weeklyOSM 510

21/04/2020-27/04/2020

Mapping

• alexkemp blogged about his work in OSM on complex multi-site schools, specifically on the Heath Mount School in Hertford, England. In his blog he details the steps he made with JOSM to deal with the complex mapping task.
• CupIvan, an OSM user from Russia, has created a validator that shows post offices on a map. The orange colour indicates that the data in OSM is wrong or incomplete and the blue colour indicates that everything is OK. He invites (automatic translation) everyone to join his little mapathon and sort out all of the post offices in Russia.
• Andreea Banciu, from Telenav, has announced a project to improve navigation in Frankfurt and Rüsselsheim on the local OSM mailing list. The project targets street tagging, turn restrictions and the geometry of ways. She asked the OSM community for information about other local OSM communication channels and local data sources.

Community

• There are many communication channels for OSM enthusiasts. A reader informed us that the ‘OSM World’ discord channel just exceeded 1000 participants. If you are interested in joining, our reader provided an invite link.
• Rohubi analyses (automatic translation) in his user blog the differences between elevation profiles that different providers have determined from OSM route relations, but partly different elevation datasets. It is particularly noticeable that the profiles of Waymarked Trails are clearly smoothed, which is due to the use of the ASTER elevation data model, Version 2.
• ZKir published a video review of the Street Complete mobile app, which is used to edit OSM from a smartphone.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The agenda, the action items for the board members and parts of the minutes of the OSMF board meeting on 21 and 22 March 2020 have been made available. The minutes of the conversation with the sysadmins are also an interesting read.
• Meeting minutes of the OSMF working groups are available:
  • Operations Working Group on 10 April
  • Engineering Working Group on 16 April
• SunCobalt showed that the OSM project is accumulating more and more guidelines, terms of use and other regulations, the length of which are no longer reasonable for a reader.

Events

• The annual meeting of the in Austrian OSM association will take place (automatic translation) on 7 May 2020 online using Jitsi. Non-members are welcome to join the event.

Maps

• News from “Ca reste ouvert”, they now:
  • appear in 15 languages among others Catalán and Galego
  • offer a list view and allows the selection of subcategories;
  • have an app available for Android and iOS with English, French and German instructions, otherwise all 15 languages are supported;
  • and enable adding data about the availability of masks and hand sanitiser in pharmacies and other shops, however this data is not imported into OSM, because it is expected to change regularly; this feature is useful for countries where masks are obligatory..
• Eric Gundersen (CEO of Mapbox) published, on Medium, an article ‘Alternate care sites to expand bed capacity in Los Angeles mapped by UrbanFootprint’ talking about some maps created by UrbanFootprint to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Dhelfer announced on the Alsatian local list and twitter the availability of an OSM tile server with Alsatian rendering of names (name:gsw).
• The Austrian user gsa has created (automatic translation) a map, which displays pharmacies and whether and how often the website uses terms such as homoeopathy, Schuessler salts or Bach flowers (see Wikipedia), i.e. the German words Homöopathie, Schüsslersalze, Bachblüten, which he calls collectively ‘esoteric’.

switch2OSM

• The Ukrainian Minister of Interior Affairs Arsen Avakov published (automatic translation) a map of flights around fires in the Chernobyl nuclear power station exclusion zone. The map is based on OSM.
• Facebook has created a map of COVID-19 distribution in the US. OSM is used as a basemap.
• SpeedTest, an internet speed measurement service, has created a map of 5G network implementation around the world. OSM is used as a basemap.

Programming

• Ivan Begtin has developed a tool for processing data using the undatum command line. This tool allows you to convert, split, calculate frequency, statistics and check data in CSV, JSON and BSON files.
• Rory McCann blogged about software he has created to make heatmaps based on OSM data. In his post he demonstrates the functionality by making maps based on the sport=* tag.

Releases

• There is a fresh release of Maputnik 1.7.0. You can read about new features in the blog article.

Did you know …

• … the Procedural City Generator, which creates fictitious cities in the American grid-based style.
• …about MapCraft? MapCraft is a tool to use at mapping parties, or any other time you need to collaborate with others in OpenStreetMap.
• … UN Mappers? It is a newly created but growing community of mappers that contributes to the United Nations’ peace-building and humanitarian efforts (we reported) by editing OSM features in developing countries with the goal of producing better data and maps for daily UN operational activities. A large number of mapping projects are available on the Tasking Manager under ‘UN Mappers’.

OSM in the media

• Kylie Foy, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. reported on efforts to use an airborne Lidar platform, paired with artificial intelligence algorithms, for identifying the status of roads after a disaster to allow routing around impassable roads. The identified road network with recognised anomalies is merged with OpenStreetMap to create a useable network for route planning.

Other “geo” things

• Sidewalk (or pavement) infrastructure has a significant effect on how easy social distancing might be for users. Two initiatives this week map sidewalk widths in New York City and Paris. In many areas of both cities sidewalks are often too narrow for pedestrians to pass whilst allowing for the desired physical separation (1.5-2 metres or 6 feet). Historically, mapping widths of sidewalks has been a minority sport on OSM. Now is the time to collect this information.
• The cartographer Daniel Huffman blogged about his just finished project An Atlas of North American Rivers, an interestingly styled atlas of the major rivers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
• Citylab asked people to draw maps of the worlds they can access under lockdown. They drew tight floor plans, ‘sanity’ walks, and the people they miss seeing.
• Roger Kain published, on Talking Humanities, an article ‘How we make maps and why’ talking about the history of cartography. He refers to the page History of Cartography Project where you can find links to books, from ‘Cartography in the Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval’ to ‘Cartography in the Twentieth Century’.
• [1] ‘The end is near’ is an often (mis)used phrase. This time Tobias Kauer used the term to label his map which visualises the final syllables of German town and village names. The source code is available on GitHub.
• On 20 April 2020 online protests (automatic translation) took place in a number of Russian cities. The citizens expressed their dissatisfaction with the government’s policies by leaving messages with their demands in the Yandex.Navigator app. Messages were concentrated on the squares near the buildings where authorities are located.

Upcoming Events

Many meetings are being cancelled – please check the calendar on the wiki page for updates.

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 Elizabete, Nakaner, NunoMASAzevedo, Rogehm, SK53, Silka123, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, YoViajo, derFred.