weeklyOSM 516

02/06/2020-08/06/2020

Mapping

• The question of whether objects that are not or no longer visible on the ground should be mapped once again arose on the Talk and Tagging mailing lists.
• Rafael Avila Coya shows three different possibilities of how ‘overlapping naturals’ can be mapped.
• Would you delete a place mapped as a bouldering wall (i.e. rock climbing) with sport=climbing if an OSM note pointed to a public appeal not to publish such places? This question has been discussed (automatic translation) in the German forum.
• Jan Michel’s proposal for tagging access for new types of electric mobility devices, such as scooters, pedelecs or electrical bicycles, has been approved.
• Another proposal that has recently been approved was drafted by Fanfouer. It aims to describe particular topologies of power lines with the introduction of the key line_management=*.
• Pelderson’s proposal for new role values, namely alternative, excursion, approach and connection for members of recreational route relations is now open for voting.

Community

• Ilya Zverev has cancelled the vote for the 2020 OSM Awards and at the same time announced a new format for the awards in 2021. weeklyOSM notes that all the nominees have done very valuable work for OpenStreetMap. You can find the list of nominees in the different categories here:
  • core
  • innovation
  • writing
  • mapping
  • community
  • team
  • Ulf Möller Memorial Award
• The YouTube account OpenStreetMap Deutschland has been revived (automatic translation) and is looking for help and content.
• Like the OSMF, the German local chapter FOSSGIS runs its own microgrant programme. The differences between the two programmes are that you don’t need to be a member of the OSMF or FOSSGIS to apply and the FOSSGIS programme (automatic translation) has been running for more than 10 years. Amongst the grants this year is the popular map for historic features Historic Place.
• Toshikazu Seto, Hiroshi Kanasugi and Yuichiro Nishimura have published a paper on quality verification using OSM notes. The paper is a further expansion of their SotM 2019 Academic Track presentation.
• Ilya Zverev registered with OSM 10 years ago. On this occasion, he posted (automatic translation) a short reflection in his Telegram channel. It looks like he’s less invested in OSM now in favour of his job and other hobbies, but that can turn at any moment, but it is also worth noting that it may not change 😉

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Michael Reichert thinks that the OSMF shouldn’t grant rights for using its name in a particular manner, here ‘OSM Buildings’, as he wants to protect the business of 3DBuildings, which has existed since 2013, following the application of Cesium to use the name ‘Cesium OSM Buildings’. The difference between 3DBuildings, which already runs a website called osmbuildings.org, and Cesium is that the latter asked the OSMF to use the name and that the viewer of 3DBuildings is available on GitHub .
• Allan Mustard, chairman of the OSMF board, came up with a proposal to improve the relationship between parts of the community and the developers of iD. It cites the often criticised tagging decisions of the iD team but goes much further. The proposal was published as a blog post and as a mail to Talk and OSMF-Talk. Comments are explicitly requested. The proposal can also be applied to other developers and projects.
• The OSM Data Working Group has released the Activity Report for the 4th quarter of 2019. It includes a curious case of ‘node reuse’.
• The minutes of the sysadmin meetings of 4 May and 22 May are online.
• The OSMF Microgrants Committee, according to a message from Chris Beddow, has undertaken a review of proposals for the microgrants programme and is still finalising the results as well as confirming decisions with the OSMF board. Notification to recipients and announcement to the community will be made in the first half of June. The committee extends a heartfelt thanks to all who submitted their ideas for consideration. Craig Allan and Mike Collinson have been appointed as observers for the process.

Events

• The Environmental Futures & Big Data Impact Lab will host a one-hour online introduction to OSM, including a guide on how to update OSM’s data, on 16 June 2020.

Humanitarian OSM

• HOT welcomes 27 new voting members.
• The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and the Netherlands Red Cross/510 are initiating an experiment to measure the effects of AI-assisted mapping in order to compare it with conventional mapping in an evidence-based approach.

Education

• The Italian user Ferruccio Cantone has published (automatic translation) a tutorial giving hints and explaining in detail how to map with OsmAnd while riding a bike.
• Open Educational Resources is on everyone’s lips at the moment. Prof. Stefan Keller, from the HS für Technik Rapperswil, announced on Twitter his presentation on ‘OpenSchoolMaps materials on OpenStreetMap and on (geo)visualisation’. Among other things, the presentation refers to:
  • Teaching materials (worksheets): Open Educational Resource (OER), as PDFs
  • Everything available on the repository in original format
  • Structure of all teaching materials or worksheets (PDF)
    • Information for teachers, introduction and preparation
    • Worksheets with solutions.

Maps

• Swedish national broadcaster SVT made a travel map that visualises how far you get in two hours based on OSM. This is the maximum distance from home allowed under the current COVID-19 travel recommendations in Sweden.
• PBS, an American media company, created an OSM-based map which visualises Wireless Emergency Alerts, which are used in the United States to alert the public.

switch2OSM

• Michael Norelli used the QGIS MMGIS plugin to geocode 48,000 local addresses with Nominatim. This drastically reduced the number of addresses which he then geocoded using Google services. This demonstrates that even if not all addresses are mapped, an astute user can still make use of them. Users should mind the Nominatim Usage Policy.

