13/08/2019-19/08/2019

Mapping

• Kevin Kenny has been working on a proposal for protection_class=* which is intended to replace protect_class=*. His aim is to increase readability and usefulness of the tag values used with the key: specifically replacing opaque numeric codes for classes with more memorable mnemonics.
• MaggPi shows how to process satellite imagery in a Jupyter notebook environment. Using OpenStreetMap and Planet satellite data, park areas in Nottingham (England) are identified and compared.
• Are you looking for something to map? Here are some interesting challenges posted in MapRoulette:
  • Indonesia buildings crossing roads
  • Washington state, USA TIGER cleanup
  • Unmapped towns in South Africa
• In his 15th blog post in the series “Improving OSM – why don’t we?”, Marc Zoutendijk writes about the use of landuse=village_green. This tag is not used as he thinks it should be and appears to have different regional meanings.
• Nvk updated us on his project to add basic support for a point-of-view feature for disputed borders in OpenStreetMap. Frodrigo also reported on his experiments in displaying disputed and claimed OpenStreetMap boundaries.
• A road which has two names, one for each side, caused (automatic translation) some discussion in the forum about the possible ways to tag it in OSM. Apparently it is not that uncommon. A GitHub issue was created 4 years ago to support the 4235 highways currently tagged with name:left/right.
• Rooftop solar panels are being mapped as the UK’s Quarterly Project. This will help improve forecasting for the electricity grid and reduce the need for non-renewable generators to remain on standby. A video shows how to map them, and 25,000 have already been added!
• The mapping company lvl5 has been acquired and is “moving on to new adventures”, but all of the street-level imagery they paid to collect is currently being uploaded to Mapillary and will soon be available for editing OSM.

Community

• Vincent Privat, one of the JOSM core developers, is unhappy about one of the nominations for this year’s Core Systems Award.
• 10 years after the start of Map Kibera by Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron, Mikel wrote a blog post with his reflections on the famous event.
• Frederik Ramm has suggested prioritising OSM’s own communication channels over other, externally controlled, ones in the iD user interface. The same issue was also raised by Joost Schouppe in the OSM Community Index project.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The Licensing Working Group has made the minutes for the meetings on 11 July 2019 and 8 August 2019 available. Amongst other topics the Attribution Guidelines and Brexit were discussed.
• OSMF’s local UK chapter, OpenStreetMap UK CIC Ltd, has submitted their annual and financial reports for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2019 to the OSMF.
• The FOSSGIS eV board minutes from the 7 May (automatic translation) and 13 August (automatic translation) meetings have been published.

Events

• Insight Centre at University College Galway are hosting an OpenStreetMap event on Saturday 31 August. The meeting is held in collaboration with the Irish OSM local chapter.
• Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group invites you to a free workshop on open-source routing with time-dependent restrictions on the Friday before the State of the Map, 20 September 2019.
• Are you going to the State of the Map 2019? If you are, then Christoph Hormann has perused the programme and come up with a list of recommended talks to attend. As a bonus, Christoph also analysed the backgrounds of the presenters and, on the basis of where the OSMF Scholarships were awarded, forecasts that SotM 2020 will be held in the Philippines.

Humanitarian OSM

• Overpass Turbo is brilliant at querying and viewing OpenStreetMap data, however it can be slightly perplexing for users with little knowledge of OpenStreetMap; this is why HOT has built the Export Tool. The Export Tool allows users to define an area of interest, select map features and quickly export in a GIS-friendly file format to start to analyse. A user does not have to know how tags are set up in OpenStreetMap for map features and can simply select from a list of options to start exporting the data.
• Melanie Chabot, a GIS Coordinator at the Canadian Red Cross, wrote an article on how they brought Missing Maps to Canada in order to improve community resilience and disaster preparedness in Indigenous communities.

Maps

• Yes, the slippy map tiles on the Fraunhofer server, with place names shown in English, are great. No, you can’t use them in your project without asking first.
• The Babykarte, a map dedicated to display baby and toddler related stuff, can speak French now. The new update now includes a filter for playground equipment and other new features.

Open Data

• Rob Kitchin is pleased with his initial attempts to print a 3D map of Dublin.

