In the SOTM Latam 2017 Perú, I realized that we are all very disconnected, that each community is doing its own things and that it’s really necessary to strengthen and rebuild our map together, show to each other what we are doing to see each other advances and have the strength to spread the voice in our environments and countries and can spread the OSM technology and tools around it and what can be achieved whit this tools that is very powerful and is still very unknown.

Creating this video to promote fundraising, I researched the communities in Latam and began an approach to motivate us to better organize ourselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdETKQGGIPY&feature=youtu.be

Campaign Link https://vaki.co/vaki/osmcoytupale

Last year I motivate my team to send a proposal to HOT Microgrant they don’t talk or write in English often and they have a discomfort getting out of the bubble but I encourage them, this work is all about Territorial arrangement plans. I think this is the most important field where to work right now in Colombia because many municipalities don’t even have a map to create this plan that is mandatory.

Sometimes I feel That I’m doing all this outside networking alone, but it worth it, because I feel more connected to the Latam community and I want to contribute to visualize not only the Colombian community work, also the Latam community work and contribute to the succession that is happening, the people that begin this process 10 years ago are tired, busy or disconnected they give us the most powerful basis now I want to help empower youngers and consolidate the work, the portfolio and connections .

At the beginning of the process with the HOT Microgrant, I as microgrant lead and head of communications, began to make connections, this was my first alert about my role in this process, questions about what happens with the contacts I make personally on behalf of the foundation, and how to leave a good detailed record that can be accessed by any member if needed, also as we began to receive technological equipment, such as GPS, cell phones, projectors and elements for the drone I began to think about how to make a detailed inventory and put this equipment at the service of the community with a loan protocol and a person in charge of each equipment with their contact details.

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I present in Perú a game methodology and the achievement with indigenous, farmers and social leaders in rural areas and the importance of being using these tools in the post-conflict process that Colombia is living.

Social Media https://twitter.com/Cyberjuan/status/936674894481203200 https://twitter.com/piligab/status/936721573473644544 https://twitter.com/Cyberjuan/status/936724959434498048 https://twitter.com/osmpe/status/936720754325962752

Presentation https://slides.com/julianahdiaz/maperos-campesinos

I create a methodology called Pioneers Social and community Mappers that help us build the bridge with the most remote places in the country working with indigenous, farmers and social leaders in rural areas learning JOSM, fieldpapers, osmtracker, even QGIS for printed maps.

Spanish Post https://blog.openstreetmap.co/I13e00b253e58ecc587daa6134cfb7934

Summary of work with indigenous communities https://blog.openstreetmap.co/ie774b70ed48054130665080e2fc400ab

Summary of work with countryside people https://medium.com/@fosm/maperos-campesinos-cart%C3%B3grafos-sociales-y-comunitarios-78b0fd075ddd

From time to time, people point to weird situations they encountered in their mapping. I’m going to collect some of these in this diary entry (and comments).

Traffic signs

In a discussion about traffic signs, the German forum mentions a node with a German traffic sign in France (on a track leading to Germany). As you can see, the reason is a track that starts on the French part but the only destination is back to Germany.

2018: I led a project that was awarded a HOT Microgrant to develop Territorial Arrangements Plans in rural areas together with local governments and communities, overcoming many challenges and learning valuable lessons.

2017: Start the program Social and Community cartographers with OSM And open software tools in Partnership with an NGO. I design the gamificación methodology call Pioneers Program and during this year I work in workshops with three main groups between farmers(countryside) people, indigenous people, and social managers in some of the most representatives places of post-conflict in Colombia.

2016: I meet the OpenStreetMap Foundation in Colombia #FOSM and the Humanitarian Mapping Unit #UMH, I began to work with them, my expertise in graphic design and anthropology help me to address the areas in which I can contribute.

• At the same time I meet the tool Tupale.co that allow create maps with information that looks like pretty close to what I’ve been looking build and I begun to participated updating the interface, the user experience, the layout, applying my acquired knowledge in HTML, CSS and javascript, learning PHP because this tool is built in this language.

2015: I work with Javascript community in Medellín co-organizing the main meetup and JsConf conference in Colombia for two years and leading a group designed for empower women and give them trust to embrace the challenge of participating proactively in traditionally male sectors and groups.

• During this period I advocated value mapping of subjective and creative production communities. Mapping places for workshops, numbers of members in the community, new jobs thanks to the networking, hours of workshops, amount of volunteering working, presentation inventory, this kind of mapping give me tools to understand how to address assessment of communities, volunteering, and collective intelligence.

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Hello, world 🌎🌍🌏. I am writing this from Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. A masjid (mosque) in our neighbourhood was attacked by a white supremacist terrorist last Friday. Why did the attacker think that Aotearoa (New Zealand) is his land? We are grieving for our muslim brothers and sisters, and the event should make us rethink our worldviews, geography, and mapping. But who cares? Please read the following carefully.

