weeklyOSM 635

13/09/2022-19/09/2022

About us

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Mapping

• The French city of Rennes, announced ► that it is hosting three mapping parties, during which citizens will be helped in adding shops to OpenStreetMap.
• Pieter Vander announced that now MapComplete is able to detect tree species automatically by using PlantNet.org API, making it easier to link a tree to its correct species while mapping tree location on OpenStreetMap.
• Requests have been made for comments on the following proposal:
  • highway=scramble for indicating that a path needs use of hands to travel over.
• Voting on the following proposal has closed :
  • crossing:markings, to declare the existence and style of pedestrian crossing markings, was approved with 29 votes for, 1 vote against and 3 abstentions.
• Voting is underway for the following proposal:
  • To clarify the definition of the dimensional tags used on loading docks, until Wednesday 28 September.

Community

• OSM user Mannivu wrote > a diary entry on how to upload pictures to Wikimedia Commons, create a Wikidata element, create a Wikimedia Commons category, link a Wikidata element and a Commons category, and insert those data into OSM.
• Martijn van Exel wondered why there is no search form for OSM diaries. Commenters explained how to use your favourite search engine for that.

Events

• Katja Haferkorn announced ► that a workshop ► on the topic of OpenStreetMap indoor tagging will be held 14 to 16 October in Frankfurt am Main.
• Some statistical figures on the recent SotM in Florence for you.

Humanitarian OSM

• Adam Rousell announced that HeiGIT has activated the Disaster openrouteservice in the region of Pakistan in response to the severe monsoonal flooding the country has experienced in recent weeks. Currently, data is being updated every 10 minutes to reflect the dynamic situation and affected infrastructure.

Maps

• Martijn van Exel published an open source clone of Ilya Zverik’s vintage OSM tile server.

switch2OSM

• Deutsche Bahn is using OSM in their passenger information system. It tracks the train’s current speed, position and schedule and informs passengers of points of interest that can be found along the route. Recommended for imitation.

Open Data

• GwenCarto gave a tutorial on NoiseModelling using OSM data.
• The state of Sachen Anhalt, Germany has released ► a 20 cm resolution digital surface model as open data (via Twitter). The licence ► allows using the data to improve OSM.

Licences

• Harry Wood published an article to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Open Database License (ODbL), the licence of OpenStreetMap’s data. The ODbL was created in response to several issues regarding the unsuitability of CC BY-SA licences when applied to map data.
• Andres Gomez Casanova has published two Spanish-language videos in which he explains the incompatibility of ODbL and CC-BY:
  • The problem of attribution.
  • The use of DRM in derivative works where ODbL allows it but CC-BY does not.

  They expand ► on an article from 10 April (we reported earlier).

Software

• [1] Ilya Zverik published a tutorial for his Every Door OpenStreetMap editor (for POIs and entrances) along with the release of version 2.0 of the software. Downloads are available for Android and iOS. Release notes are on GitHub.
• Arno Wolter, one of the three founders and CEO of the Initiative for Safer Roads, talked about their new project Gefahrenstellen.de, which seeks to help parents and schoolchildren select the path to school with the least traffic and risk. The project uses HeiGIT’s openrouteservice as a routing service, which in turn uses OSM data.
• Altilunium has released Pataddress, an open-source alternative to what3words (but with four words instead) with a built-in word frequency analyser to build a custom word database in your own language.
• GraphHopper has released version 6.0 of their routing engine. This update offers faster route calculation, more flexibility, better instructions, and developer documentation.
• HeiGIT, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, reported that a building completeness indicator has been added to the ohsome quality analyst. This indicator uses proxy variables to predict the expected area of buildings in a given area of interest and then compares this prediction to the total area of buildings currently mapped in OSM.
• Marcel Reinmuth wrote that the Open Healthcare Access Map has now achieved global coverage. The Open Healthcare Access Map uses OpenStreetMap, HeiGIT’s openrouteservice, and WorldPop to estimate the number of people living within a certain distance of a healthcare facility. The data is also available on the Humanitarian Data Exchange.
• The RapiD development team at Meta blogged about an ‘early preview’ of RapiD 2.0 alpha, an OSM editor with access to AI-generated open data. The big change is a rewrite of the graphics engine to improve overall performance. They are asking for feedback via GitHub, Slack or Facebook.
• Felt announced that Erica Fischer, the creator of the library Tippecanoe, joined the company to continue her open-source work. Tippecanoe is a GeoJSON to vector map tiles converter, with a specific aesthetic intent to enable making a scale-independent view of the data. At any zoom level, the density and texture of the data is still visible, rather than having to manually exclude certain classes of data.

