05/06/2025-11/06/2025
[1] OpenStreetMap Japan community hosted a mapping party in Kamiooka, Yokohama City | © Japanese OpenStreetMap Contributors.
About us
- A weeklyOSM reader recently suggested an improvement to the event listings in the OpenStreetMap calendar, noting that only the city name was displayed instead of the full event location. In response to this feedback, we have implemented a new feature, and as of issue #776, the calendar now includes the full event location, provided it is specified in the OSM calendar. The improvement was done, as always, by TheFive, who is the creator and development leader of the OpenStreetMap Blog Collector, our CMS.
Mapping
- Mateusz Konieczny is proposing a mechanical edit to retag
building=building
asbuilding=yes
. - A proposal to deprecate the
socket:tesla_supercharger=*
andsocket:tesla_destination=*
tags is currently open for voting until 23:59 UTC Wednesday 25 June.
Community
- [1] The OpenStreetMap Japan community hosted
►
a mapping party in Kamiooka, Yokohama City, on Saturday 24 May. Equipped with Field Papers for on-site surveying and a 3D-printed terrain model from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan. Participants set out to explore the area’s distinctive topography, including its cliffs and sloping landscapes.
- Anne-Karoline Distel recently journeyed along the Barrow Navigation, an inland waterway system in Ireland centred around the River Barrow, capturing water-level imagery with a GoPro to document the route and upload the visuals to Mapillary and Panoramax.
- In episode 177 of the Deep Dive podcast Robin Boldt, founder of the motorcycle-focused navigation app Kurviger, discussed
how the platform leverages GraphHopper and OpenStreetMap to deliver highly personalised route planning.
- Jiri Podhorecky explained
►
both the historical and modern features shaping the Meadows of South Bohemia, highlighting old drainage ditches, land reclamation, and newly established ponds. These elements reflect two contrasting trends, firstly the historical drive to drain wet meadows for intensive agriculture, and now a growing effort to restore natural water retention through the creation of new ponds and wetlands and the revitalisation of old ditches to boost biodiversity and improve the landscape’s resilience. Jiri also presented the relevant OpenStreetMap tags for documenting these features.
- Secarateratur used
►
BRouter and OpenStreetMap road network data to analyse and compare several alternative walking routes.
OpenStreetMap Foundation
- Nominations for the 2025 OpenStreetMap Awards are now open and can be submitted, via the official OSM Awards website, until Wednesday 23 July.
Local chapter news
- The Swiss OpenStreetMap community has officially launched its presence on LinkedIn, marking a new step in its outreach and engagement efforts.
Events
- State of the Map 2025, to be hosted in Manila in October, now has tickets available for purchase.
Maps
- Vespucci reported that Microsoft plans to discontinue its Bing Maps services by the end of June 2025 (except iD editor).
Software
- Andrii Holovin has developed the OSM Diff State Finder, a web-based tool that allows users to locate OpenStreetMap replication state files by timestamp. Peter Körner has also built a similar application.
- OpenStreetMap US Tech Lead Quincy Morgan introduced Layercake, a set of thematic extracts (buildings, transportation, etc.) from OpenStreetMap data in a cloud-native file format that is easy to use with software ranging from DuckDB to QGIS.
- You can see an web map about streets in Belém (Pará, Brazil) made with JavaScript, OSM, and Leaflet.
Programming
- Mapbox has launched mcp-server, a Node.js-based implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects AI language model agents to Mapbox’s APIs. This enables them to access Mapbox’s spatial intelligence, understand and reason about locations, navigate the physical world, and leverage geospatial data.
- vbrene is currently developing
a JOSM plugin aimed at simplifying the tagging of bicycle and pedestrian paths in Germany and is now seeking input on some tagging inconsistencies in the wiki.
Releases
- CoMaps is being rapidly developed further. A new APK for Android was released on 10 June (f-droid). The group is still looking for iOS developers.
- LastUpdated version 1.9 has been released.
- The Android app osm2gmaps, which converts links from apps like Organic Maps and OSMAnd to proprietary map formats, has just released version 0.5.19.
Did you know that …
- … you can generate a Public Transport Line Diagram using the Overpass API?
- … Walter Nordmann’s ‘Wambacher’s OSM software list’ is a constantly updated compilation of the many software products that are important in the OSM environment and is indispensable for an OSM newcomer?
Other “geo” things
- Students from the Institute of Geography at Heidelberg University have conducted a study to examine how residents perceive urban heat in the city’s historic old town. Using the Sketch Map Tool, a participatory offline mapping method, the team collected data from 19 local participants who marked perceived hot spots in red and cool areas in blue on printed maps, which were then digitised, georeferenced, and analysed to understand spatial variations in thermal perception.
- Der Standard’s Michael Windisch reported
that following the recent acquisition of route planner app Komoot, 75 percent of the company’s staff have been laid off, with further cuts expected. In a video message released at the end of May, the departing team bid farewell and hinted at future plans to build ‘something even bigger, even better’, suggesting the possible launch of a competing product.
- The QGIS for hydrological applications course, developed by Hans van der Kwast and Kurt Menke, was translated into Portuguese by Hermínio Sabino and is the basis of the self-learning
platform, which is publicly accessible. The content has also been translated into French
and Spanish
.
- The Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), through the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal), maintains the Repositório Científico da CPLP, available
►
publicly and with more than two million records, including articles about OpenStreetMap.
- Kefiijrw detailed
the recent Yandex Maps redesign, highlighting significant changes to road visuals, which now feature detailed markings and have shifted from the familiar yellow to grey, reflecting a move toward greater realism over abstraction.
Upcoming Events
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 Fiszi37, LuxuryCoop, MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.