I edited an area where I grew up and frequently return. I chose to focus on some features in this area, as I figured some would be missing or incorrect due to fewer resources to investigate them and their lower priority given the town’s smaller size. I decided to start with elements I knew were recent in the town, such as the opening, closing, or rebranding of businesses. Then I moved into land-use elements, as some areas were assigned to a broader category when a more specific use could be assigned. I updated some other features as well, like microfeatures in Murphy Park and Canada Post mailboxes, but I mainly focused on businesses and updating the elements around them. I learned that, in OSM, you can get a lot more detail on land use in an area, which I thought was a really nice feature. One of the challenges for me was finding the aforementioned resources. If I had not frequented this area, it would be difficult for me to understand what to update or add, as the larger mapping services are also outdated. I foresee this as a challenge with OSM: without someone in a small town committed to making changes, they will slowly lag behind the already slow giants in the industry.

The areas I mapped are familiar to me, so I was able to add new things that haven’t been marked on OpenStreetMap before. The most important thing about OpenStreetMap, to me at least, is how much contribution is needed to keep everything accurate and up to date. There were some edits in that area that were made 15 years ago, some that haven’t been modified to accurately display the area (under LuLu’s Variety, the block of houses is labelled as a park 15 years ago, when it isn’t a park now). The most challenge I had while editing was trying to accurately name certain buildings. For example, Itec Equipment is a building material supply store, but there weren’t any labels like “Supply Store” or “Building Supply Store”; the best I could label it with was “Rural Supplies Store, but I’m not sure if that is accurate.

For this OpenStreetMap activity I focused on adding and improving features in an area I am familar with. I contributed information based on places I know, such as my University campus, which made the mapping process both meaningful and interesting to me. I think it is very important to share accurate and local information in OSM, because small details can make a big difference. I also noticed that some information around my area is outdated or incomplete, so in the future I would like to contribute more.

Paused due to seasonal work. I’ll get back to this at some point January.

I seem to have started on the questionable task of adding all the bus routes in Halifax.

I’ve been grabbing the route description from the Halifax Transit website, creating the route relations via Id and then adding to the relation with OSM Simple Route Editor. (I’d prefer to use OSM Relatify, but it seems to take a while to notice that the relation has been created or is having some other issue.) I have been using Relatify to verify that the route is correctly ordered and connected. I have also used the sort feature in JOSM “PT Assistant” plugin to deal with grumpy route alignment.

I have been doing inbound and outbound legs of the bus route as separate routes to avoid the complications from using the same way twice. In the case of the 1, they were already split like that with a master route that joined the two which seems rather elegant. But, it may be worth seeing if there is a way to join the halves together after the fact.

Here’s the overpass-turbo query I cobbled together to find current OSM routes (it mostly worked):

[out:json][timeout:25];
// gather results
(
  relation["type"="route"]["route"="bus"]["network:wikidata"="Q14875719"]({{bbox}});
  relation["type"="route"]["route"="bus"]["operator"="Halifax Regional Municipality"]({{bbox}});
  relation["type"="route"]["route"="bus"]["network"="Halifax Transit"]({{bbox}});
);
// print results
out meta geom;

So far I have found these routes either in OSM or via the current list of route descriptions:

… See full entry

Some news and visions about topic focused contribution monitoring capabilities of Podoma software

Podoma platform

For more than 6 years, former ProjetDuMois platform now Podoma was used to plan, encourage and monitor “Projects of the month” by French community (and some other countries too). It has been a significant progress for people responsible of those very short projects as it has freed us from the hassle of counting changesets and provides a mappers-friendly customized editor.

… See full entry

Bank and ditch

Preliminary

This is a provisional report about a future proposition for specific tags for the following types of banks and ditches:

• bank and ditch barrier
• hedge and ditch barrier
• fossé bordier
• talus
• old way (e.g. Tiense Groef)

About bank and ditch



Bank and ditch or hedge and ditch are man made earthworks in the landscape. All have a historic interest as being the landmark for present and past administrative boundaries. They were used to limit lands, parish, communes, forests, etc.

… See full entry

I’m raising funds to purchase the historic 1:50,000 topographic map series of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), so I can preserve and share them online as a seamless, zoomable mosaic - free for everyone.

In 2008 I successfully raised £1000 to acquire the equivalent series for Namibia (South West Africa). You can explore that project here: https://namibia-topo.openstreetmap.org.za/

Donate and more information: https://www.gofundme.com/f/purchase-historical-eswatini-topographic-maps

This is the story of how the cycling association measured streets in Bruges and got what they wanted - a cycling zone - 5 years after the initial campaign…

The setup

First some belgian road law. One of the peculariaties of Belgian is that we have the concept of a ‘cyclestreet’. This is a street where cars are not allowed to overtake cyclists - one of the tools to make cities more liveable. A cycle zone is similar, except that it is about multiple streets. It needs different traffic signs and is in effect until the “end of cycle zone”-traffic sign.

