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Recent diary entries

Posted by rphyrin on 11 September 2025 in English.

I’ve been mulling over an idea for a while: what if we grab a complete snapshot of OpenStreetMap data for a given region, then run some statistics over it?

Things like which tags are most frequently used, who the top contributors are by edit count, and who has been active in that area the longest.

For the last one, “longest active” means the timespan between a contributor’s very first edit within that region and their most recent edit (also within that region). This distinction helps separate two very different contributor types: the one-hit wonders who show up during a mapping campaign, make a huge number of edits in a short burst, and then disappear forever; and the long-term caretakers, often locals, who quietly keep the map up to date whenever they notice changes in their surroundings.

To explore this idea, I had to build some tools.

Step one was downloading all OSM objects within a given administrative boundary (relation) : https://altilunium.github.io/osm-region-downloader/

See full entry

Posted by mmahmud on 8 September 2025 in English.

2025.09.08

I am two days late to write this post. Life gets in the way. However, I felt I should have this in writing. On 6 September 2025, after 11:30 PM, I suddenly realized that the ending day marks something significant. It marks the 10th year completion of my journey with OpenStreetMap. 10 years ago, on this day in 2015, I entered a workshop arranged by Save the Children International in Bangladesh. The workshop was arranged by a project named Kolorob (Bengali word for the sound of a lot of people cheering together) who were training youths on how to edit OpenStreetMap. Little did I know back then that it will entirely change the direction of my life.

10 years since 6 September 2015 consists of 3654 days. Checking my HDYC told me that I mapped 3425 days in that 10 years. That is about 9.38 years of mapping each day. It felt quite overwhelming. Mapping became such an integrated part of my life that it hardly feels something I do, rather something automated that is to be done regularly.

It was a rewarding journey, mixed with bittersweet memories of field mapping in hot summer days in the sun, venturing to unknown areas for GPS tracks, remotely mapping areas after areas that I will probably never visit, spending hours after hours on validating, figuring out how to best map an area, learning new tools, plugins, taking workshops, teaching and training new mappers, solving data collection problems, and so on.

Over time, due to various aspects of life and career, I drifted apart from organized mapping community. However, my mapping continued. I kept mapping unmapped areas of the world. My joy is to take a part of the world with no features mapped and then completing it, literally putting it on the map.

I hope to continue my mapping journey, one day at a time.

Posted by NIYONGIRA Fabrice on 7 September 2025 in English.

y first day in mapping was sweet and exciting. I felt good to know that even small tasks I did could help improve global maps. It was interesting to discover how roads, buildings, and other features are added, and I enjoyed learning while contributing to something meaningful. That experience motivated me to keep mapping and to grow my skills further.

Location: Nyamirambo, Nyarugenge District, City of Kigali, Rwanda

(My first diary entry, am I doing this right?)

I’ve been mapping my beautiful town for now 1.5 or more years. I discovered OSM through a Polish youtuber talking about motorways, and at first I made some small changes, not knowing what I got myself into. Through the years, I’ve fixed the landuse, updated all of the POIs, kept up with constructions, repairs, etc., and did all sorts of detailing.

I’ve reached a point where… I need to move outwards. There is not much left to do except wait for something to close, open or change.

It’s been a heck of a ride. I would like to give the Polish OSM community a warm thank you for helping me out in sticky situations.

Link for the map, go explore!

안녕하세요

가산동 라이브 방송 스튜디오 세븐시스템 입니다 페북 체크인 관련건으로 만지작 거리다 여기까지 오게 되었네요

즐거운 하루 되세요

질문요 ! 오픈스트리트맵 앱은 없나요? 아이폰 스토어에서 검색해도 안나오는거 같던데

https://blog.naver.com/7sorkr

Lifecycle Tagging

Lifecycle tagging is the representation of the temporal state of an object (e.g., whether it is under construction, demolished, or abandoned). Since there is no single convention universally accepted by the community, different and inconsistent schemes have developed, making automatic interpretation and uniform data management difficult. In many map editors, there is no section dedicated to editing this lifecycle, which makes it even more difficult for new users to understand how to use the system.

The goal of this project is to devise and implement a method for applying lifecycle tagging in a way that is simple, intuitive, and does not interfere with existing tagging practices.