Cartography, which includes geographic information, was and is part of colonisation, christianisation, imperialism, exploitation, dispossession, and domination. On the other hand, our present life relies on modern cartographic practice and mapping technologies, both of which inherit and reproduce the mistakes of the past.

I’ll give a petty indicator. Millions of people live in Oceania, but there is no emoji of the Pacific. 🌎🌍🌏 ?

How can we make sure that cartography, including the present trend of crowdsourcing geographic information, is careful and caring? What should a #caretography mean?

The only way for certain to identify villages in Turkmenistan seems to be to drive to them, find the town hall (‘‘geňeş’’), and record the name either by photographing it or, if lighting and the angle don’t permit, punching it into the smartphone or GPS. Ann’s and my curiosity got the better of us so over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend we have identified the villages of Ahal obasy, Tagan Baýramdurdyýew adyndaky geňeşligi / Gökdepe obasy (yes, that’s the full name of the village), and Täze Eýýam, which has had its name changed officially.

I wish all mappers out there the luck of the Irish!

With Brexit on the horizon and the possibility of customs post returning on roads that have had unimpeded access for the last thirty years or so, I had the idea of recording its current state for posterity. Around thirty thousand people cross the approximately 270 official places where roads traverse the border, from both sides, everyday. After raising this with other mappers they pointed out that by documenting its current state snaking back and forth across the border it would also provide a useful baseline to compare any changes to. Today the difference between either side is largely invisible, noticeable from small changes like the type of kerb stone, names of company’s on utility poles, the yellow or white road markings. So with a motorbike to make the journey, the next question was how to pull off this idea, esp, since the deadline of the 29th of March is near and the idea came late in the day.

On the OSM Ireland trip up to Belfast I talked about the project and got enthusiastic feedback. Coincidentally Mapillary were sending a gopro camera to fellow OSM mapper Dabigc, which suddenly made planning much easier. After it arrived we went for an practice run in his car to see how it worked. We looked at different options to mounting the camera on my bike helmet, unfortunately it has a piece of plastic that means it can’t be in an optimal position. The other option was a chest mount, but Dabigc pointed out pictures taken as I move my head around doing safety checks would add more information about the area.

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Late last year (around the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States) I wrote a blog post saying “It’s about time OpenStreetMap showed native lands on the map”. After that we had a few weeks of discussion and voting around the proposed tagging on the wiki (which is now approved as boundary=aboriginal_lands or synonymously boundary=protected_area + protect_class=24), and then a couple of months of refining the style proposal in the default OpenStreetMap stylesheet.

Now at long last, these features are starting to show up on the map. Here are a few examples:

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it is interesting learning how to map and helping others to learn as well.

Above is one of the final of the set of photos taken May 8, 2017, within the edge of a stand of wild trees looking north-west towards the ruins of Chase Farm. It is close to a ridge of high ground which runs from Nottingham (to the South-West) towards the North-East, which is on the other side of the Farm, and which today is called “Mapperley Plains”. Only 150 years ago it was full of trees and was called “Sherwood Forest” (yes, that Sherwood Forest), was originally owned by the King and renowned for The Chase.

I’ve finally added all the stuff I surveyed back in 2017 to the map, and will very soon be free to begin mapping again after a gap of 2 years. The bypass whose development you can just see on the LHS is one of the things that needs mapping.

Hope you like the photo.

Update 23 June 2022

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Glad they finally dumbed down JOSM for us Canadians.

I am trying to import aerial imagery into a massing model that I downloaded from OpenStreetMap into my Lumion 9.0 model. I have exported aerials from Google Earth Pro, imported that into Sketchup then placed this into my Lumion model but this will not scale appropriately. Is there a layer or a way to upload/import aerial imagery that will line up with my OpenStreetMap model? Thanks!

Lime Tree Gardens Soakaway (map)

This is the second time that I’ve come across a Flood Lagoon (the far-more-impressive first time was back on 20 June 2016 with the Carlton Foxhill Road Central Flood Prevention Lagoon. Thanks to lots of help provided on that First Contact, and after a phone call with Nav today (“my name is ‘Nav‘, like ‘SatNav’”) I’ve also got the inside skinny from Severn Trent on this one. And it is complicated…

There is a rectangle of grass (map) that encloses the whole thing:–

• landuse = grass

3 sides have a metre-high fence (map):–

• use menu: Highways|Barriers|Fence

The man-made structure that you can see in the centre of that photo above is two outlet pipes for a culvert that conducts surface water from the nearby estate’s roads into the soakaway:–

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So much has changed in OpenStreetMap. Wow!

In my process of learning more, I start a map that locates artworks or cultural monuments you may enjoy while driving through the roundabouts of this beautiful island Mallorca.

Why thinking of artwork in roundabouts?

As we pass by, we miss quite often the chance to learn more about the piece decorating the roundabout (and preventing you from crossing this area the shortest way).