The cycling association of Bruges wanted a cycling zone in the entire city center. To force this, they devised a plan using a different law. The Belgian road code says that cars are not allowed to overtake a cyclist if the space between a cyclist and the car would be less then 1 meter.

In other words, if the cycling association could prove that most of the streets in Bruges are too small to legally overtake cyclists anyway, that would be a good starting point to force a cycle zone in the city. In practice, it would make the already existing situation more explicit.

Enter OpenStreetMap

As such, the local cyclist association asked me to help them in 2020, in the middle of the corona lockdowns.

I did create a custom version of StreetComplete to ask for the street width (a quest that StreetComplete would officially add about a year later).

And, as such, we got out into the city and, armed with a laser measurement device, took the width of every street in the historic center - a perfect activity to do during the corona lockdowns.

To display the information, I setup a custom map theme on MapComplete (which was quite young as well) to show the widths of the streets.

Using the measured width, parking and sidewalk information, MapComplete can automatically determine which streets are to small to officially overtake a cyclist.

… See full entry

When I was using JOSM tonight, the satellite imagery shown on my screen reminded me of something.

It reminded me of a simulation game I loved playing several years ago : SimCity 4.

… See full entry

My morning walks got replaced by Car driving lessons.

I turn on my GPS and go for driving and after returning I upload the traces to OSM.

I am wondering other than uploading the GPS traces, is there any other way I can utilize my local knowledge to contribute to OSM.

I’m honored to begin my journey as a 2025 Fellow with the Open Mapping Advocacy Network (OMAN) under the HOT Open Mapping Hub – West and Northern Africa (WNAH). Over the years, I have actively contributed to the open mapping ecosystem through OpenStreetMap Sierra Leone and YouthMappers, as a 2023 YouthMappers Leadership Summit Fellow and 2023–2024 YouthMappers Regional Ambassador for West Africa and a Trainer, OSM Sierra Leone. These experiences have shaped my passion for leveraging geospatial technology as a tool for sustainable development, data-driven decision-making, and youth empowerment.

I applied to join the OMA Fellowship because I deeply believe in the transformative power of open data and participatory mapping to promote inclusion, community actions, and resilience. The OMAN Learning Initiative provides a meaningful opportunity to expand my skills in course design, open mapping advocacy, and community engagement, while collaborating with my co-fellow to co-create impactful learning resources that empower local mappers and communities across West Africa. Together with my co-fellow Jimerveille Thierry-Ngouama, we’ll be co-developing the course “Open Mapping for City Management and Planning.” This learning initiative explores vital and practical themes such as: -Open Data for Sustainable Cities -Informal Settlement Mapping -Disaster Preparedness and Resilience -Disability Assessment and Accessibility Mapping -Revenue Generation and Urban Innovation These themes strongly resonate with challenges faced across West African cities, where limited access to reliable geospatial data often hinders effective governance and urban development. Open mapping offers a powerful and practical pathway to strengthen urban planning, disaster risk management, and inclusive infrastructure design ensuring that no community is left behind.

… See full entry

About me

A geospatial tools and technologies enthusiast from the Republic of Congo. First, a chapter’s Vice-President of YouthMappers de l’Université DENIS SASSOU-N’GUESSO, before serving as a Technical YouthMappers Regional Ambassador. Now, more than pleased to shape the future of Open Mapping within the North and West African region as a Content and Community Engagement Fellow at the HOT WNA Open Mapping Hub.

How did I end up here?

Having witnessed the power of Open Mapping, I am dedicated to raising awareness around it and its related tools and technologies. So, when I heard about the Open Mapping Advocacy Network (OMAN) Learning Initiative, I felt excited to dive into it. More interestingly, the selection process to become a fellow in this program was one of the best experiences I have had. Indeed, no interview for shortlisted, the selection team directly provides us task to complete, linked to what is expected of us and what we are supposed to be doing once selected. This process taught me a great deal about situational thinking and problem-solving.

According to my view, why is open mapping so important?

Open mapping is neither just about freely available online maps for getting from place A to B nor collaborative mapping projects anyone can join. It’s really about democratizing locational knowledge for facilitating decision making, helping problem solving, and supporting one’s geographic experience. The reason why the course under development is titled “Open mapping for sustainable cities” and will be subdivided into five (05) modules, emphasizing an introduction and four (04) mapping thematic as follows: informal settlements, disaster management, disability assessments, and revenue generation.

---

A propos de moi

… See full entry

this is just a little page for me to keep some of my Ultra experiments, will write more when time allows

FPAS replica map with custom colours for MetService

A few days ago I found what appears to be a criminaly underviewed video (currently with 81 views) about imagery interpretation. I almost cannot believe I hadn’t seen it up untill now. It’s breif, contains many of the points I’d write to others about, and there’s next to nothing which I dissagree with. A wonderful addition to my feedback toolbelt.

