weekly 288

1/19/2016-1/25/2016

Logo
OpenStreetMap unclosed objects (landuse=farmland), these were edited 2 years ago and does’t display on the map, Those bad geometries were detected by OSMLint-unclosedways [1] | Bild von Mapbox

Mapping

  • Schools: Back to square one? A blog post in Mappa Mercia about UK Quarterly Projects.
  • Ladislav Laska is looking for volunteers for testing the new development version of Merkaator (a desktop OSM editor like JOSM) at least for the Windows systems. Further on, he also needs support to publish an Apple OSX-Version.
  • Simon Poole tells about, what is in the pipeline for the next Vespucci release.
  • The french quality assurance tool Osmose now also covers Australia, Fiji, Palestine, Israel, Armenia, North and South Korea.
  • Pascal Neis writes in his blog on how to find suspicious changesets and how to observe an area in OSM.
  • Birmingham City Council is currently converting lots of streets into 20 mph zones. The local OSM community gets a list with all changed streets every Friday.
  • The usage of amenity=swimming_pool can now be “discouraged” after the voting in OSM wiki (36 Yes, 5 No). The alternative tag is leisure=swimming_pool.
  • Matthijs Melissen writes to the tagging mailing list, that his proposal for Aquatics centre has been rejected.
  • Hillel Yakir has published four tutorial videos in Hebrew on Youtube, which gives an introduction to editing in OSM.
  • Users Hakuch has opened a proposal to “Remove suffixed name tag from wiki”. name_1 and alt_name_1 should no longer be described in the wiki and thus not be a feature of iD editor any more. The voting runs until 2016-02-08.
  • In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, Christian Quest has created an OpenEvacMap. The Hackathon was reported in “Le Monde”, one of the major French dailies under the title “A hackathon to increase security in Paris.”
    Additional press: LaTribune, RSLN. Follow the project on Twitter and github. Pictures of #necmergitur with a retweet of the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the chief of the police of Paris.

Community

  • There is a discussion in the Austrian mailing-list about the indoor mapping of the west train station done by Mentz workers.
  • Ian Dees requests for feedback regarding his project Show Me The Way, one way to do this is by filing Github issues.
  • BushmanK suggests that one would need an issue tracker (he named Github) for tagging discussions. The opinions of the commentators are ambivalent.
  • St. Lucia News Online reports about a mapathon which took place on 19. January on St. Lucia.
  • Mapbox developed a tool called OSM Comments. It is powered by an API that helps one search the changeset discussions and notes. It is open source, the source code and the documentation are available on github.

Imports

  • The Dutch agency for road construction and traffic (NLStBV) made available actual planning data for the highway A20. The goal is to use the data to build a correct representation of the highway in OSM.
  • Edward Betts wants to match geographic objects in OSM with Wikidata items using a self written software.

Events

  • The organizing team of FOSSGIS reminds about the upcoming deadline of abstracts submission for this years edition and explains why everyone is welcome to present a talk.

Humanitarian OSM

  • Washington D.C. group wants to bring digital mapping to the people.
  • Blake Girardot will talk at FOSDEM in Brussels about the technical possibilities, the tools used and the success of the HOT-Missing Maps projects.
  • Lisa Nikolau talks about the Missing Maps Project. A map shows the work that still needs to be done in the world.

Maps

  • Valle published a video tutorial for advanced users on how to use BaseCamp to make a route for off-road biker fans.
  • User MaKa announced that the WordPress OpenStreetMap Plugin is available in Spanish.

switch2OSM

Software

  • [1] OSMLint an open source suite of validators to understand the quality of OpenStreetMap data, and to identify common geometry and metadata problems at scale. The repository is here and this is the blog referring it. The developers are still adding more validator to detect other kind of errors in OpenStreetMap. Test it.
  • Dmytro Ovdiienko has released a program that is collecting data from the OSM wiki about all documented software and gives an output of an OSM Software Catalog.
  • Releases
    Software Version Release Date Comment
    OpenJUMP 1.9.0 2016-01-18 First new release since december 2014
    OpenLayers 3.13.0 2016-01-20 68 changes and fixes
    OSRM Backend 4.9.1 2016-01-20 4 bugs fixed
    SQLite 3.10.2 2016-01-20 Bug fixes

Programming

  • By releasing version 1.7.5-idio.intel.lawyers, iD Editor has changed its license from WTFPL (Do What The Fuck You Want Public License) to ISC license (similar to BSD license). iD developers integrated code from Intel but Intel lawyers did not want to publish the code unter WTFPL.
  • Iván Sánchez Ortega describes all of what annoys him as the maintainer of Leaflet.
  • Users Malenki compares the memory requirements of different file formats for OSM data using Bulgaria as an example.

Did you know …

Other “geo” things

  • Effie Seiberg’s antique map cake became very popular. (52 retweets and 164 likes. 😉
  • Mia Heikkilä in Eura (Finland) took pictures of a rare optical phenomenon which caused a city’s streets to be mapped in the sky. An explanation you can find on slate.com.
  • Locata Corporation developed in collaboration with NASA a ground based GPS . Such a network would be able to supplement the satellite-based GPS navigation and revolutionize. Accurate navigation in urban canyons or in the mountains, cm-accurate navigation even indoor GPS navigation in large buildings could be reality.
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) visited Windsor Castle, UK; Cologne Cathedral, Germany and Christo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Upcoming Events

Where What When Country
Graz Stammtisch 25/01/2016 austria
Rennes Rencontres mensuelles 25/01/2016 france
Colorado Colorado State University Mapathon, Fort Collins 27/01/2016 united states
Urspring Stammtisch Ulmer Alb 28/01/2016 germany
Paris Rencontres mensuelles 28/01/2016 france
WikiProject_Taiwan/state/新竹市 HsinChu meetup #2 29/01/2016 taiwan
Brussels FOSDEM Conference 30/01/2016-31/01/2016 belgium
Toronto Mappy Hour 01/02/2016 canada
Charlottetown Learn to OpenStreetMap 04/02/2016 canada
Moscow Schemotechnica 06/02/2016 russia
Berlin Hack Weekend 06/02/2016-07/02/2016 germany
Lyon Rencontre mensuelle mappeurs 09/02/2016 france
Salt Lake City Geobeers 09/02/2016 united states
Cebu Bogo OSM Workshop by French Red Cross, Bogo City 10/02/2016-12/02/2016 philippines
Wien 54. Wiener Stammtisch 11/02/2016 österreich
Paris Mapathon Missing Maps 11/02/2016 france
Derby Derby 16/02/2016 england

Note: If you like to see your event here, please put it into the calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM. Please don’t forget to mention the city and the country in the calendar.

This weekly was produced by Laura Barroso, Nakaner, Peda, Rogehm, Rub21, TheFive, Ziltoidium, derFred, escada, jinalfoflia, malenki, mgehling, stephan75, wambacher, widedangel.