týdeník 754

Zatím není dostupné

26/12/2024-01/01/2025

About us

• weeklyOSM has been advertised irregularly on Bluesky since issue 692, October 2023. As of issue 753, we will regularly announce the publication of a new issue there.

Mapping

• Anne-Karoline Distel continued to remotely map Indianola, Iowa (we reported earlier).
• Noha307’s mapping of footpaths around Albuquerque International Sunport, New Mexico, USA, marked the final 2024 changeset in the OSM database (December 31, 2024, 23:59:55 +0000). Shortly afterwards, TrickyFoxy became the first mapper to contribute to the OSM database in 2025, with the mapping of buildings in Volgograd Oblast, Russia (January 1, 2025, 00:00:00 +0000). You can view all the mappers who contributed during the historic database year transition here.
• M!dgard shared their project of mapping the WWI Western Front demarcation stones, known as ‘demarcatiepalen’ in Dutch and ‘bornes Vauthier’ in French. After identifying and adding all 19 Belgian stones to OpenStreetMap, they cross-referenced the data with the Flemish heritage agency’s database. In France, only 22 of 77 stones have been mapped and M!dgard plans to collaborate with a French heritage organisation to complete the task using their detailed list and photo album of the remaining stones.
• SK53 compiled, classified, and analysed the nearly 860 keys used to describe amenity=pub objects in Great Britain.

Community

• Ilya Zverev highlighted the disparity between donations from Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon to OpenStreetMap and their $3 million annual Overture Maps membership fees, contrasting this with significant contributions from non-profits like the German Sovereign Tech Fund. Zverev praised the OSMF for using some donations to create jobs, while Simon Poole added that Overture’s fees exclude additional staffing costs and critiqued Prototype Fund grants for focusing on lower-priority activities. Poole argued that addressing structural issues, such as competition from the Linux Foundation, should be prioritised over software development.
• Jiří Eischmann emphasised the function of #LocusMap that he really likes: ‘you can take a photo of a map, calibrate it with the standard map and then display it as an overlay’.
• Gregory Marler reflected on November’s #30DayMapChallenge in their OSM diary, highlighting standout artistic contributions that leveraged OpenStreetMap data. Gregory announced that they have a YouTube video series discussing their top picks, with new parts releasing every other day.
• Jiri Vlasak reflected on the fifth year of their ‘Divide and Map. Now.’ (DAMN) project, a tool for dividing large mapping areas into smaller segments for collaboration. In 2024, challenges included performance issues with over 300,000 segments, which were resolved through pagination and size limits, and confusing JavaScript clients, which are planned for improvement in 2025. The project transitioned to OAuth 2.0 and added a ‘divide to squares’ feature compatible with MapSwipe. They aim to make JavaScript clients more user-friendly and to achieve self-hosting in 2025.
• Yasunori Kirimoto published a summary of the MapLibre User Group Japan Activities in 2024.

Events

• In these OSM user diaries you can read about people’s experiences of the State of the Map LatAm 2024: tatipara ►, kauevestena ►, and crestrepo ►.

OSM research

• The paper ‘Mapping Public Urban Green Spaces Based on OpenStreetMap and Sentinel-2 Imagery Using Belief Functions’, published in 2021, by Ludwig and others, showed the use of OpenStreetMap data to reduce uncertainties in the classification of green areas in Sentinel-2 imagery.

Maps

• Benjamin Tran Dinh and Sarah Mamy have developed Chronotrains, an interactive rail map of Europe that shows how far you can travel by train within 8 hours.
• Klas Karlsson explained how to add and style OpenStreetMap Vector Tiles with QGIS.

OSM in action

• Hackaday showcased Arnis, an open-source project by Louis Erbkamm that transforms OpenStreetMap data into detailed Minecraft maps. Written in Rust, the tool allows users to import geographic areas into Minecraft by specifying coordinates, enabling immersive exploration of real-world locations. Although computationally intensive, Arnis is functional and the project welcomes community contributions to enhance its features.
• The Bandung city government has developed an OpenStreetMap-based interactive map that provides public access to traffic camera feeds across the city of Bandung, Indonesia.
• SPOT is an AI-driven tool designed to simplify the critical task of geolocating images, videos, or eyewitness reports. A beta release is publicly available, as is a tutorial.

Open Data

• Ronan Ysebaert, Marianne Guérois, and Louis Laurian published an open data archive using a 1 km grid at an EU scale. It shows the accessibility indicators of services related to cities and towns. It follows a reproducible, transparent, and updatable framework and uses only OSRM data, based on OpenStreetMap.
• Martina Oefelein tooted that the Munich Transport Corporation (MVG) has published anonymised usage data for their MVG-Rad bike-sharing service for download. She analysed the data using statistics and maps, and has shared her findings and code in a GitHub repository.

Software

• ^[1] GNU/Linux.ch introduced ► the BRouter as a versatile route planning tool based on OpenStreetMap, suitable for various transport modes including walking, cycling, and driving. With features such as route customisation, elevation profiles, no-go zones, and export options, it offers flexibility and functionality for users on desktops or mobile devices.
• Victor and Eugene shared OsmAnd’s 2025 New Year Resolutions, showcasing several new planned features to be implemented this year. They also recounted several of the 2024 resolutions that were successfully fulfilled last year.
• Dirk Stöcker has issued a challenge to the JOSM community to improve the completeness of translations in the programme, as only 7 out of the 41 supported languages exceed 99% coverage for the core interface. Important languages like French still lag behind, prompting the call to action for 2025 to become the ‘Year of the JOSM I18n Contest’. Contributions can be coordinated via the Translations page, where a statistics table highlights the current progress.
• Sesivany has evaluated ► the various OSM-based map applications for mobile phones: Mapy.cz, OsmAnd, LocusMap, Organic Maps, and Freemap.sk.

