weeklyOSM 557

16/03/2021-22/03/2021

About us

• We have received two comments regarding issue #556. Here are some clarifications on these subjects:
  • We reported Bert -Araali- Van Opstal’s complaint about some behaviour on Discord. Mateusz Konieczny, leader of the ‘OSM World’ moderators team on Discord (account needed) noted that the nine moderators from around the world have taken this complaint seriously. However, after hours of searching through the logs for the abusive comments described by Bert they were unable to find them. They reminded users that anyone on the discussion groups can contact the moderators directly (message @ModMail) to report abusive, racist, or insulting language.
  • Our statement that there is a radio amateur on the current OSMF board is not correct. While we have learnt that one can find amateur radio operators actively contributing to the Overpass API, helping in the OSMF MWG, as founders of projects such as OpenRailwayMap, and in many other roles, we also learnt that there isn’t one on the OSMF board.

  As the weeklyOSM volunteer writers and editors cannot systematically go through all discussion and forum threads or social media posts, it is up to you to follow the links, read further, form your own opinions, and participate in the discussions. You can also reach us easily if you would like report and contribute to brief summaries of discussions to contribute to a better weeklyOSM.

  Let’s have fun and maintain a respectful and enjoyable environment!

Mapping campaigns

• Marcel Reinmuth, from the Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group, blogged about the development of OSM healthcare related objects in India. He noted a significant increase in the use of healthcare related tags during 2020. They also looked at complementing tags such as name (used on 98 percent of all healthcare objects), healthcare speciality (1.72 percent), beds (0.08 percent) and many others. However, they conclude that the majority of information for healthcare related objects beyond the amenity tag are still missing. The geographical distribution of the objects and the tags used for specification indicate correlation with urban areas.

Mapping

• DenisJu called on everyone who is on the road in Albania to take and share mobile phone images in Mapillary. He is specifically interested in images of the Albanian region Shkoder County, where he is keen to update OSM based on the donated images.
• Joost Schouppe wrote about his first MapComplete theme: a tool for campers to highlight, improve and add official overnight camping spots and sanitary dump stations. MapComplete is generic and the article invites you to help build more themes.
• Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
  • man_made=utility_pole this aims to review and complete man_made=utility_pole with existing utility=* for poles intended for other activities than power transmission and distribution.
  • highway=busway to replace highway=service + access=no + bus=designated + service=busway.
  • boundary=forestry a new tagging scheme for areas used for forestry.
  • man_made=process_tank to tag structures used for the processing of chemicals, feeds, wastewater, or other substances.
  • Proposed features/ban deprecated tags a proposal to modify the wording of the deprecated feature template.
• Voting is underway for the following proposals:
  • historic=tomb to provide a tag for all kind of tombs: mausoleums, pyramids, simple tombs, prehistoric tombs, tumuli, rock-cut tombs.
  • trailblazed=* to extend trailblazed by new values to allow more specific tagging about way how a trail is marked (till Tuesday 6 April).
• Voting has ended for the following proposals:
  • natural=shrubbery was not successful with 38 votes for, 31 votes against, and 2 abstentions.
  • natural=couloir was not successful 15 votes for, 9 votes against, and 2 abstentions.
  • basin=evaporation was approved with 31 votes for, 0 votes against, and 1 abstention.
  • historic=ogham_stone was approved with 14 votes for, 1 vote against, and 1 abstention.
  • The change vote counting rules proposal was approved with 31 votes for, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions.

Community

• M. Sevilla-Callejo showed a video about how to easily share a location from the OSM homepage.
• OpenCage published an interview with Iman Moghimi about OpenStreetMap in Iran.
• On 20th March mappers in Japan celebrated the 50th session of Mappy Hour Japan > , which has been held every Saturday night, on Slack, since the spring of 2020.

