Nuno Caldeira announced with a tweet the work done by OSM’s Portuguese Telegram working group. More than 4,000 buildings on the islands of Flores and Corvo, in the western group of the Azores archipelago, were mapped in 35 days.
Brian Prangle suggests improving the POI data quality in the United Kingdom as the project for the second quarter. First priority should be businesses that no longer exist or have changed their name. The project follows a successful first quarter where nearly 70,000 addresses were improved or confirmed with use of public Food Hygiene Rating Standard data.
Dan S proposes a UK-specific project to map solar electricity panels. He points to wiki pages for rooftop solar panels and large solar farms that have data that should help in completing the task.
JM82 is surprised(automatic translation) that the coverage of mapped buildings in Austria seems to be decreasing.
Kleper from Colombia invites all active mappers to help complete the following task: 121. It is suggested to start with the area of Chocó, which is affected by constant migration of people from different regions and recently had to deal with a further increase of migration due to the crisis in Venezuela.
The intensive mapping of garage access roads in residential areas by employees of newspaper publishers is intensively discussed(automatic translation) in the German forum. User boldtrn has found, in a sample, an error rate of 30 to 50 percent in the posts in his street.
LorenzoStucchi has drafted three proposals for the tag landcover. He suggests landcover=cultivated for areas which are cultivated by humans such as farmland or meadows, landcover=artificial for areas that are altered by construction, mining or other human activities and landcover=barren for areas without vegetation and with bare soil. The request for comments period started on 6 April 2019.
CapitaineMoustache has drafted a proposal for industrial=grain_storage_centre as a specification of landuse=industrial. The request for comments period is planned to start on 5 April 2019.
The British national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey, tweeted a photo of surveying work starting on Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium which opened this month. Steve Chilton points out that OSM has had it mapped in detail for a while now.
Community
Colin Blackburn is intrigued by a “Clothing Optional” labelled beach in OSM on a route that he has vaguely planned to run. We hope he is not helping Mapillary during his runs.
In his diary, hvalentim wrote (automatic translation) some reflections on the mapping of national registered Portuguese-built heritage sites in OSM: some gaps were detected and many other suggestions made for the improvement and standardisation of tagging.
Imports
Jason Owen drafted a plan to import water well positions in Harare, Zimbabwe and announced it on the import mailing list.
Events
The Call for Proposals for the HOT Summit 2019, that will take place on 19-20 September 2019 directly before the State of the Map 2019 in Heidelberg, is now open.
Registration for SotM France, which will take place in Montpellier from 14 to 16 June 2019, is open!(automatic translation)
Humanitarian OSM
HOT brings transparency to staff salaries. While it does not publish individual salaries, it has made the formula/method open. The article, on HOT’s website, explains why they wanted to be more open about the salaries, the different forms of transparency and the difficulties they faced during the process to find a new model to increase equality. The article also details how the new model eliminates inequalities and the effect it had on the payroll after the implementation.
This year’s nomination phase for new members at HOT US Inc. has started and lasts until 16 April 2019. As Natalie Sidibe wrote on the mailing list, HOT is allowing self-nominations this year in order to increase the diversity of membership.
Gaurav Thapa, from Kathmandu Living Labs, describes the collection process for gathering geospatial data on the ground in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal as part of a project to increase the understanding of exposure to natural hazards and to help minimise risks resulting from these threats.
Jorieke Vyncke gave a huge Thank You from Doctors Without Borders to HOT for the work and support HOT has provided after Cyclone Idai.
Education
A collection of 200+ videos in English (and another 200 in German) about OpenStreetMap, FOSS4G, OSGeo, GIS, etc. is available on TIB AV-Portal.
Mapbox’s article “Your first steps with JOSM” helps you contribute to OpenStreetMap.
Maps
Russ Garrett made some enhancements to OpenInfraMap: different aspects of infrastructure are now shown as layers, and a heat map layer of solar photovoltaic generators has been added.
Programming
Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group released a preview of a new Openrouteservice client for the web and mobile devices.
… NotesReview, which you can use to search for OSM notes using search terms?
…the webpage Pic4Review? It allows mapping, using Mapillary images, and participating in various missions, such as adding accessibility for wheelchairs, adding ecopoints, or integrating missions over public toilets. You can also add your own quests!
… the concept of an “advanced stopping line” for cyclists? These allow bicycles to wait at traffic lights in front of other traffic. In OSM these can be tagged as cycleway=asl.
Other “geo” things
Even vultures can recognise the international border between Spain and Portugal. (Or rather, the difference in legislation between both countries regarding abandonment of cattle carcasses.)
Many economists claim that larger cities are more productive than smaller cities, usually known as the agglomeration effect. Tom Forth, of ODI Leeds, writes in CityMetrics that this does not apply to Birmingham because of poor public transport.
In a tweet, Simon Küstenmacher refers to a publication by the World Economic Forum. The publication explains five “maps that reveal the world’s remaining wildernesses.”
Mike Blackmore posted an animation on Twitter showing how almost all rivers in Europe have “developed” or straightened over the past centuries.
William du Plooy posted a similar shocking comparison: The deforestation in Mozambique.
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