Programming

• Ilya Zverev has invited Every Door users to brainstorm potential software architecture alternatives for extending the app with external modules, extensions, plugins, or whatever.
• Pavel has described how to analyse OpenStreetMap changesets with DuckDB and dbt, focusing on converting large XML datasets into the efficient Parquet format for streamlined workflows and storage in S3 for dashboards. They demonstrated solutions to challenges such as de-duplication, resource management and metadata integration, using GIS tools, automation via GNU Make and Parallel, and lightweight pipelines for flexible analysis and visualisation.
• The experimental tool Godview integrates ► OpenStreetMap data with a Large Language Model to offer a chat-based map service. Created by Reddit user Ranoutofusernames, during the holidays, to address limitations in Google Maps, it allows users to combine natural language prompts such as ‘cheap hotels, petrol stations, and hiking parking lots between Hamburg and Berlin’ for multi-faceted map results. Currently it is limited to iOS and capped at five search results. Godview’s ability to integrate multiple queries and navigate seamlessly to results, highlights its potential as a robust alternative to Google Maps.
• hlfan has developed ► a solution for programmatically identifying and fixing gaps in route relations within OpenStreetMap data.

Releases

• Alexis Lecanu announced that Baba, a new Panoramax client for Android, can be downloaded from Google Play, and since it is the first version, he is asking people to report on GitLab any problems they encounter.
• Yohan Boniface has noted in uMap’s December change log fixes for some minor bugs and improvements to the functionality of this useful web map creator.
• OsmAnd has released version 4.9 for iOS, featuring enhanced multi-layer GPX track support, customisable audio alerts for navigation, and improved map rendering. Additionally, this version introduces an updated interface for trip planning and new tools for offline editing, offering a more streamlined and versatile user experience.
• Benjamin (aka piratenpanda) tooted about the improvements to veggiekarte, which has resulted in better cluster loading times.

Did you know that …

• … the Participatory Mapping Observatory, one of the initiatives coordinated by IVIDES.org, has published a book on techniques and cases of success in participatory mapping and social cartography, in Brazilian Portuguese and with a free download > ? The Institute plans to release a book in 2025 with case studies on collaborative mapping, most of them using OpenStreetMap.
• … Alexay Noskov and collaborators have published a collection of datasets for the WeGovNow project? They contains data provided by stakeholders, OpenStreetMap data, under the OSM data licence (ODbL), and data generated by the IGIS.TK applications. You can read more about the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and its collaborative network.
• … OpenFreeMap lets you display custom maps on your website and apps for free? It provides several vector tilesets, including liberty, positron and Brighton.
• … the OSM planet file is currently about 2006 GB in uncompressed XML format and about 146 GB when compressed with bzip2?
• … OsmAnd offers hourly offline map updates for free to OpenStreetMap contributors? Tungmar recalled being surprised years ago when he had access without a subscription, only to realise recently that it stopped because he was no longer logged in.

Other “geo” things

• A gold robbery suspect in Banyumas, Indonesia, admitted during police interrogation that they had relied ► on Google Maps to identify potential targets. Specifically, they searched for local gold stores that lacked security grilles on their shopfronts.
• Christopher May highlighted the AuthaGraph projection, an approximately equal-area projection created by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa. The projection achieves its accuracy by dividing the globe into 96 triangles, mapping them onto a tetrahedron, and then unfolding it into a rectangle. This method minimises the distortions common in traditional Mercator and Dymaxion projections, offering a more accurate representation of Earth’s geography, particularly at the high latitudes.
• In the final #geomobpod of the year, the podcast’s hosts, Ed, Steven, and Alastair, got together to reflect on 2024.
• Malay Haldar and the Airbnb engineering team have explored how to optimise map search rankings differently from traditional list-based rankings. Maps require unique strategies due to uniform user attention across scattered pins, rather than a top-down decay in lists. Innovations included limiting map pins to maximise discoverability, introducing tiered attention with ‘mini-pins’ for less prominent listings, and recentering maps to prioritise high-probability bookings near the centre.
• A Deutschlandfunk report discussed ► recent discoveries revealing that the Amazon basin, long thought to be an untouched wilderness, once hosted advanced urban centres. Using technologies including LiDAR, researchers have uncovered evidence of sophisticated ‘garden cities’, challenging old assumptions, and supporting indigenous legends of thriving civilisations in the Amazon.
• A research group from the University of Ghent, Belgium, published a study in 2020 in which they were able to prove that there is no ‘Mercator effect’. You can take the test as well. This quiz was found via Paulina Rowinska’s MapMatics, How we navigate the world through numbers, recommended by the editorial team!

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Montrouge	Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris		2025-01-02
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2025-01-03
Moers	Community-Hackday vom 3. – 5. Januar 2024 im JuNo, Moers Repelen		2025-01-03 – 2025-01-05
Model Town Tehsil	13th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online)	✓	2025-01-05
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2025-01-07
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2025-01-08
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2025-01-08
	iD Community Chat		2025-01-08
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2025-01-09
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2025-01-09
Bangalore South	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2025-01-11
Model Town Tehsil	13th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2025-01-12
København	OSMmapperCPH		2025-01-12
Richmond	MapRVA Meetup with OSM US		2025-01-14
Chambéry	Mapathon en ligne saison 24/25 CartONG		2025-01-13
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #72		2025-01-13
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2025-01-14
	Asamblea General Extraordinaria Enero 2025 Asociación OSM España (Online)		2025-01-14
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2025-01-15
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2025-01-16
Utrecht	Nieuwjaarsborrel OSGeo.nl, OSM.nl en QGIS Gebruikersvereniging Nederland		2025-01-19
	Panoramax monthly international meeting		2025-01-20
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2025-01-20

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