Japan team hosted the FOSS4G Hokkaido and State of the Map Japan 2024 in 15th February in Sapporo, Hokkaido.
The idea to organize two related conference was raised by Hokkosha in June 2024 and now is realized.
You can find the record at YouTube
Here is a link to the presentations.
- Web tool for Receipt mapping
- Behind the WeeklyOSM by Hiroshi Miura
- 20 years journey of OSM by AyameO
This is cross-linked from my blog, posted on 11 July 2023
I recently joined the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in moderating their Community Working Group and Tech Working Group’s discussions on AI-Assisted Mapping.
This, in part, was a reminder that I (still!) haven’t published an OSM diary that summarises my MA research, and that publication is still process. But it was also a reminder that I have yet to really summarise or bring together what I have shared so far.
Here’s a short summary:
Moderation: “Perspectives on AI-Assisted Mapping”
- Session 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTtTh6gHEwI
- Session 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfdDV9xSoo
- These two sessions - recorded as hour-long discussions with unrecorded 30 minute discussions at the end, were really interesting (and much-needed!) community spaces for the OSM community. I’m grateful to have been given the trust needed to facilitate, and learned a lot from folks there. Most notably, I think the discussion primarily ended up focusing not on “what we should be building” but what AI means to mappers in the first place (these being very different things)!
Talk: “Crisis Maps, Community, and Corporations (an Anthropologist’s perspective)”
- Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0a84F0pdNU&t=351s
- Slides: Coming soon!
- This was given at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit in 2021 in the form of a talk. It shared some of my initial thoughts around crisis mapping specifically, and citations in that direction. In particular, I focused a bit more on what defines the kinds of crises that become maps, and informational asymmetries within the community.
Talk: “Mapping crises, communities and capitalism on OpenStreetMap: situating humanitarian mapping in the (open source) mapping supply chain”
Some days ago, I searched online for a bus route that was supposed to be newly introduced to go from Kilkenny to New Ross. I didn’t find it, but I found another one which pleased me even more which goes from Kilkenny to Fiddown (ref=891). The reason it pleases me is that the other route is already partly covered by another bus company and I don’t really need it, and the 891 covers a route that goes past several historical sites and at least two hiking routes. Since I don’t drive, I will certainly avail of it myself. I don’t mind organizing myself lifts, and I enjoy the company of my “drivers”, but sometimes it’s good to be more independent. For context, the bus route started on January 20th 2025.
Street-level imagery
So I decided to track it, because I don’t really trust Transport for Ireland’s route maps, and I can’t be sure that they didn’t use proprietary map material to provide the routes online, even though their background map is OSM. But I have seen routes on their website which they seemed to have taken out of thin air which had nothing to do with the actual route the bus takes.
Prerequisites
To follow along with this tutorial, please setup and configure a Oracle Cloud instance for mapillary tools. Please refer to this guide for instructions on how to accomplish this.
Uploading a 360 video to Mapillary on Oracle Cloud instance from ARM computer
- Login to Oracle Cloud Instances.
- Select your Mapillary instance configured from this guide.
- On the top bar, click Start to boot your instance and note any public IP address changes.
- Open Terminal and SSH into your Oracle instance.
ssh -i ~/.ssh/oracle_mapillary_keys/[your private key (not .pub)] opc@[IP Address copied from Oracle]
- Open a second terminal window and copy files from your local machine / SD card / elsewhere to your Oracle instance. This will place the file into the folder on your instance you created during configuration.
scp -i ~/.ssh/oracle_mapillary_keys/[your private key (not .pub)] [/path/to/local/360/file] opc@[IP Address copied from Oracle]:~/mapillary
- Wait for these file(s) to transfer to the Oracle instance and switch back to the instance terminal window. Upload the transferred files to Mapillary.
mapillary_tools process_and_upload ~/mapillary/*.360
- Wait for the upload(s) to complete. Delete the files off the instance and gracefully exit the instance.
rm ~/mapillary/*.360 && exit
- Return to Oracle dashboard on the web, select Stop from the top bar to stop the instance from running while not in use.
Tools Used
- GoPro MAX 360 Camera
- SD Card
- SD Card Reader
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Internet Connection
See also
Installation & Configuration
So I recently started working on adding the features of a local high school into a relations group, but after looking at the docs, I’m not sure I’ve properly understood when or how relations should be used. Could somebody help clarify this?
Well, I’ve just discovered that anybody can edit like it’s wikipedia. So instead of doing homework, I’ve spent several hours fixing little things in my hometown. This is fun.
npm install leaflet react-leaflet @types/leaflet import ‘leaflet/dist/leaflet.css’; import { MapContainer, TileLayer, GeoJSON } from ‘react-leaflet’;
<MapContainer center={[39.8283, -98.5795]} zoom={4} style={{ height: ‘400px’, width: ‘100%’ }} >
<GeoJSON data={stateGeoJSON} style={stateStyle} onEachFeature={onEachFeature} /> </MapContainer>
I used this query in overpass turbo:
[out:xml][timeout:25];
// fetch area “Kildare” to search in
{{geocodeArea:County Kildare}}->.searchArea;
// gather results
(way["highway"="tertiary"]["maxspeed"="80"](area.searchArea);
way["highway"="unclassified"]["maxspeed"="80"](area.searchArea);)->.roads;
// print results
(.roads;>;); out meta;
and loaded it directly into Josm, then replaced 80 with 60, and added maxspeed:type=IE:rural as suggested on the talk-ie list, which I hope will make the difference between “rural” local roads, and those at the edge of urban areas, obvious.
