The other day I noticed that there’s an absurdly large number of hospitals mapped in certain countries, including doctors’ offices, clinics, dentists’ offices, nursing homes, research institutes, pharmacies, even vets’ offices. Over the course of several days, I cleaned up Bosnia, leaving only true hospitals (i.e. provides inpatient care, consists of several specialized clinics, usually has the word “hospital” in the official name), and retagged everything else as appropriate. Here’s an image of hospitals in the former Yugoslavia with Bosnia cleaned up and the rest left untouched:

(full size)

Maps.me is a good mobile app (Free Software) for navigation and adding Places (POI – Point of Interest) to OpenStreetMap.org

It uses offline data, to provide smooth user experience. OsmContributor, OSMAnd are other few android app, to contribute to OSM by adding POI. But we can feel the lag on navigating the map as they fetch real time data on every move over the map.

Maps.me is super fast. But because it uses only offline data. The maps.me provides updates for the data once in a month or twice.

We can see the POIs added by us. But, when we run a mapathon kind of events, many volunteers will be roaming around a city. Sometimes, they come to a street, where the POIs are added by someone else already.

When you are using maps.me for adding POI, we can not get the POIs added by other volunteers immediately. We have to wait for the updates provided by the maps.me team.

This leads to repeated adding of same POI many times. Even verifying for the same POI using other app is boring.

Checked for the maps.me team for providing options to update the data whenever required. But it is not on their roadmap.

Discussed this with “OpenStreetMap Asia” telegram group. Erwin Olario replied with few ideas.

Maps.me uses mwm format for the data
https://export.hotosm.org/en/v3/exports can export data in mwm format
https://export.hotosm.org/en/v3/learn/export_formats#mwm gives steps on how to download latest data and use with maps.me

All we need now, is a mobile app to download the desired data from hotosm and place in the proper path of maps.me

We can develop this as a separate mobile app and distribute to all.

If this is done, anyone using maps.me can click another app, and update the osm data whenever required.

Reply here / Contact me if you are interested in doing this as a Free/OpenSource Project.

My mail id – tshrinivasan@gmail.com

I have had this account since 2015. Why so few edits in comparison?

I first heard about OSM from my geography advisor in 2015, so I created an account to see what it was. I went to an event to support aid efforts in Nepal. Then I left it alone for a year.

In 2016 I heard about State of the Map US, where I was formally introduced to OpenStreetMap. It was in Seattle near where I went to school, and I took the opportunity to volunteer. The first night I went to a social where the whiteboard said “Women in Technology” and the feeling was eerie. I wasn’t in the Dept. of Engineering at UW, nor was I conditioned to see myself as a STEM major. I talked to the other women there and I was intimidated, to say the least. I spent the conference with an open mind. I managed some of the interactions on the SOTM-US Twitter account as part of my volunteer gig. Mostly I just listened and learned.

The following autumn I changed my geography track to GIS. I wanted to know more about it. There I was, building on GIS I had learned the previous year, finding my path, and designing projects of significance to me. I was finally one of those career woman who spent all night coding and lived on Starbucks. And that was all I could ever want. I was using OpenStreetMap’s data for more of my projects. One in particular, I had to find accessible walkways on my campus and OSM had the best terrain maps for those. Still, I wasn’t making edits like I should, and I wasn’t getting involved out of intimidation.

When I won a scholarship to the next conference by writing about how I utilized OSM, I knew I had to get involved. I talked to more and more people, then I took the plunge and actually started editing on my own. It was great! I was contributing to a program I knew everything about!

Moral of the story: don’t let your own imposter syndrome keep you from trying things out. You can know everything in theory, but the application is most important.

I’m running for OpenStreetMap United States board in the upcoming board elections.

This past year the board worked with the local organizing team to put together a great State of the Map US in Boulder and made progress on hiring an executive director. But I was a little disappointed with how quiet we were in other aspects of the community.

This coming year, I’m looking forward to hiring an excellent executive director so we can rely on a full-time person to help us move forward with some of the tasks OpenStreetMap US has been working towards for years. Supporting and building a community of enthusiastic mappers requires a lot of time and the board has struggled to do it in recent years. As I mentioned in last year’s statement, my hope is that by hiring and supporting a talented individual to help us we can look forward to a stronger community in a shorter amount of time.

I’m also looking forward to finishing off some other important pieces that the board has been working on for quite some time. We have a draft policy that makes our existing habit of supporting mapping parties through food and drink sponsorship clear. I’d like to see us get feedback from the community and vote that into a real policy with a clear way for community members to request reimbursement. We also have similar policies for reimbursing the cost of community tools like Meetup, and for travel to speak about OpenStreetMap at local events. I’d also like to see us revamp our website so that resources like this are more obvious to our community members.

