weeklyOSM 232

23/12/2014-29/12/2014

About us

• On Geohipster.com some people make predictions for 2015 with respect to geographic information. We’ll see whether Tim Waters’ prediction is true that 2015 will be the year of the “specialized personalized OSM maps everywhere” (meaning all platforms).

• If you have news for the OSM-community and you think we should spread it here, please send an email.

• If you have news for the OSM-community and you think we should spread it here, please send an email.

• If you think this blog should be available in another language - for example French, Portugues or Sinugboanong Binisaya - (and you are willing to translate) please contact us.

Mapping

• User imagic points out that the definition of the lanes tag is unfavorable and he thinks about alternatives.

• Guillaume Pratte asks on the tagging mailing list, whether “variety” would be a suitable value for theater:genre = *.

• User Kolosssos has linked OSM tags (eg man_made=lighthouse) with Wikidata entries.

• Bridge or tunnel? Tunnel or bridge? Russ Nelson is unsure and asks for clarification.

• Skobbler published Scout Signs. It is a tool designed to facilitate the collection of traffic sign data.

• User derFred asks in the German forum: “How reliable is Geonames?”

Community

• How does OSM look on a smart watch?.

• Ian Lynch from The Learning Machine draws attention of teachers in the computing baseline testing project to raise awareness of the OSM and weeklyOSM projects.

Imports

• Phase 1 (buildings) of the import of the Sardinian cadastre is over, now the address import is pending.

Humanitarian OSM

• With the planned Humanitarian ID the communication between crisis workers should be simplified.  In a crisis helpers can “check in” and reveal their contact details. This is intended to make it faster and easier for foreign experts to come together with knowledgeable local experts. A Lego-Film illustrates how it should work.

Maps

• MapBox has published its map style Space Station.

• Yves explains in the OpenSnowMap blog “How to embed a ski map on your website”.

• Alexander Matheisen explains in the OpenRailwayMap mailing list how railway signals have been mapped on OpenRailwayMap. The English version is below the German one.

OSM in action

• SWR 3’s (German Radio Station) traffic messages are displayed on an OSM map.

• The buses from Alsa, Spain use OSM to display routes.

• The Italian “Carabinieri” use maps from OpenStreetMap on their website .

• [1] All stations of the French National Railways (SNCF) in the Ile de France are now  mapped in detail using OSM. (Attention: video) (via: sncf_presse). The SNCF states that this follows their “Open Data” strategy.

Software

• On Kickstarter money is collected for the development of “Live Layer Effects” for QGIS.

Programming

• The cartography blog “Geoawesomeness” has collated its “Geoawesome Maps of 2014”.

• Tim Sutton explains how to use Geoserver with Docker and Fig.

Did you know that …

• … Carmen from Mapbox, a vector tile-based Geocoder?

• … Easymap, a tool to produce your own map with OSM-data?

• … or Inkata?

Other “geo” things

• Esri and the US Geological Survey published “highly detailed ecological land units maps”. Esri created: “Story Map and custom app that allow for additional exploration and insight.”

• Need a mount for your Garmin Oregon? Print it! (via: twitter)

• In the publication “Erstellung einer Geodatenbank aller Brücken und Straßen Deutschlands in kommunaler Baulast auf Basis von Open-Street-Map-Daten – Dokumentation der Arbeitsschritte und Beschreibung des Ergebnisses” the German Institute of Urban Affairs claims that “It seems that much of the OSM data comes directly from Google Earth / Maps”.  In the German forum there is much debate about this and the publication is, in some parts, strongly criticized. (PDF direct download 13,5 MB).