Imports

• Cascafico Giovanni announced a plan, as documented in the OSM wiki, to import a dataset of mobile phone communication towers, provided by the Italian region Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Education

• On the Geography of the Landesbildungsserver Baden-Württemberg portal you can find a lot of information about geo-topics. In the chapter Interactive Maps > you can find some information about the free world map OSM. It’s worth a browse.
• Moritz Schott, Yair Ginberger, Sven Lautenbach and Alexander Zipf, from the universities of Heidelberg and Jerusalem, have published a framework to analyse online community member activity. Participants of 94 mapathons in OSM were analysed with regard to changes in their mapping behaviour. It was shown that advanced mappers are rarely influenced by mapathons. In contrast, newcomers who attended a remote mapping event in many cases did not stick to the project and ended up concentrating on creating new data with lower quality but high quantity in places foreign to their home region; newcomers who attended a field mapping event updated and enhanced existing local data with high accuracy.

Maps

• Daniel Capilla (dcapillae) presents > an interactive map with the layout and known remains of the ancient medieval wall of Malaga. The map also includes the hypothetical layout of the walled enclosures that protected its suburbs and the location of the city gates. Unfortunately the menu and the explanations are only available in Spanish.
• Equal Street Names is now also online for Leipzig. The map is updated every Thursday and shows, after the respective street has been linked to a Wikidata entry, whether it is named after a man or a woman.

Open Data

• Craig Taylor updated one of his projects, making ‘data flowers’ from ONS commuter data and OSM networks.
• Six authors from the Center for Digital Safety & Security, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, published (paywalled) a paper titled ‘Packet Error Rate Based Validation Method for an OpenStreetMap Geometry-Based Channel Model’. In their work they focus on validating OSM geometries based on a stochastic channel model, which they then compare with time-variant power delay profile and Doppler spectral density obtained from a measurement campaign. The introduction mentions that OSM data shows minor differences to the measured data. Unfortunately the full report is behind a paywall.
• In his user diary, Tobias (@tordans) published > an interview with Alex (@Supaplex030) about his approach to ‘refining’ an open dataset, available at the district level, using OSM and other building information (we reported earlier). The result is statistical data on the number of residents per house and their car ownership.

Did you know …

• … that there is an Overpass API Blog? Roland Olbricht, developer of the Overpass API, describes new features of the Overpass QL syntax through clear and fully explained examples. Roland welcomes contributions such as that by Antoine Riche which we reported last week. So feel free to propose an article on GitHub.

OSM in the media

• Clubic, a French webzine, reported > on the 3-year collaboration between main public electricity distribution network operator Enedis and OpenStreetMap France, which we have already covered.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Пенза	Online mapping party in Penza (Домашняя картовечеринка в Пензе)		2021-02-19 – 2021-03-31
Biella	Incontro mensile OSMers BI-VC-CVL (online)		2021-03-27
XV. kerület	Exhaustive mapping within certain Budapest administrative boundaries, OsmAnd tour planning (Hungarian)		2021-03-29
	Missing Maps CartONG Mapathon		2021-03-29
	Missing Maps DRK Online Mapathon		2021-03-30
Ville de Bruxelles – Stad Brussel	Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting	✓	2021-03-30
	UN Mappers weekly mapathon		2021-03-31
San Jose	Virtual Civic Hack & Map Night	✓	2021-04-02
	OpenStreetMap World Discord Spring Mapathon		2021-04-03
京都市	京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第23回 Re:常寂光寺		2021-04-04	jp
Heidelberg	International Mapathon: Weeks Against Racism		2021-04-06
London	Missing Maps London Mapathon	✓	2021-04-06	gb
Landau an der Isar	Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen	✓	2021-04-06
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter Stammtisch (Online)		2021-04-06
	Numérique Éducatif Libre Webinaire : Quels usages pédagogiques avec OpenStreetMap ?		2021-04-07
	Missing Maps Studentendesk Rode Kruis Maastricht		2021-04-08
	Missing Maps Artsen Zonder Grenzen Mapathon		2021-04-08
Dresden	Dresdner OSM-Stammtisch	✓	2021-04-08
Berlin	154. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch (Online)		2021-04-09
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2021-04-13
Chippewa Township	OpenStreetMap Michigan Meetup	✓	2021-04-15
Osborne County	OpenStreetMap U.S. Virtual Mappy Hour	✓	2021-04-15
San Jose	Virtual Civic Hack & Map Night	✓	2021-04-16
	PoliMappers: Humanitarian Mapping with Map For Future		2021-04-16

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, Nordpfeil, PierZen, Polyglot, SK53, Sammyhawkrad, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, derFred, richter_fn.