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28/11/2024-04/12/2024

rphyrin used OSM_PANTAU! to explore the humanitarian mapping activities by the Indonesian community [¹] | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors)

Community

Ciarán Staunton has reflected on the progress of the #osmIRL_buildings campaign, an initiative to map all buildings in Ireland accurately on OpenStreetMap, addressing data gaps for planning and housing projects. While initial enthusiasm mapped several counties, challenges including inconsistent mapping quality and burnout have emerged over time. Ciarán asked for skilled mappers to help validate and improve building data for better accuracy.
Dr Diego Rosselli’s 20-year journey to visit all 1105 municipalities in Colombia relied ► heavily on OpenStreetMap for navigation through remote and uncharted areas. His use of OSM highlights its unique value as a collaborative mapping tool. His travels have inspired others and contributed to improving map quality, leaving a legacy through detailed routes, public talks, and a book documenting his adventure.
jbcharron has proposed ► a new StreetComplete quest to map the line_attachment tag, detailing how electrical lines connect to supports like poles or pylons. While adding a new quest is technically straightforward due to robust resources and community support, the process requires effort to refine the proposal. The quest will debut in version v60.0 of the StreetComplete app.
ClaireV highlighted the Open Marchabilité ► project, which aims to improve pedestrian data in OpenStreetMap by exploring ways to describe, enhance, and use walkability and accessibility data. One of the outcomes of this project is the OSMarche web application, an interactive web map for assessing how well pedestrian data is mapped in OSM in any French city.

Events

Hokkosha reported ► that the State of the Map Japan ‘2024’ ► will take place on Saturday 15 February 2025 in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. The event will be jointly organised ► with FOSS4G Hokkaido.
The call for speakers for the State of the Map US 2025 conference is open until Friday 31 January. The conference will take place in Boston from 19 to 21 June 2025. The theme is ‘Charting the Course’, spotlighting the successes and challenges of mobility mapping.
In a Trufi webinar on Monday 16 December, research physicists who have studied informal transport data on OSM will discuss their findings on surprising efficiency and user-centric design.

Education

KuboF Hromoslav highlighted [EO]► efforts in training new contributors for OpenStreetMap through an Erasmus+ funded project. They recount workshops and events where participants learned to edit OSM using tools like StreetComplete, focusing on accessible and community-driven map creation. The initiative has also explored collaboration between Wikimedia, Esperanto, and OSM, aiming to enhance technical skills and civic engagement.
Jean-Christophe Becquet has authored an article titled ‘OpenStreetMap for Education Stakeholders’, which is part of the project Building a Dynamic Around OpenStreetMap ► with the Haut-Jura Regional Nature Park, France.

OSM research

Floris Calkoen and others presented a framework for conducting high-resolution, planetary-scale coastal analytics, based on OSM coastline data. The Global Coastal Transect System can be obtained freely and tutorials are available as well.

Humanitarian OSM

^[1] Severe floods and landslides have devastated the Sukabumi Regency, West Java, Indonesia, after two days of intense rainfall, with over 100 mm of rain falling in a short period. Upon being informed about this news, the Indonesian OpenStreetMap community has initiated humanitarian mapping activities around that area.
HOT wrapped up its Nigeria floods activation with a detailed After Action Review. Read it to find out how Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Nigerian Red Cross, and Humanitarian Mappers requested OSM data in the region and shared their mapping priorities.

Maps

geoObserver has highlighted ► carbonmapper, an interactive web map that provides observations of methane and carbon dioxide super emitters around the world, with the goal of promoting the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by making methane and carbon dioxide data accessible and actionable.
Daniel Capilla has published ► about the Mapa navideño de Málaga 2024 (Málaga’s Christmas attractions), which integrates OSM data on the XMAS-Map.
Christoph Hormann described the hidden intricacies behind the line-dashing techniques used in ancient, pre-digital cartography styles and emphasised that it is not simply a matter of mechanically and blindly repeating the defined dashing pattern along the line. Using this as inspiration, he has improved the pipeline dashing pattern renderings in the AC-Style.
Scy has developed a userscript that modifies the OpenStreetMap website’s styling to invert and hue-rotate the colours of the map tiles.
Protomaps Extracts, a web portal that offers minute-updated OSM extracts for any area containing up to 100 million nodes, has been migrated to an OpenStreetMap US Community Project and is now available at slice.openstreetmap.us.

OSM in action

Gonzalo Espinoza, from Esri, announced that the GEOGLOWS streamflow service, which offers global river discharge forecasts, now dynamically displays river names sourced from OpenStreetMap data. These names are automatically updated in the GEOGLOWS service directly from OpenStreetMap, so when missing river names are added to the main OpenStreetMap database, they will appear in the GEOGLOWS 2.0 pop-up within a few hours.
The map in the Call a Bike app of Deutsche Bahn can now be displayed using OpenStreetMap.
On Mastodon, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras used OSM data to explore the most frequent names for neighbourhoods in Argentina.

Open Data

Maxar’s Open Data Program provides satellite imagery for major crises, offering pre- and post-event data to support humanitarian efforts. Imagery, released under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0, helps organisations respond more effectively to natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, and wildfires.
OpenStreetMap US presented the latest updates to the Public Domain Map (PDMap) project. It allows mappers across the United States to edit, contribute, and consume federal datasets via a collaborative user environment and modified versions of popular OpenStreetMap tools, thereby simultaneously improving government and OSM datasets.