PR can be viewed here.

Study

Before fully committing to the development of a new interface, a study was conducted to assess which tagging schema is the most popular, consistent and suitable for integration into the iD editor. Many other editors have been. Full study available here.

I also tried many of the existing editors and checked how they supported lifecycle editing.

Proposed Standard

See full entry

Después muchas pruebas, les comparto un método para realizar las correcciones de manera masiva y controlada. Este flujo de trabajo es el más simple, rápido y seguro que pude lograr.

⚠️ MUY IMPORTANTE:

  • Seguí las instrucciones paso a paso. El orden de los reemplazos es importante.
  • No mezcles las dos tareas (network y ref). Hacelas por separado y subilas en changesets distintos.

Requisitos:

  • Un editor de texto que soporte “Buscar y Reemplazar” con expresiones regulares (RegEx). Notepad++ es perfecto para esto.
  • JOSM instalado y actualizado.

Tarea 1: Normalizar la etiqueta ref

🎯 Objetivo: Quitar los prefijos “RN” y “RP” de la etiqueta ref en todas las relaciones de ruta.

Paso 1: Obtener los datos desde Overpass Turbo

Vamos a descargar un archivo .osm que contiene únicamente las relaciones que necesitan ser corregidas.

  1. Andá a overpass-turbo.eu y pegá la siguiente consulta.
  2. Modificá la línea {{geocodeArea:...}} para poner la provincia en la que querés trabajar (recomendado).
[out:xml][timeout:180];

// Reemplazá "Jujuy" por la provincia que quieras.
{{geocodeArea:Jujuy,AR}}->.searchArea;

// Para buscar en toda Argentina (puede ser muy pesado y lento)
// area(3600286393)->.searchArea;

(
  rel(area.searchArea)
     ["route"="road"]
     ["ref"~"^R[NP]"];
);

out meta;
  1. Hacé clic en “Ejecutar”. Ante el aviso de “Datos incompletos” hacé clic en “Mostrar datos”
  2. Una vez que termine, descargar los datos como OSM XML, andá a “Exportar” > “datos OSM sin procesar”. Guardá el archivo como refs_para_editar.osm.

Paso 2: La Edición Masiva en Notepad++ (en 2 reemplazos)

See full entry

📢 Venho compartilhar com vocês o Material de Apoio do Projeto Mapeia Crato/CE 2025.

Neste material, você encontra um passo a passo completo para o mapeamento das edificações (buildings) utilizado no projeto, organizado de forma prática e acessível. O conteúdo está disponível em três formatos: ODT, PDF e uma apresentação em MP4, para que cada mapeador possa escolher a melhor forma de aprender e aplicar.

👉 O material pode ser baixado diretamente no site do projeto:

🔗 https://www.umbraosm.com.br/projeto-mapeiacrato

https://imgur.com/cUFxKT5

🚀 Venho compartilhar o Material de Apoio do Projeto Mapeia Crato/CE 2025!

📂 Disponível em ODT, PDF e MP4 🏠 Passo a passo para mapear edificações (buildings) 🌍 Pode ser usado em qualquer projeto com dados do Open Google Buildings ⚡️ Fluxo de trabalho simples e produtivo

📥 Baixe agora: umbraosm.com.br/projeto-mapeiacrato

Location: Pimenta, Crato, Ceará, Região Nordeste, Brasil
Posted by AdannaG on 3 September 2025 in English. Last updated on 4 September 2025.

SIWES Diary – Day 1 Date: 2nd September, 2025 Organization: Unique Mappers Network, Nigeria National Office: Suite 7, Mapathon Center, UNIPORT Mall, Abuja Campus, University of Port Harcourt

Activities:

-Reported to the National Office of Unique Mappers Network and settled into the Mapathon Center.

-Was introduced to the organization’s vision, mission, and the role of open mapping in sustainable development.

-Met fellow IT students including Favour, Alexander and Salvation, who are also undergoing their internship.

-Created an OpenStreetMap account and was tasked to locate my community and count the number of buildings. Many buildings were not visible, so using aerial imagery and my local knowledge, I edited the map by adding missing buildings.

-Since the office router had no internet subscription, I used my personal data for mapping and contributions.