I want to give this video a signal boost in all relevant mapping channels, since it’s a fantastic resource which can help contributors improve their imagery interpretation. An Introduction to Aerial Imagery for New Mappers

The video is titled for beginers, but the fundamentals don’t change; check it out!

If you are like me, you like things fast. Hobbits aren’t know for this, but we Mappins a little different you know…. more to come.

Dear Bilbo,

What a calamity! Just this morning, I attempted to properly document Sandyman’s Mill in OpenStreetMap—you know, the watermill where they grind all the Shire’s grain—and I discovered to my absolute horror that OSM has no proper tagging schema for Shire watermills! Oh, they have man_made=watermill for those dreadfully generic watermills elsewhere in Middle-earth, but nothing that captures the essential hobbitish details: the number of grinding stones, the undershot versus overshot wheel configuration, or most importantly, the weekly flour production capacity (measured in seed-cake equivalents, naturally). I sat there at my mapping desk, GPS coordinates at the ready (SY 1234 5678, if you must know), completely flummoxed—rather like the time Bilbo tried to explain his Elvish poetry to the Gaffer. Looks up with determined gleam in eye

I realize I must take matters into my own furry-footed hands! If the wider OpenStreetMap community hasn’t created proper specifications for Shire watermills, then by the Green Dragon’s best ale, I shall create them myself.

“By Elbereth! A proper preset definition for hobbit watermills!” I exclaimed, nearly spilling my tea over the JSON structure before me. This beautifully formatted file would let any mapper document our mills properly—but first, I needed Sam’s expertise to determine which fields truly mattered. Next: I rush to Bag Shot Row, waving my GPS device at a bewildered Sam in his garden!

This is the json object that same and I came up with.

… See full entry

Mapped a new bit of The Meadoway this morning. It’s not quite open yet so there are construction gates (TIL they’re called barrier=hampshire_gate). I will have to remember to remove them when the trail opens (December, they say).

As this is likely to be one of the very few ways with road_marking:colour=blue, I want to show people that it really does: (or if that didn’t work: →).

I really should add a relation for The Meadoway, but I use iD and relation editing happens for other people. This new path should probably be part of the Gatineau Corridor Recreational Trail and Trans Canada Trail - Toronto relations, but probably shouldn’t be part of the Pan Am Path relation since this was built more than a decade after the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games.

GPS Trace: 2025_10_21_07_47_571.gpx

Changeset: 173584061

We (Teritorio.fr) publish an approach and an implementation of a strategy to reconstruct OpenStreetMap object history at a semantic et geospatial level, beyond the technical object history.

It should help to review the OpenStreetMap changes. It supports geometrical and also semantical OSM object spiting or semantic concept moved from one objet to an other.

A demo is available online https://teritorio.github.io/openstreetmap-logical-history-component/

And the the code is open source : https://github.com/teritorio/openstreetmap-logical-history

The full story on

• Github https://github.com/teritorio/openstreetmap-logical-history/blob/master/doc/OSM-Logical-History-From-technical-diffs-to-reconstructed-semantic-object-history.md
• the same, on Medium https://medium.com/@frederic.rodrigo/osm-logical-history-from-technical-diffs-to-reconstructed-semantic-object-history-eea089a6d72e

When processing places of worship for the National Crisis Center (Belgium), I run into the problem that it’s quite hard to filter just “significant” places of worship from OSM. We’re interested in places where it’s likely that regular services take place, or that get regular crowds (e.g. weddings & funerals). But it’s hard to remove all the little wayside crosses or chapels that are just not relevant because their tagging is too limited.

uMap with all the places of worship that could not be classified

To do so, we start from all places with amenity=place_of_worship. For our search area (Belgium + areas we have projects in + a buffer), that give us about 45.000 locations.

My initial strategy was to then exclude “obviously small places”. There’s three tags we can use for that:

… See full entry

Some people are confused about neis-one “Type?” badge below “Discussed changesets” section. So what It’s actualy mean?

There are simple and easy criteria for both secions. First one how many changesets user have and secound is how many mapping days contributor have collected.

Chngesets (left section)

• Fewer than 25: Hit-and-Run
• 25 to 99: Newbie
• 100 to 1,499: Casual Mapper
• 1,500 to 2,999: Great Mapper
• 3,000 to 5,999: Heavy Mapper
• 6,000 to 9,999: Super Mapper
• 10,000 to 14,999: Legendary Mapper
• 15,000 to 59,999: Fantastic Mapper
• 60,000 to 99,999: Mega Mapper
• 100,000 or more: Epic Mapper

Activity categories by number of active days:

• Fewer than 15: Rarely Active
• 15 to 39: Regularly Active
• 40 to 79: Active
• 80 to 169: Very Active
• 170 to 269: Highly Active
• 270 or more: Mega Active