weeklyOSM 738

05/09/2024-11/09/2024

About us

• Bastian Greshake-Tzovaras has started using weeklyOSM to practice their Spanish.
• darkonus marked ► two years since the launch of the Ukrainian version of weeklyOSM. They celebrated the work of the translators and highlighted the project’s success in making OpenStreetMap news accessible to Ukrainian mappers. They encouraged community contributions and invited volunteers to help with the translation and editing.

Mapping

• Luna explained how to use the seats:separated=* tag to map ‘anti-homeless‘ bench separators.
• Comments are requested on:
  • The proposal to introduce the divider=* tag for more accurate mapping of physical separators between traffic lanes.
  • The proposal to add oneway:foot=* for marking one-way restrictions on pedestrian paths and improving data for routing in areas with controlled pedestrian movement.

Mapping campaigns

• OSM India has initiated a humanitarian mapping campaign in response to the flooding caused by heavy rainfall in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Community

• The Belgian chapter, in particular Jonathan Beliën, has announced that after more than three months of downtime, the OSM Welcome Tool will soon be working again. The current SQLite-based setup struggles to handle multiple regions, leading to suggestions including migrating to Platform.sh, Laravel Forge, or Laravel Vapor for better scalability. Testing is underway with Platform.sh and Laravel Forge to determine the best option for efficiently managing server resources.
• Amanda McCann recommended a new OSM Mastodon account to follow, @awsm@en.osm.town, where each week a different OSM person will take the helm to manage the account.
• Jiri Podhorecky blogged ► about how adding smaller features to maps can make them more intuitive and appealing. These details help users navigate more easily, especially in rural areas. It emphasised the importance of including both natural and human-made elements to enhance the clarity and beauty of maps.
• Christoph Hormann talked about how to make map symbols look better, especially in OpenStreetMap. The new method makes overlapping symbols look nicer by cutting rather than blocking and taking into account things such as view angles and elevation. The article also talks about the new technology in Mapnik that makes this possible, making maps easier to read and interact with.
• The Swecha Andhra Pradesh Community celebrated the 20th anniversary of OSM with a mapping party.
• Following the collapse ► of Dresden’s Carola Bridge into the River Elbe, on the night of 10 and 11 September, the bridge tags were updated in OpenStreetMap just a few hours after the accident. Fortunately nobody was injured ► according to the latest news.

Local chapter news

• Meta and ESRI have joined OpenStreetMap US as a strategic members. There are three strategic level members now.

Events

• Christoph Hormann wrote a short comment about the State of the Map 2024.
• Hawa Adinani shared her experience of attending the State of the Map conference in Nairobi, the first global OSM conference to be held in Africa. She nominated the diversity of projects, the networking with non-technical members of the OSM community, and the inspiring lightning talks from young participants as highlights. Hawa reflected on the balance between organising and attending the event, and shared her excitement for future academic collaborations. She also enjoyed her first game of golf at the social event.
• Raquel Dezidério Souto wrote ► about the participation of IVIDES.org at the State of the Map 2024, which took place in Nairobi (Kenya), where some of the institute’s ongoing research was presented.
• The video recordings of each talk from State of the Map France 2024 have been released .

Education

• Jiří Eischmann demonstrated ► several different methods for adding points of interest to OSM using StreetComplete, OsmAnd, and Organic Maps.

OSM research

• In a project inspired by Harry Beck’s iconic London Tube map, researchers at the University of Freiburg, Germany, are automating the creation of schematic transit maps around the world using OpenStreetMap data using SPARQL queries and a line network graph. The study tests different transit systems (e.g. subways, trams) and evaluates map quality and scalability.
• HeiGIT reported that a paper called ‘Enriching building function classification using Large Language Model embeddings of OpenStreetMap Tags’ by Memduhoğlu et al. has been published. Their findings underscore the value of deep contextual understanding in enhancing automated classification methods.

OSM in action

• Henrique et al. have classified over 67 million US buildings by using an unsupervised machine learning method to categorise building types based on building footprint data and available OpenStreetMap information.
• ANYWAYS has recently analysed bike-sharing systems around the world and ranked cities according to the quality of cycle routes between bicycle stations. The top three cities are Helsinki (1.7), Antwerp (1.4) and Seville (1.3). They invite proposals for cities outside Europe to be evaluated for inclusion.
• openclimbing.org is a community-driven platform for managing climbing topos using a cartography-first approach. The site allows users to contribute under a free licence, with all data stored in public databases like OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia Commons. The platform encourages open collaboration similar to Wikipedia.
• The Surprise Date Spot website offers a fun way to discover restaurant recommendations by allowing users to randomly select locations on a map. It helps plan spontaneous dining experiences by suggesting places based on the selected area.
• Tobias Jordans noticed that Komoot has made it easier to show POIs, which can ease the planning of routes.
• The Sparta Coding Club interviewed ► the developer of the ‘Deepfake Victimised Schools Map’. This website shows where sex crimes exploiting deepfake technology have occurred in South Korea.

