weeklyOSM 586

05/10/2021-11/10/2021

Daniele Santini‘s Open Etymology Map [¹] © Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Mapbox | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

Daniel Capilla told > us in his blog that the reality in Malaga has nothing to do with the old cliché ‘Malaga, city of a thousand bars and only one bookshop’, sharing details related to bookshop and libraries mapped in OSM.
Voting is underway for boundary=border_zone, for tagging areas near borders that have special restrictions on movement (till Friday 22 October).

Community

The UN Mappers Crowdsourcing Team organised its first online training in Portuguese. The activity was in collaboration with the Munzuá Research Group from UNILAB > . Over six sessions of three hours each, the aim was to both train new contributors on OSM mapping and provide insights regarding the OSM ecosystem. The overall objective is to support the development of OSM communities in Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. In addition, the Highway tag Africa OSM wiki page has been translated into Portuguese.
The University of the Philippines’ NOAH (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards) has formally launched its revamped website, which uses OpenStreetMap datasets to identify hazard exposure and risk for the whole country.
After only one week as a mapper in the OSM world Sebastian Helm wrote a blog post about his first impressions of mapping and pointed out some aspects that, from his point of view, make it difficult for new mappers to stay on the ball.
Simon Poole shared that he sent the 10,000^th new contributor a welcome message on Tuesday 5 October. The first was sent in December 2013.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

Dorothea Kazazi released three reports highlighting recent updates related to the OSMF, including local chapter news and membership statistics.
Amanda McCann suggested, on the OSMF-Talk mailing list, that the State of the Map brand should not be used for events in places where homosexuality is banned and persecuted.
The minutes of the Friday 24 September OSMF Board meeting have been released.

Local chapter news

Christian Quest wrote > about the creation of OpenStreetMap France on the occasion of its 10^th birthday.

Events

Pista ng Mapa (Festival of Maps) is an annual open and geo conference held in the Philippines. Registration is open until Sunday 31 October.

Education

In this tutorial Amanda McCann demonstrates using different GPS positions for mapping, creating curved and unusually shaped buildings, and the all-important terrace.
Amelia Hunt and Doug Specht, academics at University of Westminster (London ), published ‘Crowdsurced mapping in crisis zones: collaboration, organisation and impact’, in the Journal of International Humanitarian Action. The paper presents case studies centred on crowdsourcing communities, such as the Standby Task Force (SBTF), which activate on a case-by-case basis at the request of international agencies and/or local actors. These communities gather and analyse, in real time, social media information during conflict and disaster, and produce POI maps.

Humanitarian OSM

HOT Open Mapping Hub – Asia Pacific announced their Booster Grant programme – OpenStreetMap community/ecosystem investments in Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines.
At HOT’s Annual General Meeting (held on 7 October), the HOT Voting Membership elected five members to the Board of Directors. Chad Blevins replaces Matt Gibb as the newly elected Voting Membership Chairperson. Four amendments to the organisation’s by-laws were also approved.
Outgoing HOT Board President, Miriam Mapanauta, shared her End of Term Report 2019–2021.

Maps

Open Etymology Map shows the etymology of names based on OSM and Wikidata.

Licences

LySioS wondered if the OSM copyright notice might not be better clarified by a word-picture mark rather than plain text to indicate OSM’s contribution. Various people in the thread pointed to earlier discussions on the theme.

Software

Geofabrik tweeted that their OSM Inspector QA tool is now being updated twice a day.
Pieter Vander Vennet released a new version of MapComplete. As detailed in his diary entry, it contains a heap of new themes (for example, charging stations, pubs and cafes and restaurants), performance improvements and new features. The post ends with a request to help develop MapComplete, e.g., with translation.
Bo Percival is seeking the community’s views on the Tasking Manager’s ‘tomorrow’. HOT_tech are also on the hunt for a possible community representative product owner for TM, so if this sounds like something you could be interested in, please get in touch.
Sarah Hoffmann discussed some of the issues encountered when trying to deal with names in different languages or mixed-lingual names. The next version of Nominatim will support language-specific handling of names, including for names that do not have a language suffix.
The subway validator (we reported earlier), initially created by Ilya Zverev, is now being hosted by Mail.ru. Some details about this tool are available on the OSM Wiki and the code is on GitHub.

Did you know …

… that the key floor:material is designed for tagging ceilings (technically the lowest part of a building part with a non-zero minlevel). taginfo suggests that it is in fact used for tagging floors, at least in places like Nepal. It is one of a number of confusing tag names documented on the wiki.
… that the shapes of non-circular turning circles (yes, it’s an oxymoron) can be described with the turning_circle key? The recent documentation of this usage is by Jdcarls2.
… the JOSM style Coloured Streets for better address mapping? nickjohnston explains how it improves address mapping.
… the vroom-project on GitHub by Julien Coupey, the open source application to solve the travelling salesman problem? Vroom is BSD-licensed, relies on OpenStreetMap data, and works with OSRM, Openrouteservice, or Valhalla.
… the OSM Emergency Map?

Other “geo” things

The Azores Islands may have been inhabited > 700 years earlier than previously thought, reveals a new study developed by an international team of researchers. Until now the islands were thought to have been discovered by the Portuguese in the 15^th century, namely the island of Santa Maria in 1427 and the islands of Corvo and Flores in 1452.
Map war: China dictates > (paywalled) its borders to the world with maps.
The Billion Dollar Code is a German Netflix miniseries that covers, among other things, the legal battle over the allegation that Google Earth software plagiarised the Terravision system developed by ART+COM.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2021-10-18
Lyon	Missing Maps CartONG Tour de France des Mapathons – Lyon		2021-10-19
Bonn	144. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn		2021-10-19
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #28 (Online)		2021-10-19
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2021-10-19
Olomouc	říjnový olomoucký mapathon		2021-10-21
Budapest	Survey around the University of Óbuda (please vote!)		2021-10-25
Hlavní město Praha	“50 years of MSF” mapathon with Missing Maps CZ community 2021 #6		2021-10-25
	Code for Toyama City シビックテックナイト#33 参加できるデジタル地図づくり		2021-10-25
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen (Online)	✓	2021-10-25
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2021-10-27
Bruxelles – Brussel	Virtual(?) OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting		2021-10-26
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OSM-Treffen (online)		2021-10-27
Decatur County	OSM US Mappy Hour		2021-10-28
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2021-10-29
Amsterdam	OSM Nederland maandelijkse bijeenkomst (online)	✓	2021-10-30
Prévessin-Moëns	Cartographie dans le Pays de Gex		2021-10-31
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation – Board of directors and advisory board public videomeeting		2021-11-02
Greater London	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2021-11-02
Landau an der Isar	Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen	✓	2021-11-02
Nordrhein-Westfalen	OSM-Treffen Bochum (November)		2021-11-04
	OSM Local Chapters & Communities Virtual Congress		2021-11-06