weeklyOSM 531

15/09/2020-21/09/2020

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How did you contribute – celebrated its 10th birthday 1 | © Pascal Neis | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

  • Alex started a discussion on what to consider when mapping a street’s width and the different variants currently used. In the discussion, Tobias Zwick, from StreetComplete, referred to a helpful app for measuring with your phone and the help of augmented reality.
  • After the approval of amenity=funeral_hall, user Vollis is proposing the subtag funeral_hall=*, for a building or room used for funeral ceremonies ancillary to a funeral director’s shop or a crematorium.
  • Andrew Wiseman, from Apple, has updated (es) > en the challenges on MapRoulette for Bolivia using new data. The challenges can be found here.
  • Michael Montani, from the UN Department of Operational Support, invited (fr) > en OSM contributors, on various African local discussion lists, to help support UN missions. Mappers can do this by participating in the Tasking Manager jobs they have created to map highways, waterways, land cover, land use, places, and any other relevant points of interest.
  • User stragu warned users of OsmAnd Maps for iOS about a bug that shifts POIs without notice, due to incorrect rounding of coordinates. The issue affects versions 3.10 to 3.14, but was promptly addressed and is solved in version 3.80.

Community

  • After a long break, the Belgian community continues its choice of the ‘Mapper of the Month’. This month it is Jacques Fondaire, aka jfonda, from Belgium.
  • [1] The widely-used tool ‘How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap’ celebrated its 10th anniversary – we congratulate and say thank you, Pascal Neis, for this and also for all the other nice stats you have added over the years!
  • The 35th edition of the Geomob Podcast features an interview with Sarah Hoffmann who, as a software developer, is responsible for the maintenance of Nominatim, the most important software for geocoding used by OpenStreetMap. Sarah explains the technical aspects and challenges of managing a technically complex and publicly visible open source project.
  • Maning Sambale notes that diversity and inclusion are fundamental for OSM’s spread and growth, but seldom make it to centre stage. Plenary sessions such as State of the Country at SotM Asia 2016 and GeoLadies-PH plenary at Pista ng Mapa 2019 aim at increasing the audience listening to community stories. The second Pista ng Mapa (November 2020, online) hopes to feature more stories, maps and posters from the community.
  • OSM contributor hocu wrote about a changeset discussion where he (once more) realised that, thanks to OSM contributor Alikam, the OSM data is more up to date than the official sources, IETT (the governing body of Istanbul’s transport network) in this case.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

  • Christoph Hormann took a look at OSMF’s strategic reorientation and changed way of working and communicating over the past year and expresses concern and frustration about the, in his view, insufficient attention to the long-term consequences and risks of this.
  • Rory McCann (᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️🏳️‍🌈) wrote in his blog about his activities in August 2020 and reports, among other things, about his activities on the OSMF Board of Directors and the Communication Working Group. mmd complained in a comment that apparently no formal candidate selection process (for the new paid positions on the OSMF) has taken place. Instead, he suspects that this was ‘all done behind the scenes’. Rory confirmed, in his response, that OSMF ‘had a preferred candidate in mind, rather than an open interview process’.

Events

  • Last weekend members from the Italian OSM community gathered (it) > en in Limone, Piemonte for a weekend dedicated to OSM. On Saturday, they gave talks and shared their OSM experiences and useful tools for mapping. Sunday was dedicated to mapping excursions around the area using OSM-based phone apps.
  • On Monday 21 September, the New Caledonian chapter of the cycling association ‘Droit au Vélo’ hosted (fr) a mapping party in its office in Nouméa. The event focused on mapping cycling infrastructure and welcoming new mappers.
  • The Hungarian colleagues have moved their meetings and ‘regulars’ table’ to the Internet en.
  • A virtual mapathon will be held (it) > en on 30 September by the Italian OSM community. During the mapathon participants will draw the maps of the 78 municipalities of Benevento based on satellite images using OpenStreetMap. The event is a collaboration between Valerio De Luca (Map For Future Roma (it) > en), Luciano Amodio (ThinkSannio (it)), and Nicola De Innocentis (GeoPillole), with the support of Wikimedia Italia (it) > en.

Humanitarian OSM

  • The European Youth Humanitarian OpenStreetMap is planning a two-day online workshop on 15 and 16 October, aimed at students and teachers. The participants will learn to use JOSM and will map the streets and houses on the island of Terceira (Azores), as pre-disaster mapping.
  • The app MapSwipe is being extended to be able to compare the completeness of OSM data with airborne or satellite imagery. A first prototype was developed and tested in the LOKI project at Heidelberg University. The use case is building footprints, as they are important inputs to earthquake risk exposure models.
  • HOT detailed their strategy for achieving equal pay and organisational gender equality in a news post on International Equal Pay Day.
  • HOT is currently in a hiring push, with many jobs available, to scale up their staff to carry out the Audacious Project to map an area across 94 countries, home to one billion people.