Open Data

• In a comprehensive blog post user Robhubi describes (automatic translation) issues with getting elevation data from GPS and barometric sensors. In his article, he details many aspects that need to be considered before using the data.

Software

• GeoJSON and MapCSS support is now available in Guru Maps v4.5. Users can add layers with their data to the map.
  • Several GeoJSON files can be displayed on top of the map at the same time
  • The appearance of GeoJSON files can be customized with MapCSS
  • For changing GeoJSON and MapCSS files, you can set up an update by link
  • These features are free for all users.
• OsmAnd turned ten years old. The editors send congratulations on the anniversary.
• A service similar to the Tasking Manager, which breaks an area into smaller chunks that humans can map, is ‘Divide and map. Now’. In a diary post, user qeef writes about the experiences he had in setting up the service on an inexpensive VPS and testing it with 100 mappers.

Programming

• Ubipo released two JOSM plugins: Center Node to create a node at the centre of the selection and Shrinkwrap to create various types of hulls around the selection. Useful for landuse and other areas.

Releases

• New release of JOSM: The stable version #16538 comes with the addition of Icelandic and Persian Farsi languages and countless new features and improvements.
• Track Guru (automatic translation), a tool for analysing GPS tracks in GPX files, has a new release (automatic translation). A position correction function (the manual shifting of track points) has been added.

Did you know …

• … Ethermap by Chris Lamb? The source code is published on gitlab. Karlos, from OSMgo, has created a nice map based on Ethermap. He takes the event data, just like weeklyOSM, from the calendar.
• … the javascript library openglobus by user zemledelec? It allows you to display 3D maps. He asks for your opinion.
• … the website ‘Where is the market?’ by Tobias Preuß shows the weekly markets, vegetable markets and flea markets of different cities in Germany? The software for the website is free, open source under the MIT licence, and available on GitHub.

OSM in the media

• The Markgräflerland Environmental Protection Association provides a series of maps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 with environment-related information, including ‘New ideas and concepts for regional public transport’. A report has been published in the Badische Zeitung (automatic translation).

Other “geo” things

• The French Archaeological Mission of Kition published a story map which invites the visitor on a journey through the urban history of the ancient town of Kition, which was founded in the 13th century BC and is today covered by the contemporary city of Larnaca (Cyprus).
• In Alta, Norway a mudslide carried several houses into the sea. This dramatic event was caught on video. (Note, that the coastline in the area needs improvement on OSM.)
• We have already talked about a map visualising street names in Brussels by gender. Now, based on the same project, another city is on board: Belgrade, Serbia. The etymology of all street names in Belgrade are mapped and 11% of streets are named after women, almost double that of Brussels but nowhere near gender equality. The original project has been refactored to allow easy use in new cities. Which city will be next?
• GIScienceHD published a short blog post ‘Exploration of OpenStreetMap Missing Built-up Areas using Twitter Hierarchical Clustering and Deep Learning in Mozambique’ that refers to an article by Hao Li et al. on Science Direct.
• The blog Map of the Week writes about Mr Tornado, Tetsuya Fujita, who not only developed the F-scale for measuring tornado intensity but also drew interesting speciality maps.
• The blog Geoobserver (automatic translation) mentioned the sinking of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in the course of the worldwide movement #BlackLivesMatter in Bristol. It remains to be seen if the user stadtvermesser has entered the place of the sinking correctly.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	When	Country
Munich	Münchner Treffen	2020-06-11
Zurich	117. OSM Meetup Zurich	2020-06-11
San José	Virtual Civic Hack Night & Map Night	2020-06-11
Berlin	144. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch (Online)	2020-06-12
Berlin	OSM Berlin Verkehrswende (Online)	2020-06-16
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (Online)	2020-06-16
Cologne Bonn Airport	128. Bonner OSM-Stammtisch (Online)	2020-06-16
Leoben	Stammtisch Obersteiermark (cancelled)	2020-06-18
Sheffield	Sheffield pub meetup	2020-06-23
Guarda	EuYoutH OSM Meeting (cancelled)	2020-06-24-2020-06-28
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OSM-Stammtisch	2020-06-26
Rennes	Atelier découverte	2020-06-28
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter Stammtisch	2020-07-01
Cape Town	HOT Summit	2020-07-01-2020-07-02
Kandy	2020 State of the Map Asia	2020-10-31-2020-11-01

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 check your event in our public calendar preview and correct it, where appropriate.

This weeklyOSM was produced by AnisKoutsi, Anne Ghisla, LorenzoStucchi, Nakaner, NunoMASAzevedo, PierZen, Polyglot, Rogehm, SK53, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, derFred, jinalfoflia, mOlind, renecha.