OpenStreetMap
In December 2023, the Hanang District of the northern Manyara Region in Tanzania faced a catastrophic disaster. The heavy rainfall triggered flooding and landslides, causing widespread destruction in the areas around the towns of Katesh and Gendabi, as well as the steep slopes of Mount Hanang.
I’m new to mapping. I’m trying to map the neighborhood common areas.
I thought I’d start with OSM maps, but they’re not in good shape for describing the right property lines - literally not the right shape, yet. For example, when I look at my neighborhood, there’s a grey blob named “Residential Area” surrounding all the homes, but it doesn’t follow their property lines properly. The boundaries of the neighboring research refuge are also incorrect, extending into the private properties and common areas. And our neighborhood appears to be labeled with a point as opposed to a containing area.
Before I start trying to add or edit features for my neighborhood, I need to learn what I should be changing and what I should be leaving alone. Do I edit the “Residential Area” shape to match the external boundaries formed by private and common-area property lines? And then can I label it with our neighborhood name? Or do I add a new shape with that boundary and label? Or, more likely, follow some other established practice?
Une semaine plus tranquille avec assez peu de changements par rapport aux précédents updates. Ce n’est pas qu’il n’y ait rien à faire ou quoi bien sûr, mais l’absence d’une image satellite récente devient un petit peu limitante et je ne sais pas s’il y aura même un update 2023 du SPW (🤞). En attendant donc, j’ai décidé de faire un peu mumuse en dehors de ma zone habituelle, mais c’est fatalement plus limité vu que je connais moins ces endroits.
Pour ce qui est des vidéos, j’en ai de nouveau trois cette semaine :
Améliorons Flémalle (sur OpenStreetMap) - Épisode 6 (La chasse aux pins) - Version live de ce changeset où je dégage le plus possible de pins/noeuds d’adresse de Flémalle (et Seraing un peu)
Ce mappeur OpenStreetMap change quelques rues près de l’aéroport de Bierset - Version live de ce changeset où je corrige un certain nombre de rues près de Liège Airport. Le problème ici (et que j’ai remarqué après coup) est que je pense avoir remis certaines rues comme elles sont en temps normal, mais pas la situation actuelle apparemment (zone en travaux). Ça m’apprendra à ne pas lire les notes précédentes 😬
Améliorons Seraing (sur OpenStreetMap) - Épisode 26 (Opération passages piétons) - Version live de ce changeset où j’ajoute et mets à jour les passages piétons dans le Fond de Seraing. Une bonne partie de la vidéo est en vitesse rapide avec de la musique parce que c’est réellement juste ça
Pour être honnête, il est probable que je ne fasse que deux vidéos par semaine si je continue à ce rythme moins soutenu, parce que j’avoue que cette dernière vidéo a été faite un peu à l’arrache.
C’est tout pour cet update donc. On verra si je continue à cette cadence plus faible ou si je retrouve d’autres trucs à faire.
A+
Je suis en train d’essayer d’organiser une carto party dans le bas quercy (département 82). les détails sont sur la liste diffusion local de toulouse
I just thought I’d update my diary and give a shout for my trusty GT-31. Every few years I revive it and take it out for some data logging. This year I took it around the new Waterbeach development near Cambridge, UK. It worked perfectly. This is an amazing piece of kit.
One slight let-down was discovering that GPSBabel seems to have dropped support for the GT-31’s native SBP format. I thought that might be the end of my OSM career, but then luckily I found that I can still run the old NaviSys software on Windows 11. I can’t connect to the GT-31 over USB any more (why not?) but I can load the SBP file from the SD card and convert it to GPX. I can then drop the GPX file straight into OSM’s iD editor. Such great software!
Guests who show up during mapping activities don’t always have the same level of motivation, equipment, or goals for participating. Some may like to just learn and collect imagery, but are not keen to edit. Some may prefer to just edit, and not go out in the field.
Nobody is even sure if you’d see the same faces again in the next event, so investing too much time on specific (or “better”) tools are deferred, to focus on simpler tools that gets the job done.
A collage of sample photos taken with OpenCamera
Mise à jour du cadastre de Quimperlé OK_______12 313 habitants
In addition to the previous diary post, I want to quickly show why I think that historic=pinfold should be deprecated.
When I started mapping historic pounds with historic=pound, it was pointed out to me that the value I should use was in fact “pinfold”. I had only ever seen “Pound” on old maps, so I presumed that that was the standard word used by cartographers, but I did my due diligence to find out.
Collins Dictionary differentiates by animal kept in the enclosure: “pound” for dogs and cats and “pinfold” for cattle and sheep. No room for pigs, geese, goats and donkeys. I had my suspicion that that was not a very precise definition.
I sent an email to Historic England, because they use both terms in their database; I’m still waiting for the verdict. (Edit 2024-01-29: Their reply email said that they were two words used for the same concept. I don’t find that very helpful. They sent a list of all their pounds and pinfolds, but I didn’t want to look into the copyright license issue, so I ignored that. If anyone is interested, I can forward the list.)
While I was waiting, I searched for “animal pound”, “village pound” and “pinfold” on Wikimedia and, after comparing the GPS provided there with what was visible on aerial imagery and sometimes streetview imagery (rarely, because they are mostly found in villages with no streetview coverage), added them using historic=pound for the ones where the file name and description contained “pound” and historic=pound + pound=pinfold to the ones that were called “pinfold” on Wikimedia. This enabled me to create a distribution map for both terms. (There were also “pounds” in Wales, but I left them out for this search.)
