01/05/2025-07/05/2025
[1] The power of OpenStreetMap with links to things such as Wikidata shown by watmildon | © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Community
- asciipip has detailed a method for naming trails in the Catoctin Mountain Park, by combining on-the-ground observations, such as coloured blazes marked on trees, with official trail information from the park’s website.
- BingoBongo has been testing its in-house game engine, for realistic terrain and vegetation rendering, by integrating global geographic data from OpenStreetMap, high-resolution surface imagery from NASA’s BlueMarble, and elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.
- The Trufi Association is celebrating their Volunteer of the Month, Anahi Gonzalez: a Mexican public-transport-mapping phenomenon.
OpenStreetMap Foundation
- Grant Slater, of the OpenStreetMap Operations Team, has announced that OSM planet exports, including minutely, hourly, and daily diffs, are now being published through an Amazon Simple Notification Service. This move enables AWS users to automatically trigger workflows as soon as new OpenStreetMap data is released.
Local chapter news
- Since late 2021, FOSSGIS e.V. has been curating
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a growing directory of companies and independent professionals offering support and services around Free and Open Source Software in the GIS sector, including OpenStreetMap and open geodata. The updated list is now available
at dienstleister.fossgis.de, where new service providers can also register
their businesses directly.
Events
- A special opportunity is being offered by the organisers of the III Workshop on Participatory Mapping and Social Cartography – MPCS 2025, which will be held 100% online this August. Some projects from lusophone countries, presented at the Mapping Projects Exhibition, will be selected for publication as chapters in the second volume of the book series Case Studies in Collaborative and Participatory Mapping, to be released in early 2026 under the IVIDES publishing
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label. More information can be found in a post by the event’s chair, Dr Raquel Dezidério Souto.
- In the latest episode of the Geomob Podcast, Ed interviewed Silas Toms, co-organiser of the recent GeoMeetup event in San Francisco. Silas discusses his geospatial tech background, the event’s success, and the resurgence of the local GeoMeetup scene. This episode also explored the growing role of AI, OpenStreetMap, and the importance of community and collaboration in the geospatial field.
- Several upcoming GeoMob events have been announced, including Geomob Zürich, set for the evening of Thursday 15 May, at the Meta Zürich office; Geomob Netherlands, taking place in Utrecht on Thursday 22 May, at NOVI University of Applied Sciences; and Geomob Brussels, scheduled for Tuesday 3 June, at The Sister Cafe.
- OpenCage GmbH’s Ed Freyfogle interviewed Juan Arellano and Andrés Gómez, from the Organising Committee of SotM Latam 2025, about the upcoming edition of the event in Medellin 4 to 6 September this year.
- The OpenStreetMap US Mappy Hour will be held remotely (by Zoom) on Saturday 21 May 8:00-9:00PM ET. Hear from Bill Wetherholt, Professor at Frostburg State University, about how OpenStreetMap can be used in the classroom to teach Geography’s five themes. The OSM US Software Engineer, Jake Low, will also demonstrate OSMCha, a tool for monitoring changes made in OpenStreetMap.
OSM research
- After analysing 746 mapping projects organised by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team between December 2021 and November 2023, a group of researchers have found that humanitarian mapping largely relies on remote contributors performing basic tasks with minimal collaboration. The system, they concluded, is sustained primarily by the expertise of a small group of advanced mappers. While these projects generally succeed in achieving short-term mapping goals, the researchers noted they often fall short when it comes to building long-term, sustainable mapping capacity.
Maps
- [1] Demonstrating the integration of OpenStreetMap with Wikidata, Matt Whilden has developed DecommissionedAircraftMap, which uses a daily bot to generate thumbnails from Wikidata entries and Overpass Ultra to retrieve geodata for displayed aircraft (
historic=aircraft
) from OSM. - Students in the Accounting Technician course at Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade Secondary School, as part of Citizenship and Development, have made
a map called Moedas do Mundo (Currencies of the World). This map shows the currencies of different places in the world, from ancient to current ones, and also a bit of their history. With this map, students were able to discover places in the world and some of their history. As it is always possible to improve, they will continue to do so next year.