Programming

• Nikolay Petrov noticed (automatic translation) that the Russian website “Domofond” (estate rent and sale) uses OSM data. Surprisingly, it uses Yandex as a basemap and overlays OSM data upon it.
• Russian mapper Zkir upgraded (automatic translation) his validator of 3D models for churches and some historical buildings. Now 3D models are shown right on the web page in the validator. They can look like this or like this.

Releases

• Trufi, a mobile app for public transportation in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has released an iOS version.

Did you know …

• … you can watch ships sailing in real-time on Vessel Finder? This site uses data from the automatic identification system and displays it on an OpenStreetMap based map.
• … there is a difference between the tags change (to tag if traffic is permitted to leave a lane) and overtaking (to tag if overtaking is permitted)? Depending on legislation these two are not identical – overtaking can be allowed even with a solid lane divider so long as you don’t need to cross the line. Obviously this only works with broad lanes and narrow vehicles.
• … about the nice and simple website Nebo.live which shows the air quality in Krasnoyarsk (Russia)?
• … about the map of forbidden zones for flights on quadrocopters?
• … how to connect online maps to the navigator in your smartphone? (part 1 (automatic translation), 2 (automatic translation), 3 (automatic translation))

OSM in the media

• It’s not often that an OpenStreetMap edit can make it into a news story, but this is what happened recently in Waldshut, Germany. The Albtalstraße has been closed since 2015, due to rock falls, and its disappearance from OpenStreetMap was seen (automatic translation) as proof that it would not be reopened to traffic.

Other “geo” things

• The website theverge.com has echoed reports from Chinese newspapers according to which Huawei is working on an alternative to Google Maps. The “Map Kit” is expected to be released in October.
• Radio Garden is a geographical interface that lets you find and listen to live streaming radio stations from around the world. Radio Garden was originally commissioned in 2016 by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in the context of an exhibition for the international research project Transnational Radio Encounters. It is now being developed into a company by one of the original creators.
• Transport for London only launched “the world’s-largest database of cycling infrastructure” this month, but startups are already using the open data to improve their journey planning services. Beeline is now developing a proprietary routing tool built on OpenStreetMap for London.
• Yanko Design creates and sells luminous maps, which shows what your favourite city would look like from above at night. The luminous maps are based on OSM data.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	When	Country
Kameoka	京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第11回 出雲大神宮	2019-08-24
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2019-08-26
Suva	Missing Maps Fiji	2019-08-27-2019-08-30
Salt Lake City	SLC Map Night	2019-08-27
Viersen	OSM Stammtisch Viersen	2019-08-27
Düsseldorf	Stammtisch	2019-08-28
Dortmund	Mappertreffen	2019-08-30
Galway	Galway mapping party	2019-08-31
La Balme-de-Sillingy	Incontro comunità piemontese	2019-08-31
Maebashi	オープンストリートマップセミナーとマッピングパーティ	2019-09-01
London	Missing Maps Mapathon London	2019-09-03
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter Stammtisch	2019-09-04
Bochum	Mappertreffen	2019-09-05
Dresden	Stammtisch Dresden	2019-09-05
Montrouge	Rencontre des contributeurs de Montrouge et alentours	2019-09-05
Minneapolis	State of the Map U.S. 2019 [1]	2019-09-06-2019-09-08
Salt Lake City	SLC GeoBeers	2019-09-10
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2019-09-10
Leoben	Stammtisch Obersteiermark	2019-09-12
Munich	Münchner Stammtisch	2019-09-12
Berlin	135. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch	2019-09-12
San José	Civic Hack Night & Map Night	2019-09-12
Edinburgh	FOSS4GUK 2019	2019-09-18-2019-09-21
Heidelberg	Erasmus+ EuYoutH OSM Meeting	2019-09-18-2019-09-23
Heidelberg	HOT Summit 2019	2019-09-19-2019-09-20
Heidelberg	State of the Map 2019 [2]	2019-09-21-2019-09-23
Dhaka	State of the Map Asia 2019	2019-11-01-2019-11-02
Wellington	FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019	2019-11-12-2019-11-15
Grand-Bassam	State of the Map Africa 2019	2019-11-22-2019-11-24

Note: If you like to see your event here, please put it into the calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM. Please check your event in our public calendar preview and correct it, where appropriate.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Nakaner, Rogehm, SK53, Silka123, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, YoViajo, derFred, keithonearth, ᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈.