15/01/2026-21/01/2026
[1] How to Make a Lighthouse Map Using QGIS and QuickOSM | by Mashford Mahute | map data © by OpenStreetMap Contributors.
About us
- Hello dear friends of the Italian language. This is probably our last issue in Italian. Last week we didn’t publish issue #808 because we only had one proofreader.This week we are publishing even though we only have one proofreader.Our quality standards stipulate that at least two native speakers must proofread the automatic translations.
As we were unable to do this last week and again this week, we assume that you would like to read one of the remaining languages from issue #810 onwards.
We would like to thank you for your loyalty over the years and especially our many colleagues in Italy who have been offering this service for many years.
Mapping campaigns
- Koreller reported that, on 7 January, Mapbox updated over 10 million square kilometres of aerial imagery across the world with a resolution of 30 cm.
- After a fatal train crash in Spain, which occurred by the Adamuz crossover, OSM mappers began mapping the surrounding area in solidarity to improve map quality.
- Saarpfalz-Touristik has launched
► an organised OpenStreetMap editing initiative aimed at updating hiking trail data in the Bliesgau region of Germany.
►
Community
- Anne-Karoline Distel presented her latest project on YouTube, in which she transferred historical data from the 1655 ‘Down Survey’ map for County Kilkenny, Ireland into an interactive map on uMap. She explained the challenges of working with the old manuscripts, such as outdated spellings, copying errors by the cartographers of the time, and matching to modern geographical data on Wikidata. She also showed in detail how different layers of information, including townlands, castles, churches, bridges and historic mills, can be visualised using technical filters and formatting.
- Foxy has noticed that Google publishes statistics on website metrics collected by Google Chrome. Using this data, it can be inferred that more than half of users who access OSM via Chrome do so on mobile devices.
- Ivan Branco marked six months of MensileOSM, an Italian newsletter dedicated to the OpenStreetMap community, by presenting it live in Trento at OSMit 2026 and in Biella at the OSMers Biella, Vercelli, and Canavese ► meeting.
- While waiting for a subway train, Mittens_unofficial used ► the Vespucci mobile app to map the surveillance cameras at subway stations in the Nuremberg–Fürth area.
- PizzaTreeIsland has emphasised that
accesstags indicate whether use is permitted, whereas thewheelchairtag describes whether access is physically possible, regardless of permission. This distinction is reflected in the iD editor’s input mask, where ‘allowed access’ and ‘wheelchair access’ appear in entirely separate sections. - After three and a half years of drafting and polling to find the tagging concept the community prefers, Penegal has made a request for comments on a tagging scheme for advisory access restriction ideograms on destination signs. This proposal aims to tag advisory restriction ideograms, which are displayed on destination signs in many countries. Comments can be made on the proposal’s talk page or in the OSM Community forum topic.
it live in Trento at OSMit 2026 and in Biella at the Local chapter news
- OpenStreetMap US has announced that it is seeking mapping enthusiasts to fill two vacant seats on its Board of Directors. The nomination period will open on Monday 26 January and close on Saturday 8 February.
Events
- Recordings of the State of the Map Europe 2025 sessions are being uploaded and are available on its YouTube channel. The details can be found in the event’s schedule.
Maps
- [1] Mashford Mahute has published a little routine to create a map of lighthouses using QGIS and the QuickOSM plugin and offered Japan’s lighthouses as an example.
- Hidde discovered Lights of Sea Online (we reported earlier), a web map that visualises around 65,000 blinking lighthouses, light buoys, and other navigational beacons, taken from OpenStreetMap data.
- The European Environmental Agency published a map of ports belonging to the core network and not, with LNG bunkering facilities based on OpenStreetMap. But the download area does not have the option to offer OSM data. The product is part of the Sustainability of Europe’s mobility systems EEA programme.
- Christoph Hormann has released his Musaicum satellite image mosaics as a ready-to-use tileset for interactive web maps.
- Christoph Hormann published an article explaining how features located outside a map tile can affect its rendering, a factor that can lead to inconsistencies in map visualisation.
Software
- Eugene reported that OsmAnd’s topography plugin now includes an avalanche colour scheme for the Slope layer, which colours terrain based on its steepness, to highlight potential avalanche risks and provide a more intuitive visualisation for safer backcountry navigation.
- Eugene introduced OsmAnd’s Snowmobile map style, aimed at visualising
route=snowmobiletrails.
Programming
- Richard Hemmer, from Geschichten aus der Geschichte , has published a post on his own blog, in which he explains his design and developing process behind the postcard application we reported earlier.
- Michael Reichert reported that Geofabrik has decided to port Nik4, a tool for rendering single map images for a given location, to C++ to address its unmaintained dependency on Mapnik’s Python bindings. The code is published on Codeberg.
Releases
- Alexis Lecanu has released Baba version 1.20.0, a mobile app for contributing to the Panoramax project.
Did you know that …
- … you can see the top OSM users over the past day, week, or month by accessing the statistics page?
Other “geo” things
- The international OCEANIDS Project noted that a lot of coastal settlements are shifting to inland areas as climatic risks increase. It can be a challenge to global collaborative mapping projects, including OSM. There is a web map (OCEANIDS Platform) that shows related geodata and geoservices (still in the initial stages of development), which is provided by the EU, but unfortunately the option ‘OpenStreetMap’ in the layers panel is written incorrectly.
- The OGC Artificial Intelligence-Discrete Global Grid System (AI-DGGS) has offered a workshop on a pilot, which uses a recently published DGGS API standard, providing a natively digital alternative to traditional coordinate systems.
- In response to escalating geopolitical tensions, OpenCage has revised its planned geotrivia topics, shifting the focus to Greenland.
- There is a proposal to include ‘location collected’ as a property in Wikidata records and you can cast your vote. It is intended to record the geographic location where a specimen or sample was collected in the field.
- Lena Mattson, from the US Library of Congress, blogged about the ups and downs of daily life for a fire insurance map company’s surveyors, citing experiences that include being denied entry, locked out on high-rise rooftops, attacked by dogs, shot at by smugglers, and even detained by military police on suspicion of espionage.
- Mary Wadland, of The Zebra, reported that Gladys West, renowned for her pioneering work in mathematical modelling of the Earth’s shape and the development of satellite geodesy models, later integrated into GPS, died on Saturday evening 17 January.
- Robert Schwandl regularly publishes some urban rail networks on the Urbanrail.net potal. You can learn more about this service and send photographs to the project.
Upcoming Events
| Country | Where | Venue | What | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
UN Mappers: OpenStreetMap Beginner Training using JOSM  | 2026-01-23 | |||
| OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting | 2026-01-23 | |||
 | Bengaluru | RT Nagar | OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party | 2026-01-24 |
| Nashik | Nashik Engineering Cluster, MIDC Ambad | State of the Map India 2026 | 2026-01-24 |
| Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr] | 2026-01-26 | |||
 | Hannover | Kuriosum | OSM-Stammtisch Hannover | 2026-01-26 |
 | Saint-Étienne | Zoomacom | Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire | 2026-01-26 |
 | Online | Mappy Hour OSM España | 2026-01-27 | |
| Kiel | Mango’s, Kiel | Kieler Mapper*innentreffen | 2026-01-27 |
| Berlin | Online | OSM-Verkehrswende #71 | 2026-01-27 |
| Düsseldorf | Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026 | Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online) | 2026-01-28 |
 | Amsterdam | TomTom HQ Amsterdam | 2026 Kickoff Meetup – Mapping, Fireside Chats, Show & Tell, and More! | 2026-01-29 |
| Mapping USA 2026 | 2026-01-30 – 2026-01-31 | |||
 | Gent | Sporewegel 1 | OpenStreetMap meetup in Gent | 2026-01-30 |
 | Aosta / Aoste | Museo archeologico regionale | Compleanno di Wikipedia e mapping party ad Aosta @ Fiera di Sant’Orso | 2026-01-31 |
| Mumbai | Churchgate (approximate location) | OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.6 (Mumbai City) | 2026-01-31 |
| नई दिल्ली | Jitsi Meet (online) | OSM India – Monthly Online Mapathon | 2026-02-01 |
| EPN d’Arlon, rue de Diekirch 37, Arlon | EPN d’Arlon – OpenStreetMap – Découverte | 2026-02-03 | |
| Essen | Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum | Essen OSM-Treffen | 2026-02-03 |
| Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng] | 2026-02-03 | |||
| iD Community Chat | 2026-02-04 | |||
| Stuttgart | Stuttgart | Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen | 2026-02-04 |
| Le Schmilblick, Montrouge | Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris | 2026-02-05 | |
| Montpellier | La Base | Mapathon OSM à La Base : cartographier Haïti pour la prévention des risques | 2026-02-05 |
| Freiburg im Breisgau | CCCFR | OSM-Treffen Freiburg/Brsg. | 2026-02-05 |
| Braunschweig | Stratum 0 | Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace | 2026-02-07 |
 | København | Cafe Bevar’s | OSMmapperCPH | 2026-02-08 |
| Chennai Corporation | Mapping Party @ Chennai | 2026-02-08 | |
| Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr] | 2026-02-09 | |||
 | 臺北市 | MozSpace Taipei | OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #85 | 2026-02-09 |
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 MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, miurahr.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.