- LUN, together with the MasterZoo pet store chain, has launched an interactive
map of dog walking areas in Kyiv. The initiative aims to support the development of a pet-friendly culture and responsible walking, and help create a barrier-free, comfortable environment for pet owners and their pets. The map already features over 200 locations: individual playgrounds, parks where walking is allowed, green areas and other places where you can walk your dog. Each location contains a brief description and notes on amenities, such as fencing, benches, litter bins, and training equipment for pets. You can read
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more about it in the accompanying blog post.
OSM in action
- The Duitama Mapping Stars, a group of Colombian high school students, have digitised informal transport networks from East Africa, via Southeast Asia, to Latin America. The Trufi Association is raising money to send them to SotM Latam.
- Gosfilmofond, a state film archive in Russia, has published a map
with previously unpublished newsreels and archive photos linked to the places and dates of the events of the Second World War. The map lets you filter events by date, add your own photos, and uses OpenFreeMap tiles as the base layer.
Open Data
- Michaël showed how to cross check between OSM elements IDs and their counterparts on Wikidata, using the R language.
Software
- CoMaps, the emerging community-driven fork of Organic Maps, has released an updated version of its open letter addressed to Organic Maps stakeholders (we reported earlier). In the statement, the group reaffirmed its commitment to moving forward with the fork but emphasised that it remains open to ongoing negotiations with the original project’s leadership. A project on Codeberg and a Matrix chat have been created for the current working name ‘CoMaps’.
- Tobias Zwick has announced that the StreetComplete project is receiving sponsorship from NLNet to support its full migration to a multiplatform app. The transition will leverage Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform for the user interface, paving the way for future releases on platforms beyond Android, including iOS and potentially Linux. Volunteer contributions are welcomed, particularly in areas such as migrating the UI to Jetpack Compose, improving the stability of MapLibre-Compose on iOS, and assisting with iOS development for those with the necessary expertise.
- OpenAerialMap (OAM) V2 has been released, providing faster, more reliable access to satellite and drone imagery for humanitarian mapping. HOT and Development Seed are rebuilding OAM with a new STAC-based infrastructure and modern tools.
- Panoramax tooted
that, one year after version 3, the Panoramax viewer is undergoing a major update with version 4. A new look, better readability and a series of small details will make all the difference in using the programme. It’s being tested before being implemented. For more details, see
the forum.
Programming
- In response to feedback on his OpenStreetMap diary post and Mastodon toot (we reported earlier), Daniel has demonstrated the versatility of the Z-Curve + BIGMIN technique by developing a cloud-native static spatial index for 2D points. Leveraging the same Z-order space-filling curve and BIGMIN search space pruning, the solution enables users to host a single .parquet file, similar to ProtoMaps, as a spatial index that can be queried efficiently without relying on GeoParquet, R-Trees, or PostGIS.
- TrickyFoxy demonstrated that you can run JOSM in a browser using CheerpJ, a tool for running graphical Java applications in browsers.
Did you know that …
- … TrickyFoxy has introduced new functionality to OSMBuilding, enabling the platform to render building data from custom OpenStreetMap servers? This update allows individual buildings from alternative sources, such as OpenHistoricalMap and OpenGeoFiction, to be visualised, expanding the tool’s reach beyond the main OSM database, which was previously its only data source.
OSM in the media
- The mapping of trees with OpenStreetMap and MapComplete was promoted
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by the Fluminense Federal University and also noted
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by the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. This initiative, a partnership between IVIDES.org and the YouthMappers chapters at UFRJ, UFRRJ, and UFF Campos, also included speakers at the Green Open Data Day 2025 evening session. The results are available on Wikimedia.
Other “geo” things
- Alex Woodie, of Big Data Wire. has interviewed the Overture Maps Foundation CTO, Amy Rose, regarding the technical aspects of the foundation’s efforts to build a foundational reference map, something that other mapmakers around the world can build upon.
- Deborah Pickett’s toot highlighting some confusing street names in Melbourne quickly sparked a wave of responses, with users sharing similar examples from around the globe.
- Sean Gorman has experimented with a point-of-interest (POI) relocalisation method to improve the accuracy of POI data in the Overture database, by developing a mobile application that detects nearby POIs based on the user’s location. This enables users to select a POI and capture an image to enhance location precision. This effort sparked a discussion on Mastodon, noting that it is beneficial for improving commercial POI datasets, which are strong in coverage but weak in positional accuracy.
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 Elizabete, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Ted Johnson, TheSwavu, TrickyFoxy, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.