weeklyOSM 546

29/12/2020-04/01/2021

About us

• If an important article is missing, then you have forgotten to enter it here! A short instruction explains in four steps how it works.

Mapping

• The French Project of the Month is to add power poles >
  on the regional distribution network controlled by Enedis > , which comprises about 95% of the national network.
• The following draft proposals are asking for comments:
  • Tom Pfeifer’s proposal on emergency=disaster_response
  • ipswichmapper’s proposal on addr:interval=*
• You can now vote on the following proposals:
  • electricity=*, which indicates the electricity source used in a public building or amenity (until 14 January).
  • amenity=place_of_mourning, to tag a room or building where families and friends can come, before a funeral, and view the body of the person who has died (until 15 January).
  • military=* to tag bases of various branches of military services (until 16 January).
  • healthcare=vaccination_centre to tag a healthcare facility where people are vaccinated (until 15 January).
• Several National Parks in England and Wales went ‘missing‘ on OSM. Andy Townsend (SomeoneElse) explains his approach to diagnosing what was wrong with the relations for these objects.
• If you (maybe as an OSM beginner) want to know how to track your edits to OSM as a number in the form of CS (changesets), this thread > in the German forum might be helpful for you.

Community

• CycleStreets, the Cambridge (England) not-for profit social enterprise, reviewed their work for 2020. They provide sophisticated OSM-based cycle routing, both on their own website, and through white label sites for other organisations.
• Missing Maps published a blog from a community member, mapmaker David, on how mapping should involve participation of and accountability towards the communities being mapped.

Events

• The first (London) Geomob of 2021 will be an online session on Wednesday 13 January at 19:00 GMT. Sign-up is now open via Google Forms.

Humanitarian OSM

• Pete Masters shared an OSM diary on ‘Potential HOT tasking manager improvements to help new and existing contributors collaborate more effectively’.

Maps

• Christopher Beddow wrote a blog post about why ‘OSM fails to compete with Google Maps’. Although they work for Facebook subsidiary Mapillary these posts are from an entirely personal point of view and include numerous examples of how digital maps fit into work and leisure activities. This initial post has already seen a lot of commentary on the OSM subreddit and Hacker News.

Software

• GpsPrune is an application for viewing, editing and converting coordinate data from GPS systems. Basically, it’s a tool to let you play with your GPS data after you get home from your trip. Besides English, the how-tos are also available in German, French and Spanish.
• OsmAnd published its ‘New Year resolutions’ for 2021 and also lists achievements from 2019 and 2020. You can select your language directly using the integrated Google Translator on the website.
• Jiri Vlasak provided an update on their ‘Divide and map. Now.‘ project, which helps mappers by dividing big areas into smaller squares that a human can map.

Programming

• Finnish researchers have used OSM to simulate the logistics associated with volunteer Fire Departments to ask if the commonly used approach of ‘go to the fire station and then respond together’ is actually the best solution.

Releases

• Bryce Cogswell announced that the latest release of GoMap!! (2.0.7) is available at the iOS App Store. This release includes some substantial new features, including greatly extended presets (using the Name Suggestion Index and iD presets), dark mode, and an updated user interface. Of particular significance is support for a number of languages beyond the original English.
• Sven Geggus wrote about changes made to improve the consistency of tagging for capacity of campsites, which can be number of tents or persons. He also asks for help to fix the localisation of his Camping Sites Map in French, Spanish, and Russian.

Did you know …

• … OSM is useful for postal delivery workers?
• … about the Wiki Site ‘How to map a …‘?
• … that the Massachusetts Bureau of Geographic Information (MassGIS) offers public domain imagery and feature maps for Massachusetts that can be integrated into OSM editors? Included is aerial imagery, a labelled topographic map, property line boundaries, and shaded relief LiDAR (especially neat as it can help locate stone walls and narrow streams beneath tree cover).
• … that the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency runs their own OpenStreetMap instance, including their own base map (with English language names in brackets after local non-Latin ones), Nominatim, overpass turbo, and OSRM routing). It’s only provided for US Government ‘authorized’ use only, so don’t go too crazy and do something unauthorised.
• [1] … about the GIS Jobs Map? It is a jobs portal showing GIS job openings around the world, overlaid on an OSM basemap.

Other “geo” things

• Frank Jacobs, at Strange Maps, produced an interesting and quirky set of thematic maps which show the zombie footprints of the German Democratic Republic.
• Intents, an Indian tech startup, has released a pothole warning app. The app is based on HERE technology. The data is collected by a separate app, partly automated, which is used by taxi and truck drivers. Machine learning will also be used in the future to estimate the danger of potholes. According to the developers, around 20 people die every day in India in traffic accidents caused by potholes.
• Simon Weckert and Moritz Ahlert presented their art projects based around Google Maps in an entertaining video talk at the Remote Chaos Experience of the Chaos Computer Club – among them, of course, the 99 mobile phones in a small cart. This activity effectively simulated traffic jams and ensured traffic-free streets in Berlin (as we reported earlier).
• A prize question for the community: According to an article at n-tv > (the embedded video is already in English), there is only one tree on Campbell Island, a squat old Sitka spruce, but no one is sure exactly how old it is or how it came to be there. Now an overpass query finds two trees on the island, so which one is in the correct place? Who can find the correct answer and the correct tree? The prize is a mention in the next weeklyOSM for the first user to answer this question correctly …

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
	Virtual meeting of the Polish OSM Association		2021-01-09
Tamia Tahsil	Naksha 2021		2021-01-10 – 2021-01-16
Zürich	OSM-Treffen Zürich		2021-01-11
München	Münchner OSM-Stammtisch		2021-01-12
Chippewa Township	Michigan Online Meetup	✓	2021-01-14
Osborne County	OpenStreetMap US Mappy Hour	✓	2021-01-14
Berlin	151. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch (Online)		2021-01-14
Warszawa	Virtual community meeting.		2021-01-15
Lyon	Rencontre mensuelle (virtuelle) Lyon	✓	2021-01-19
	135. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn		2021-01-19
	Missing Maps DRK Online Mapathon		2021-01-19
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #19 (Online)		2021-01-19
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2021-01-19
San Jose	Virtual Civic Hack & Map Night	✓	2021-01-22
Warszawa	Virtual community meeting.		2021-01-22
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen (Online)		2021-01-25
Ville de Bruxelles – Stad Brussel	Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting	✓	2021-01-26
Warszawa	Virtual community meeting.		2021-01-29

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 Climate_Ben, Nordpfeil, rogehm, SK53, Sammyhawkrad, SomeoneElse, TheSwavu, derFred, richter_fn.