… See full entry

Huh. Didn’t realize I took a 7 day break from mapping. The notes in my OsmAnd [1] are piling up :)

Today I learned that I can map route relations for minibuses (like those Metro feeder buses!) and “share taxis” (or as they’re locally called, “Gramin Seva”). These don’t show up on Google Maps - I hope they give OSM something of an advantage.

It’s funny how, even though public transport is one of my mapping interests, I’ve never yet done the “travel the whole of a bus route with GPS and maybe camera” dance - though of course I recognize that it’s not only (probably) more efficient, but also inevitable. Currently I just map bus stops, note their listed routes in a note=, and add them to bus routes in JOSM. The few bus routes I’ve actually traveled on I mapped ages ago, and even those I cannot claim to know the entirety of. More recently, I’ve started noting down (in OsmAnd) what buses I’ve seen, what their boards say their destination is, and (if I’m near a turn) if or where they turn - this has enriched my work quite a bit.

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Discord is a well-known community server platform. It’s kinda like a newer, more souped-up version of IRC, and it claims itself as a replacement for Skype and TeamSpeak. Does OSM have a Discord server, official or otherwise?

I am carrying out my third year undergrad research project on the humanitarian OSM community. If you saw a questionnaire about motivations and contribution frequency, that was probably me!

I am in the process of writing up, but I am happy to share my data - it’s all in a numbers/excel document so I can’t attach it here but if you’re interested I can email it. If you have any questions about my research please ask me - it’s still quite vague, but it’s basically about contributor motivations and communication between contributors and NGOs. As well as the questionnaire, I conducted some interviews with NGO workers that use OSM data, and I aim to see whether there is some kind of a disconnect between perceived and real effects of the data, as well as whether a potential lack of communication has an effect on mapping frequency (it doesn’t seem to).

It’s a 10 000 word project so I really don’t have scope to include all my data, which is a shame, so if you want to do something with it please do!

Just added first link to Mapillary photo. Looks like it could be useful.

My first foray into editing was adding some house outlines in my neighborhood.

The AI/neural network/deep learning/machine learning wave is ready to touch OpenStreetMap. Modern machine learning algorithms require a lot of data, and we have lots of data. OSM is going to be a natural place that open source, machine learning algorithms development happens.

Exciting and useful machine learning projects are possible today, using only the OSM database. For example, statistical based editor presents, changeset anomaly detection, import changeset detection, and smart auto tag/value suggestions are possible with just the OSM database.

To open things up, we need additional data sources like overhead satellite images. However, satellites and airplanes are quite expensive. Microsoft/Bing and Mapbox purchase a license to use other companies images, such as DigitalGlobe. They are restricted by the upstream license on what they can offer to the OSM community. For example, when Facebook wanted to use machine learning to map all the roads in Thailand they had to purchase a license for the images. The license did allow them to share the images with anybody. The DeepOSM project handled the image issue by using public NAIP images. However, the NAIP images are not ideal for OSM, the resolution is only 1 meter, and coverage is just the US.

Over the past two months, both Microsoft/Bing and Mapbox have completed reviews of their satellite image licensing terms and determined that they are capable of offering their image layers for nonprofit machine learning projects whose goal is to improve OSM. The great news is that if they want to support Machine learning for OSM they can.

Microsoft/Bing has gone ahead and made it official with an email to the talk-us list.

… See full entry

I’m reposting this, since it’s been a long time since I’ve updated the last one.

Probably fine

Still need bus stops and platforms.

… See full entry

This building can only be seen in the Esri imagery and that is from an awkward angle. How do I mark out the outline of this building accurately?

Edit: Building at 53.46, -2.23. Corner of Burleigh Street and Denmark Road

2nd Edit. Guess I should have mentioned. The east half of the building is taller than the west half. That’s where the problem is. Sorry.

Miller Liu editing is very terrible. I’m still doesn’t know what the intention behind his tree deleting actions. Here is the list of his tree deleting changeset in National Taiwan University:

• osm.org/changeset/53688054#map=12/24.9941/121.4810
• osm.org/changeset/53685400
• osm.org/changeset/52682153#map=8/23.856/121.398
• osm.org/changeset/53628628#map=11/25.0297/121.6951
• osm.org/changeset/53630421#map=8/23.995/121.034
• osm.org/changeset/53663846
• osm.org/changeset/53249016#map=14/25.0082/121.5520
• osm.org/changeset/53054444
• osm.org/changeset/50714300
• osm.org/changeset/53196001#map=8/24.231/120.600
• https://osmcha.mapbox.com/changesets/53581600
• https://osmcha.mapbox.com/changesets/53665006
• https://osmcha.mapbox.com/changesets/52818017
• https://osmcha.mapbox.com/changesets/50942593
• https://osmcha.mapbox.com/changesets/52984166

Hello! We just released a new version of OSMCha and we have some new features.