Programming

• The osm2pgsql team just announced that the source code of osm2pgsql has gone through a security audit. None of the tests revealed any severe security issues, but users should be aware that they should properly set up a secure system environment. The team have amended the manual further to explain several important security practices.

Releases

• Vespucci, ‘the editor for Android that allows any kind of editing directly on mobile devices’, released version 18.0.0. The highlights are described in a blog post.
• Marcos Dione discovered that JPEG map tile files with quality parameter set to 70–80 are 50% or less their size in PNG, suitable for low-resolution, offline, low-connectivity, or mobile map apps. He also updated his osm-tile-tools to accept JPEG tile file format.

Did you know …

• … Marcel Reinmuth presented several maps with information on abortion access in Germany that were created using HeiGIT’s openrouteservice?
• … you can find places with vegetarian (diet:vegetarian) and vegan (diet:vegan) options by using Veggiekarte?
• … that an anonymous critic collects problems with the what3words algorithm and implementation?

OSM in the media

• OpenCage is partnering with the MapScaping podcast to help promote OSM-based projects. The selected projects will receive a 30 second promotional message at the start of a podcast episode and logo inclusions on the MapScaping front page and Twitter account. Any project using OpenStreetMap is eligible (tools, technologies, services, open source, NGO, or for-profit start-up). You can apply until Saturday 15 October.

Other “geo” things

• The events associated with the funeral rites for Queen Elizabeth II would seem an unlikely reason for an item of geospatial news. However, Gizmodo reported that a number of odd errors occurred through the use of what3words to help people find the end of the queue for viewing during the lying in state.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Budapest	OSM Fonó: Short editing introduction and remote help (online, live)		2022-09-23
La Virgen	5ta reunión bimestral de OSM Latinoamérica		2022-09-24
Recife	[online] First pic4review mapathon from UMBRAOSM (BR)		2022-09-24
Cisterna d’Asti	Incontro mapper astigiani		2022-09-24
Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend		2022-09-24 – 2022-09-25
Gent	OpenTechTalks: OpenStreetMap		2022-09-26
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2022-09-26
Arlon	Réunion des contributeurs OpenStreetMap, Arlon (Belgium)		2022-09-26
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2022-09-28
Derby	OSM East Midlands/Nottingham meetup		2022-09-27
London	Geomob London		2022-09-28
Washington	OSM US Mappy Hour	✓	2022-09-29
Vern-sur-Seiche	Atelier participatif « Recensement des commerces »		2022-09-29
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen	✓	2022-09-30
Villa de Cos	Notathon en OpenStreetMap – resolvamos notas de México		2022-10-01
	Hacktoberfest 2022		2022-10-01 – 2022-10-31
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #45		2022-10-03
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter Stammtisch		2022-10-04
London	London pub meet-up		2022-10-04
London	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2022-10-04
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #39 (Online)	✓	2022-10-04
Murray	OSM Utah Monthly Meetup		2022-10-06
Mannheim	Mapathon in der Moschee		2022-10-06
Град Крагујевац	OSM Serbia regular meetup	✓	2022-10-06
La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz	Atelier participatif « Recensement des commerces »		2022-10-07
Kaiserslautern	OSM Mapping Event Erfassung von Barrieren		2022-10-08
京都市	京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第32回 Re:妙心寺		2022-10-08
Polokwane Local Municipality	OSM Africa October Mapathon	✓	2022-10-08
Polokwane Local Municipality	OSM Africa October Mapathon	✓	2022-10-08
Washington	MappingDC Mappy Hour		2022-10-12
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2022-10-12
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2022-10-11
Frankfurt am Main	Arbeitstreffen Indoor OSM 2022		2022-10-14 – 2022-10-16

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Lejun, PierZen, Strubbl, TheSwavu, andygol, derFred, erenozdemir, rtnf, tordans.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.