Programming

Mapsy is a Python library designed for rendering static maps with ease, supporting layers like tiled rasters, polygons, lines, and symbols. It is compatible with Cairo for rendering, thereby allowing users to incorporate OpenStreetMap tiles and custom geometries, making it ideal for creating visually rich map outputs for various applications.
Simon Poole’s osm-area-tags provides data on which OpenStreetMap tags imply that a closed way is an area, distinguishing between polygons and linear loops. The project supports improving tagging clarity by addressing cases where tags may imply both linear and area features. It builds on data from the iD editor’s area definitions for enhanced mapping consistency.
Rphyrin shared their experience of trying to fix a missing map feature in a Jakarta, Indonesia, public transport integration Wikipedia article. After tracing the missing line coordinates through Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, they discovered that the MediaWiki Maplink extension directly sources data from OpenStreetMap, but updates can take days to process; patience is required while awaiting changes to appear.

Releases

Vespucci has released version 20.2, highlighting the ‘automatically generated summary of changes’ in the comment field.
Travo is a smartphone city guide designed to enhance exploration by combining interactive maps, audio storytelling, and historical insights. Created by solo developer Bogdan Nichovski, it features self-guided tours, itinerary planning, and support for 13 languages, with 8 free cities and more available for one-time purchases. The app uses OpenStreetMap as its base map.
The release 2.0.1 of the osm2pgsql fixed the following small issues from the previous version: the scheme parameter of replication, installs the osm2pgsql_find_changed_ways function in the correct schema, and installs the osm2pgsql-gen binary by default.
StreetCritic is an interactive tool for evaluating urban streetscapes using OpenStreetMap data. Users can rate streets on various aspects, provide feedback for improvement, and explore scores contributed by others, aiming to foster community-driven insights into urban design and infrastructure quality.

Did you know that …

… you can keep track of different aspects of OpenStreetMap via RSS/atom feeds?
… Thibault Molleman shared a discovery about Overpass queries, highlighting that beyond filtering for objects last modified by a specific user using nwr(user:Steve), you can also query for the objects that a user has modified at any point with nwr(user_touched:Steve)?

OSM in the media

A special podcast episode celebrated 20 years of OpenStreetMap, discussing ► its origins, achievements, and future directions. Hosted by Focus on Linux and supported by FOSSGIS e.V., the episode features key figures from the community reflecting on the project’s impact on open geospatial data. Listen to the episode on Podigee .

Other “geo” things

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have used AI to analyse historical maps, identifying over 1300 potential undocumented orphaned oil and gas wells in California and Oklahoma. This innovative approach helps locate wells leaking methane and other harmful substances, supporting environmental clean-up efforts and scalable mapping for other regions.
The ‘How to Map Caves’ talk explored the evolution of cave mapping, from traditional sighting compasses, tape measures, and paper and pencil, to modern technologies such as laser measures, Bluetooth data transfer, and open-source software for creating adjustable 3D maps.
MIT researchers have developed an AI tool that generates realistic satellite images of future flood scenarios using generative adversarial networks combined with physics-based flood models. Tested in Houston, Texas, with Hurricane Harvey data, the tool provides accurate predictions and helps communities visualise risks, aiming to improve disaster preparedness and evacuation decisions. The ‘Earth Intelligence Engine’ is available for experimentation online.
The Proceedings of the VII Jornada de Geotecnologias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – (JGEOTEC) 2024 has been published ► by the Editora IVIDES. The e-book, which has public access, includes 106 chapters by 253 authors, following nine thematic axes. You can read ► more about it in Raquel Dezidério Souto’s diary.
Toronto accountant Duncan McCabe spent 10 months running over 120 carefully planned routes to create a dancing stickman animation on Strava. Using the city’s grid-like streets, he choreographed his movements to the tune of Sofi Tukker’s ‘Purple Hat’, drawing viral attention for his inventive ‘Strava Art’. McCabe’s dedication showcased creativity and determination, inspiring praise from Strava and social media.
Hidden within the National Library of Scotland lies ‘The Void’, a passageway revealing remnants of Libberton’s Wynd, a steep street in old Edinburgh that was demolished in the 1830s to make way for the George IV Bridge. Discovered in the 1990s, this forgotten street, complete with its foundations and chambers, offers a glimpse into the city’s bustling past, from merchants and taverns to public executions, and is now partially used as library infrastructure.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-12-06
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-12-08
Bonn	Research & Development Mapathon zur Untersützung von Ärzte ohne Grenzen		2024-12-09
Bruxelles – Brussel	OpenStreetMap meetup in Brussels		2024-12-09
Grenoble	Atelier de décembre du groupe local de Grenoble		2024-12-09
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #71		2024-12-09
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-12-11
	Reunión Diciembre 2024 Asociación OSM España (Online)		2024-12-10
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-12-12
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-12-12
Žilina	Missing Maps mapathon Žilina #15		2024-12-12
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-12-12
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-12-12
Moers	Community-Hackday vom 13. – 15. Dezember 2024 im JuNo, Moers Repelen		2024-12-13 – 2024-12-15
Padova	OSMit 2024		2024-12-14
	LCCWG SubCommittee – OSMF Affiliation Models Volunteers Meetup		2024-12-14
City of London	London xmas pub meet-up		2024-12-16
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam: Christmas Mapping Party		2024-12-17
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-12-17
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-12-17
Bonn	183. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-12-17
City of Edinburgh	OSM Edinburgh Social Meet-up		2024-12-17
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-12-18
Stainach-Pürgg	15. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)		2024-12-18
Zürich	Research & Development online Mapathon to support Doctors Without Borders (online)	✓	2024-12-18
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2024-12-19
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-12-19