I couldn’t find any exceptions listed by Kildare County Council, so I’m reasonably confident I shouldn’t have scooped up any inappropriately, but do shout if I’m wrong.
My End Goal: Have all the ferries in the world listed in the best possible way on Openstreetmaps!
About Me
I have been a member of OpenStreetMap US for five years, engaged in fostering open data and community collaboration. My first experience with OpenStreetMap was while working in emergency management in 2010 when the Haiti earthquake occurred. As someone trained in disaster response, I watched the events in Haiti unfold and looked for ways to contribute. It was also my gateway into other open data & software communities, such as QGIS and OSGeo, which informed my educational approach during my time at the University of Arizona Libraries.
I helped host the first MappingUSA virtual conference and, in 2022, hosted the State of the Map US conference at the University of Arizona in Tucson, marking the first in-person gathering post-COVID. I currently work at Development Seed, an organization with a long-standing commitment to OpenStreetMap. I drive our team’s community strategy by supporting OpenStreetMap events and engaging with other open geo communities. My background in geospatial technology, open data advocacy, and community engagement equips me with a unique perspective to support and strengthen OSM US.
Advancing OSM US
OpenStreetMap is more than just a map—it is a platform for civic engagement, education, and open collaboration. As a board member, I would focus on:
About Me
Hey folks! I’m Gregory Power (they/them) and I’ve been a part of the map since November 2023. I am currently a Data Scientist (Contractor) for Cary, North Carolina—where I manage Cary’s Open Data Portal and other analytics infrastructure. In my spare time I enjoy learning about urban planning and equitable, multimodal infrastructure. I’m also involved with the Pedestrian Working Group, Government Working Group, and my community’s Strong Towns chapter. I enjoy contributing to the open source geospatial software community, with a soft spot for GDAL, QGIS, GRASS GIS, and DuckDB—so everyone can have the tools to understand the world around them. Even though there’s a great set of tools for us to use, it’s nothing without having an open ecosystem of data.
My Mapping
My first project in OpenStreetMap was tracing plans for Cary’s Downtown Park into OpenStreetMap. With the updated layout, Cary’s Integration and Development Team could have a basemap to put our sensor data on. Once I realized OpenStreetMap data was used by all of our applications across the town and beyond, I was hooked. I enjoy mapping multimodal transportation infrastructure, handicapped parking, and restaurants. I’ve trained team members on conducting field surveys with StreetComplete and captured street imagery with Mapillary.
As a Board Member
It’s important that communities have access to data and the ability to make changes to increase the fidelity of the data. These are the objectives I’d prioritize:
This was harder than I thought it would be. The lesson for re-drawing a road was drag-and-drop. I could not insert an extra node in the Administrative Boundary in order to truncate the triangle.
I had to create a new Administrative Boundary and relate it to the existing boundary. Then delete the node at the top of the old boundary.
Requested review as I’m not sure that is the correct or accurate way to perform the task.
Hello!
I’ve just found out that ~2k out of ~13M relations have no type tag, ~220 of which have the type tag with lifecycle prefix or date namespace suffix, so I’ve decided to review them manually, with the ones with no tags containing the word “type” being the first, correct some mistakes (e.g. missing type=multipolygon) and delete the unnecessary relations (e.g. with duplicate tags). In case I make a mistake, please point it out on OSM Community topic or comment my changesets.
Regards
Kamil Kalata
Panoramax is a rising star at the moment, for OSM, but not only; while Mapillary goes down, sold to Facebook. In my old www.OSMgo.org, the key P showed a Mapillary picture near the actual position in the 3D rendered OSM world. As the API is gone, I replaced it with Panoramax. OSMgo was abandoned by me years ago but the server is still running. As I read more and more about Panoramax, I decided to dig out the old code and use it. First I asked in the Fediverse for help with the API and got a great and fast response, even a good example, thank you all!
There are almost to much pages about it. The real API was a bit hidden but well documented at last. The Idea of decentralised servers but a central directory is great, the Web-UI to see all pictures to. And the API got me a json list of the closest pictures, including a link to the pictures. After researching to define the radius (place_distance) and get the direction of the “shot” (feature.properties[“view:azimuth”]) my old Mapillary could be modified to show the picture in the 3D view and move the camera to see it.
– Em Português
YouthMappers UFRJ Trajectory
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The YouthMappers UFRJ is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Raquel Dezidério Souto (in post doctoral internship), and Prof. Dr. Manoel Fernandes, both from the Laboratory of Cartography, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (GeoCart-UFRJ, Brazil), and was set up to prepare new mappers and develop collaborative mapping research with OpenStreetMap and related programs, involving the community, with members from inside and outside UFRJ, residing in Brazil and in other countries.
The initiative is part of the international YouthMappers network, a project founded by professors from the Universities of Arizona and Texas, with sponsor and support of the USAID (USA). There are currently more than 400 groups in public universities around the world.