My interest was triggered when we passed the roundabout near Santa Margalida. A huge red devil, made from metal, chained in the middle, seemed to be somewhat disappointed… I needed find out more about this!

( my blog post about this piece of art in German )

Follow me to learn more.

Saludos de Santanyí, DoSchu

One of my cycling goals this year is to mix up the roads I ride and fill in my 2019 Personal Heatmap on Strava. I wanted a way to see unvisited roads on my Garmin while I was out so I decided to make a custom map overlay using some of the great tools available to the OpenStreetMap community.

I started by using the Download from Overpass API feature in JOSM to download the complete road network for my city and saved the layer to a file. Then I opened all my cycling GPS traces for 2019 and started pruning any road from the network that I had already covered.

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• Intro
• Installation
• Mapping Buildings :: Startup
• Mapping Buildings :: Basics on using building_tools + terracer
• Mapping Buildings :: More Advanced

BuildingsTools plugin (Wiki)
Terracer plugin (Wiki)

In the previous post I showed the basic steps of using the building_tools and terracer plugins together to map buildings with JOSM on to the OSM map, so make sure to read that if you get lost at all during this post. This section will give a pot-pouri of how to perform more advanced tasks using the same two plugins. It will start with 2 Bradstone Drive.

Drawing an L-Shaped Detached House

For some reason these are very common in England (this particular house is a 2-story modern house — built in the last 5 years — but bungalows in this style have been built like that since the ’20s). As a detached house, adding the L-shape can be done either before or after using terracer, but for all other houses any changes to the basic rectangle of a terrace must only be done after terracing the building.

1. Draw the main frontage of the building, using (in this case) Esri World Imagery as a template
2. Press ‘s’ and select the building just drawn
3. Press ‘b’ and place the X-hairs above the common corner-node for both frontages and click
4. As you now draw the side frontage, the mouse is shaping a box anchored on the common corner node.
5. Shape the new box to the side-frontage, and click when complete
   (There are now 2 building rectangles positioned over all external borders of the house)
6. Press Shift+j
   (“Join overlapping areas”)
7. Remove the redundant nodes from 2 sides of the house
   (there are likely to be 2 nodes on top of each other on each side to be removed)

That’s it - an L-shaped house. A similar procedure can be performed for buildings with rear-extensions, etc.

Drawing Twin Garages

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Jack had this great idea to find the locations of solar panels and add them to OpenStreetMap. (Why’s that useful? He can explain: Solar PV is the single biggest source of uncertainty in the National Grid’s forecasts.)

I think we can do this :) The OpenStreetMap community have done lots of similar things, such as the humanitarian mapping work we do, collaboratively adding buildings and roads for unmapped developing countries. Also, some people in France seem to have done a great job of mapping their power network (info here in French). But how easy or fast would it be for us to manually search the globe for solar panels?

(You might be thinking “automate it!” Yes, sure - I work with machine learning in my day job - but it’s a difficult task even for machine learning to get to the high accuracy needed. 99% accurate is not accurate enough, because that equates to a massive number of errors at global scale, and no-one’s even claiming 99% accuracy yet for tasks like this. For the time being we definitely need manual mapping or at least manual verification.)

(Oh, or you might be thinking “surely someone officially has this data already?” Well you’d be surprised - some of it is held privately in one database or other, but not with substantial coverage, and certainly almost none of it has good geolocation coordinates, which you need if you’re going to predict which hours the sun shines on each panel. Even official planning application data can be out by kilometres, sometimes.)

Jerry (also known as “SK53” on OSM) has had a look into it in Nottingham - he mapped a few hundred (!) solar panels already. He’s written a great blog article about it.

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• Intro
• Installation
• Mapping Buildings :: Startup
• Mapping Buildings :: Basics on using building_tools + terracer
• Mapping Buildings :: More Advanced

BuildingsTools plugin (Wiki)
Terracer plugin (Wiki)

Nottingham City Council maintain an Adopted Highways Register which is fantastic for confirming both adopted & un-adopted streets local to me + house-numbers and, on occasion, housenames. The info comes from Ordnance Survey and therefore has a Crown Copyright. Because of that, it is important that I point out that I use the site to confirm my earlier survey results, rather than copying from it.

Adopted Highways register
A highway and a public right of way mean the same thing; they are both a “way” over which the public have a right to pass and repass at all times of the day and night. The term highway includes all carriageways (roads), streets, footways (pavements), footpaths, bridleways and byways. A highway may also include the adjacent verges.

This site shows which highways are adopted. If a highway is adopted it means it is maintained and repaired by Nottingham City Council. It also shows public rights of way (footpaths, bridleways and byways) both adopted and un-adopted which are recorded on the Definitive Map and Statement. This is the legal record of public rights of way in Nottingham at the time the Map and Statement were last updated (the “relevant date”).

You will therefore understand that the above is also the legal status that allows OSM surveyors in the UK to both survey and photograph from those highways anything that they can see.

Map Attitude

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