The “pinfold” cases were mostly confirmed by the Historic England database which I consulted to add HE_ref to the ones already found on Wikimedia. Some Wikimedia entries also had the number already provided.
꧂◤نطيح من عثرات الايام ونقوم وتزيدنا الطيحة شموخ وكرامة نواجه الدنيا بصملات وعـزوم ولا هزنا هرج الردي
This article presents a comprehensive overview of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) landscape in Africa as outlined by Geoffrey Kateregga during the State of the Map Africa 2023 conference, held both in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and online. Serving as an update to the previous assessment conducted in 2020, the overview stems from a survey organized by OpenStreetMap Africa, a collaborative network of OSM Communities across the continent. The conference provided insights into the current state, challenges, and successes of OSM communities in Africa, encompassing responses from 50 out of the 54 countries, offering a nuanced understanding of the evolving OSM landscape on the continent.
The survey, conducted by OSM Africa, engaged members from diverse communities, organizations, and individual contributors across the continent. With responses from 50 countries, the survey covered a substantial portion of Africa, there were no responses to the survey from Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles.
Bonjour à tous,
Le conseil municipal d’Orelle en Savoie (France) a créé des noms et numéros de rues fin 2023, visibles dans un compte rendu municipal.
Après transmission au centre des finances, c’est officiel et d’ailleurs repris par Googles maps etc.
Est-ce que quelqu’un pourrait se charger de reporter les données officielles ? (Nom et No)
Merci
G p
Dear Diary,
It’s me again, Eden!
It’s the midpoint of everything! My journey at HOT, and all the challenges/growth opportunities that come with it. It’s even the midpoint of the month of January!😀
I’m proud of myself for the progress I have made so far, and the initiatives I have taken in an attempt to maximize my time with HOT.
The 4th of December 2023, began a journey in my tech career which I will forever be grateful for. I was successfully selected as an Outreachy intern candidate at HOTOSM, for a duration of 3 months. As an ambitious learner, I made a list of goals I intend to achieve, and topics I intend to learn more about, but only as much time will permit me.
I mean it’s only 3 months, it will be over before you squint.
That also ushered the thoughts that kept bugging my mind even before I started; How do I achieve this much in just 3 months? What projects would be valuable to HOT and to people? What does my mentor expect of me?
Dear Diary,
Today marked a significant milestone in my exploration of the world—my first mapping activity. Armed with my trusty GPS device, a sense of curiosity, and a desire for adventure, I set out to document the landscape around me.
The morning air was crisp, and the sun cast a warm glow as I embarked on this new journey. Armed with the tools of modern exploration, I navigated through familiar streets and ventured into areas I had yet to discover.
As I walked, I marked waypoints at interesting locations, capturing the essence of each spot. The quaint coffee shop on the corner, the hidden park with its serene ambiance, and the bustling market—all found their place in my digital map.
Creating routes added a sense of purpose to my exploration. I followed winding paths, capturing the intricate network of streets and alleys. It felt like I was leaving a digital trail of breadcrumbs, each waypoint telling a story of the places I visited.
The highlight of my mapping adventure was recording a track of my entire journey. It was fascinating to see the intricate pattern that emerged—a visual representation of my exploration. The twists and turns, the pauses at various landmarks, all etched into the digital canvas of my mapping application.
This activity not only satisfied my curiosity but also ignited a newfound appreciation for the art of mapping. Each point on the map now holds memories, and the routes tell tales of the paths I’ve taken.
As I conclude this diary entry, I can’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment. My first mapping activity opened a door to a world of discovery, and I’m eager to continue exploring and mapping the beauty that surrounds me.
Until the next adventure, makilagi ed
I’ve been looking at how many tiles are changed when updating OSM data in order to better guide resource estimations, and have completed some benchmarks. This is the technical post with details, I’ll be doing a high-level post later.
Software like Tilemaker and Planetiler is great for generating a complete set of tiles, updated about once a day, but they can’t handle minutely updates. Most users are fine with daily or slower updates, but OSM.org users are different, and minutely updates are critical for them. All the current minutely ways to generate map tiles involve loading the changes and regenerating tiles when data in them may have changed. I used osm2pgsql, the standard way to load OSM data for rendering, but the results should be applicable to other ways including different schemas.
Using the Shortbread schemea from osm2pgsql-themepark I loaded the data with osm2pgsql and ran updates. osm2pgsql can output a list of changed tiles (“expired tiles”) and I did this for zoom 1 to 14 for each update. Because I was running this on real data sometimes an update took longer than 60 seconds to process if it was particularly large, and in this case the next run would combine multiple updates from OSM. Combining multiple updates reduces how much work the server has to do at the cost of less frequent updates, and this has been well documented since 2012, but no one has looked at the impact from combining tiles.
To do this testing I was using a Hezner server with 2x1TB NVMe drives in RAID0, 64GB of RAM, and an Intel i7-8700 @ 3.2 GHz. Osm2pgsql 1.10 was used, the latest version at the time. The version of themepark was equivalent to the latest version
The updates were run for a week from 2023-12-30T08:24:00Z to 2024-01-06T20:31:45Z. There were some interruptions in the updates, but I did an update without expiring tiles after the interruptions so they wouldn’t impact the results.
To run the updates I used a simple shell script