Changeset comments

Based off user feedback, we’ve made changeset comments from OSMCha more flexible.

You can choose to post comments before or after review the changeset, or not at all. You can also set comment templates, so you will have a base text that you can improve before posting. The Review Comment Templates can be edited in your OSMCha user page. We are working to improve this feature, adding the possibility to switch to the discussions tab right after the review is set.

… See full entry

A long time ago when I was starting the mapping in OpenStreetMap, I always wondered how I could see all the changes that have been made in a map in my area or another place where I worked, and have those changes in the JOSM background, and at the same time to make editions or verify according to the objects changed.

OSMCHA + Changeset-map are good tools to visualize the changeset, the plugin is consuming those API services to display the changesets. I am a fan of JOSM for faster editions with the high quality. Having these changesets in JOSM background helps to visualize the changes and edit the objects whether is necessary according to the made changes.

How it works?

Set the map view in the place where you interest, pressed the button Get Changeset in the area, it will get the changeset, you can display more than one changeset.

If you want to display a particular changeset you can set the changeset id in the text field and pressed the button Display changeset

… See full entry

I have just passed 1,000 bus stops (sitting at 1,001) mapped via a project I’m doing, so here’s my first write-up.

What I’m doing

I’m taking a set of pre-planned bus rides to all of SMART’s bus stops. Every last one of them. As I’m doing so, I’m using pen and printed maps to map out the locations of all of SMART’s stops. Then when I get home, I’m doing all of the following:

1. Creating public_transport=platforms for all of the bus stops
2. Creating public_transport=stop_positions for all of the bus stops
3. Adding those to the various route relations I created in the overhaul in December
4. Also adding those to public_transport=stop_areas

What I’ve done so far

One thousand and one stops, including all stops on:

• 125 Fort Street (North Terminal branch only)
• 140 Southshore
• 160 Downriver
• 250 Ford Road
• 275 Telegraph
• 280 Middlebelt South
• 330 Grand River / Beech Daly
• 430 Main Street / Big Beaver

What’s left to go

About 4,400 stops

Next update

Gonna update once every thousand stops

Greetings!

Prague Institute of Planning and Development is an organisation representing the city in spatial planning matters. They publish vast amounts of data through the website Geoportal under CC BY-SA 4.0, including regularly-updated high-resolution aerial imagery of the entire city.

Just over a year ago I noticed that there were some attempts to negotiate a permission to use their imagery for OSM, but the last news from that front was almost a year old. Being the sort of a person who tends to ask questions first and ask questions later, I decided to write them an email to find out what state were the negotiations in.

I listened to their reasons for keeping the data under CC BY-SA 4.0 and a few reassuring emails later I received an email containing the following:

“IPR Praha souhlasí s využíváním ortofotografií, které poskytuje prostřednictvím Geoportálu hl. m. Prahy, za účelem aktualizace a doplňování databáze OpenStreetMap, přičemž vzniklá vektorová data smí být vložena do OSM pod licencí ODbL za předpokladu, že IPR bude uveden v seznamu přispěvatelů do OSM a takto vzniklá data budou mít IPR uveden jako svůj zdroj.”

A simplified translation for the non-Czech-speakers out there:

“[The Institute] agrees with the use of aerial imagery provided through [the website] for OSM. Resulting vector data may be published by OSM under ODbL provided that [the Institute] will be listed among the contributors to OSM and the data will list the appropriate source.”

Needless to say I had the contributors wiki-page edited almost immediately. And so we got ourselves some very shiny imagery to use.

… See full entry

Hallo,

I am located in china at present. I want to view the map from china. But it is only in chinese characters available. How to switch it into western characters?

Thank you!

Normally SEO firms are accused of adding garbage to OSM. The worst offender, what I refer to as “SEO Updated” is a prolific firm adding poorly tagged companies. Fro the week of Jan 28th through February 3rd, SEO Updated added 27 businesses. The only good news it that they only seem to operate on weekdays. I believe DWG is fully aware of their operation.

Another offender came to my attention. This SEO firm, Milestone Inc. in Santa Clara, CA. is not only adding poorly tagged companies but they are deleting existing building outlines with some of the same information they are adding, but only as a node. Like SEO Updated, each business has their own user name in almost the exact same format. Another similarity, they don’t respond to changeset comments or messages.

Their Operations VP has not responded to my messages nor has one of their customers, Best Western Hotels. So today I’m going on Twitter to shame them into responding. I could use your help. Please retweet or post your own to @milestonemktg. Please use the hashtag #DestructiveSEOedits.

Clifford

I wrote an overview about route planning with OSM:

http://jakobmiksch.eu/post/openstreetmap_routing/