-Received four major tasks for the internship period:

  1. Watch the video “The Magic of Maps and Mapping” (YouTube link-https://youtu.be/5MyCtvSBATI?si=g6TM60pmY_oolnT) and reflect on how mapping can be applied to geology.

  2. Work on mapping buildings in my community, since the area is not yet globally visible on OpenStreetMap.

  3. Research and design an open mapping project that addresses at least five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

  4. Participate in research-related tasks assigned by the organization.

-Later in the day, I met the National Coordinator, Dr. Victor N. Sunday, who gave me a formal orientation. He emphasized the importance of my contributions and provided me with a WhatsApp link to join the National Community and Internship groups. Observations/Learning Points:

-Understood the operational structure of Unique Mappers Network and how it collaborates nationally on geospatial projects.

-Learned the importance of open data contribution to global platforms like OpenStreetMap.

See full entry

Der Datensatz “WMS LGL-BW ALKIS” enthält liegenschaften und Hausnummern.

TL;DR;

Auszug Rechtliches in https://www.lgl-bw.de/Produkte/Open-Data:

Die offenen Geobasisdaten und Geodatendienste der Vermessungsverwaltung Baden-Württemberg können unter den Bedingungen der Datenlizenz Deutschland - Namensnennung - Version 2.0 (http://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0) unentgeltlich genutzt werden. Die Namensnennung hat in folgender Weise zu erfolgen: “Datenquelle: LGL, www.lgl-bw.de, dl-de/by-2-0”.

Details

Es gelten die Nutzungsbedingungen aus den Metadaten

Dort ist die liberale https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0 zitiert, als auch die (nicht so liberale) AGB

Zu Luftbildern gibt es eine Freigabe zur Nicht-Nennung.

Lesenswert ist auch die Anfrage.

Im Tagungsband der FOOSGIS 2025 steht auf Seite 56: Baden-Württemberg gehört zu den Bundesländern, die mit Inkrafttreten der Durchführungsverordnung ihr Open Geodata-Angebot um ALKIS [10] erweitert haben. * Lizenz (Download und Dienste): Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0 (DL-DE→BY-2.0) [11]

Nach der stehen die Daten im Geoportal unter der “Creative- Commons-Lizenz CC-BY 3.0”.

Laut osm.wiki/DE:Permissions wurde eine Anfrage bei der LGL BW zur Radkarten nicht beantwortet.

In 2025 alone I found vandalism incidents specifically targeting map of Indonesian parliament compound twice, in March and now in late August. Thankfully these are all restored.

What made me sad that some Indonesians don’t understand the OpenStreetMap at all, what they only know in their head is political activism. They do by erasing - or editing - the place of institution they despise. Not really sure if these incidents are unique to maps in Indonesia or there’s international example of politically motivated vandalism of OSM maps?

Posted by tukangsampat on 2 September 2025 in Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia). Last updated on 6 September 2025.

Memang repot menghadapi sebagian netizen Indonesia yang sepertinya menyalahgunakan peta sebagai alat perjuangan politik ketimbang bantuan navigasi dan informasi.

Selama delapan bulan terakhir, vandalisme bernuansa politik sudah dua kali terjadi: Maret 2025, dengan mengubah batas wilayah negara (yang mungkin gampang diketahui oleh pengurus OSM); dan Agustus 2025 dengan mengganti dua tempat menjadi reservoir.

Target utamanya kalau tidak lain dan tidak bukan kompleks DPR/MPR, khusus untuk Agustus 2025 juga menimpa peta kawasan Polda Metro Jaya (DKI Jakarta). Jika anda punya ketidakpuasan politik di Indonesia, jelas OpenStreetMap bukan tempatnya dan yang anda hadapi adalah dihukum oleh pengurus OpenStreetMap. Mungkin ini satu-satunya vandalisme bernuansa politik di OpenStreetMap

(Update 06/9/2025 - sebenarnya bukan, cek kolom komentar di diari versi Bahasa Inggris, dimana disebut terjadi vandalisme besar-besaran di peta Rusia dan Ukraina terkait perang, serta kasus vandalisme peta TMP Fort Bonifacio di Filipina akibat politik domestik).

Jika anda berpolitik, cobalah untuk menulis di media sosial dan jangan bikin repot orang lain.