Software

• Pedro Leão summarised his Google Summer of Code project, during which he added new field types to OpenHistoricalMap’s fork of the iD editor, helping mappers to cite their sources more rigorously.
• Cartes reported ► that they have recently integrated Panoramax, a self-hosted, open-source street view platform, into their app.
• Strava’s Patchwork tool helps identify missing paths in OpenStreetMap using data from their traces of public activities. It visualises potential new ways on a map, marking these paths in orange, and allows users to compare them with existing ways for validation.

Programming

• Tobias Zwick has developed a Kotlin-based API proposal for MapLibre layers, aiming to improve usability and flexibility compared to the Java API. It includes examples for defining and styling map layers, such as roads and bridges, using Kotlin idioms and Jetpack Compose-like parameters. The main goal is to simplify working with MapLibre layers, reduce verbosity and improve the developer experience, although dealing with expressions remains a challenge.
• James Birkett showed how to display the location stored in geotagged photos on OpenStreetMap using Linux Bash.

Releases

• This Organic Maps’ GitHub issue tracks the release process for September 2024 update. It outlines steps such as alpha and beta testing, release candidate reviews, and app store submissions for Android, iOS, and F-Droid.
• The flutter_osm_plugin package provides a plugin for integrating OpenStreetMap in Flutter applications. It supports map rendering, interactive markers, custom map styles, and location tracking, making it a useful tool for building map-based applications.
• The new Maps app for GNOME 47 release included vector-based maps, improved public transit routing, a redesigned search bar, and localised highway shield updates. The article also mentions bug fixes and enhancements to rendering highway shields using Cairo.
• The 2.6.0 release of uMap included several updates, such as enhanced support for external tile servers and improved metadata handling. Bug fixes addressed issues such as layer transparency and URL handling. Other improvements included the addition of pop-up options for markers and improved compatibility with mobile devices.
• The Merkaartor 0.20.0 release introduced OAuth2 authentication, AppImage builds, and various bug fixes, including improvements to CI builds, external library handling, and Windows localisation. It also removes obsolete code and the qmake build configurations.
• Version 59.0-beta1 of StreetComplete has introduced new features and fixes, first and foremost the changeover from tangram-es to MapLibre as the map renderer. Meanwhile, iOS development has continued, with the lead developer putting considerable effort into bringing the application to Apple’s platform. However, challenges such as adapting to iOS-specific features and codebase changes remain. Support is urgently needed.
• zby-cz announced the release of OsmAPP 1.5.0, highlighting its new features such as an opening hours editor, support for multiple image sources, and improvements in mobile usability. He also mentioned bug fixes, feature panel improvements, and updates in the OpenClimbing project.

Other “geo” things

• [1] A map of every tree, something that’s truly possible within the OpenStreetMap project, was parodied in a recent xkcd comic. Paul Eberhardt, on the explainxkcd wiki, noted that mapping individual trees is an actual thing and mentioned several research projects utilising maps of every tree.
• Bluesight’s demonstration showed how satellite data can be searched for objects in San Francisco using natural language or images. They used OpenAI’s CLIP model and Meta’s Segment Anything Model.
• Jürgen Wallner tooted some Austrian basemap styles as a QGIS project. They also include contour lines and offer optional visualisations of terrain and surface details in various styles.
• As part of its gender equality policy, the Grenoble municipality is now naming ► all new or unnamed public spaces and facilities with exclusively feminine names.
• Tom MacWright tooted a flowchart diagram that shows the interrelationship between map-related companies, technologies, and key individuals within them.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Lynnwood	Mapping Lynnwood		2024-09-14
Bielefeld	OSM Ostwestfalen-Lippe		2024-09-16
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-09-16
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-09-17
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-09-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-09-17
Bonn	180. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-09-17
London	Geomob London		2024-09-18
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-09-18
Kiel	OSM auf den 22. Kieler Open Source und Linux Tagen		2024-09-19 – 2024-09-21
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam End of Summer Meetup		2024-09-19
Dresden	Stammtisch Dresden		2024-09-19
Dresden	OSM auf den Datenspuren Dresden		2024-09-21
Dublin	OpenStreetMap Ireland AGM 2024		2024-09-21
Lamego (Almacave e Sé)	Dia do Software Livre		2024-09-21 – 2024-09-22
Lebach	Craft Mapping an der “Thalexweiler Wegekreuz-Tour”		2024-09-22
Strasbourg	1er Atelier de cartographie sur OpenStreetMap		2024-09-23
Arlon	Rencontre OSM Luxembourg		2024-09-23
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-09-26
Lübeck	146. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-09-26
Málaga	Quién es quién en el Cementerio Inglés		2024-09-27
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-09-27
Rapperswil-Jona	16. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2024		2024-09-27
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-09-27
কক্সবাজার	State of the Map Bangladesh – SotMBD ‘2024		2024-09-27 – 2024-09-28
Marpingen	Craft Mapping an der “Marpinger Wegekreuz-Tour”		2024-09-29

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 MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, YoViajo, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.