Education

  • Daniel Feldmeyer et al. have published an article with the title ‘Using OpenStreetMap Data and Machine Learning to Generate Socio-Economic Indicators’ in the International Journal of Geoinformation. A remarkable sentence from the abstract: ‘OSM provides an unparalleled standardised global database with a high spatio-temporal resolution. Surprisingly, the potential of OSM seems largely unexplored in this context’. In their study, they used machine learning to predict four exemplary socio-economic indicators for communities based on OSM data.

Maps

  • Camille Scheffler announced (fr) > en on Talk-fr that magOSM (fr) > en, a project of services linked to OSM thematic data from the Magellium company, offers four new thematic layers at the level of France (fr):
    1. Train Itineraries
    2. Social structures
    3. Construction Proposals
    4. Constructions in progress
  • Jean-Louis Zimmermann mentioned (fr) > en
    on Talk-fr that OSM-fr publishes a demo map of thematic layers known only to the initiated. Further announcements are planned, and comments are welcome. The different layers, such as territories, schools, and transportation, are selected
    simply on the map from a list.
  • Google Maps will soon show COVID-19 risk areas in mobile versions so that users can avoid them. This does not mean automated routing.

Open Data

  • The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Italy at 10 m resolution is available (it) > en for the whole country as open data and downloadable here.
  • The Baden-Württemberg mobility data platform MobiData BW started (de) > en operations on 14 September 2020. On the new website (de) > en, the available data and interfaces are clearly described and are available for further use.

Software

  • A new WordPress plugin called ‘Out of the Block’ has been published. Benefiting from WordPress’s Gutenberg editor, the plugin tries a different approach to adding locations on a map and other user actions compared to existing plugins.
  • Google is a heavy user of open source tools. They are using iD for the historical map project Kartta Labs. Kartta Labs uses a customised version of iD, which lets everyone draw the historical landscape of a city based on georeferenced old paper maps.

Releases

  • An update of OsmAnd has been released. For iOS, version 3.80 introduces application profiles with independent settings, the ability to import and export profile settings, the capability to download online maps to cache, and fixes a crash that appeared while starting navigation. On Android, version 3.8 brings an updated plan a route function, a new appearance menu for tracks, and improved search algorithms.

Did you know …

  • … you can download (de) > en geological maps for all of Germany to your smartphone, with this detailed guide, and use them offline with OsmAnd?
  • Taginfo, the site which allows you to explore the tags and values used in OSM? Several local versions are available for you to explore at a country level.
  • … there is a step-by-step guide (it) > en on how to display parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities in OsmAnd?

OSM in the media

  • Just van den Broecke informed (nl) > en us that the live streaming web show, which ran April to June 2020, will return, running on the first Thursday each month (19:00-21:00 CEST), starting on 1 October.
  • Rina Chandran reported about HOT’s activities in Indonesia, where handwashing stations were mapped to help fight COVID-19.

Other “geo” things

  • Geospatial Media and Communications will present the Geospatial World Awards on 6 October virtually for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic . Since its launch in 2007, the awards have been presented to more than 200 individuals and organisations for remarkable innovations and ideas in global geodesy.
  • After a successful trial showed enormous potential, Ramblers have embarked on the Mapping Scotland’s Paths project.

Upcoming Events

WhereWhatWhenCountry
MontrougeSoirée de fin de projet “Ça reste ouvert”2020-09-24france
BratislavaMissing Maps Mapathon Bratislava #92020-09-24slovakia
MunichTUM – Mapping Party2020-09-24germany
onlineHOT Working Groups 101 Community Webinar2020-09-25united kingdom
DüsseldorfDüsseldorfer OSM-Stammtisch2020-09-25germany
HelsinkiState of the Map Suomi 20202020-09-26finland
onlineFOSSGIS OSM Communitytreffen2020-09-27germany
Salt Lake City / VirtualOpenStreetMap Utah Map Night2020-09-29united states
ZurichMissing Maps Mapathon Zürich2020-09-30switzerland
Ulm + virtuellCovid-19-Mapathon2020-10-01germany
San JoséCivic Hack & Map Night2020-10-01united states
TaipeiOSM x Wikidata #212020-10-05taiwan
LondonMissing Maps London Mapathon2020-10-06united kingdom
StuttgartStuttgarter Stammtisch2020-10-07germany
Berlin148. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch2020-10-09germany
MichiganMichigan Online Meetup2020-10-12USA
Cologne Bonn Airport132. Bonner OSM-Stammtisch (Online)2020-10-13germany
MunichMünchner Stammtisch2020-10-13germany
online2020 Pista ng Mapa2020-11-13-2020-11-27philippines
onlineFOSS4G SotM Oceania 20202020-11-20oceania

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This weeklyOSM was produced by AnisKoutsi, Anne Ghisla, Climate_Ben, MatthiasMatthias, MichaelFS, Nordpfeil, NunoMASAzevedo, PierZen, Polyglot, Rogehm, Supaplex, TheSwavu, YoViajo, alesarrett, derFred, richter_fn.

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