weeklyOSM 600

11/01/2022-17/01/2022

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the 600th issue of weeklyOSM: The OSM alphabet [1] | © MatthiasMatthias | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Breaking news

  • Dorothea Kazazi has announced that the next OSMF board meeting will be on Thursday 27 January, at 13:00 UTC. The email contains a lot of useful information, including the agenda.

About us

  • [1] This is number 600 of weeklyOSM!
    • For the cover image, inspired by Yousuke Ozawa’s SatelliteFonts, we scanned OpenStreetMap for the alphabet. Maybe you have a letter-recognising AI to extend the list?

Mapping campaigns

Mapping

  • Supaplex expressed, in his OSM diary, his opinion about the editing of NSI objects in Taiwanese Hokkien language (not Taiwanese Mandarin). He explains that some Chinese contributors’ changeset boundaries are so big that most QA tools can not visualise the changeset, which might raise suspicions about the changeset. Unfortunately, even though the whole article is composed of Chinese characters, most Chinese users are not familiar with the Hokkien variety, and could not read the article.
  • redsteakraw presented three requests regarding the handling of POIs in OSM. His requests: 1. simple editor: 2. POIs with expiration dates: and 3. a temporary layer for POIs. These ideas stimulated a diverse discussion.
  • Clifford Snow found that Nominatim’s QA tool is very good for cleaning up existing data in preparation for building and address imports.
  • Mannivu illustrated (it) > de the creation of a custom link in JOSM.
  • G1asshouse took advantage of the comments section of Mateusz Konieczny’s diary entry, on editor usage statistics (which we reported last week), to express his frustration with some underlying issues he claims to have noticed in the StreetComplete app.
  • Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
  • Voting is underway on the proposal to deprecate embassy=embassy and promote embassy=yes instead, until Wednesday 2 February.

Community

  • AngocA celebrated (es) > en that all open notes in Colombia have been successfully closed and explains how he formed a working group to achieve this.
  • The OSM editor usage statistics for 2021 have been published.
  • RATP, the transport provider for Île-de-France, France, opened two new metro stations, extending its network. Less than one hour after being officially open to the public, their data was already updated on OpenStreetMap.
  • The Open Source Festival 2022 will be held as a hybrid event on 24 to 26 March in Nigeria. The call for papers closes on 26 January at 23:30 UTC. Among other things, the call explicitly applies to ‘Geospatial Technologies (OpenStreetMap, QGIS, Location Intelligence)’.
  • TreeTracks answered the question of how far across the state of Victoria, Australia you can drive on gravel roads.

Local chapter news

  • The OSM US local chapter will hold elections for its board of directors from 2 to 9 February. The deadline to become a member of OSM US to participate in the voting is 31 January. All information about the election process is on the wiki.

Events

  • HOT hosted Neema Lugangia, founder of the Tanzanian non-profit Agri Thamani, for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ interview about her work using maps for advocacy for universal nutrition.
  • The HOT Training working group is continuing an advanced JOSM training course. Those who want to attend should have JOSM installed.

OSM research

  • Yair Grinberger, Marco Minghini, Godwin Yeboah, Levente Juhász, and Peter Mooney, from five different universities, examined the extent and nature of engagement between the academic research community and the larger communities in OSM. An analysis of OSM-related publications from 2016 to 2019 and seven interviews conducted with members of a research group engaged in OSM-related research are described.

Maps

  • MyOSMatic officially crossed the 200,000 maps rendered threshold, having rendered the very first test request on 3 May 2016.

Open Data

  • In GraphHopper’s GitHub repository open-traffic-collection there are URLs to traffic information portals containing open data. Maybe this is the beginning of OpenStreetMap based navigation with traffic jam avoidance?
  • The National Library of Scotland is looking for volunteers to help transcribe place names and footpaths from 18th and 19th century maps. The results will be released as an open dataset.

Software

  • call-me-matt has programmed a Telegram bot that can monitor the monthly number of OpenStreetMap changes made by mappers. The bot notifies you if your nominated mappers have reached a certain number of changes. If you have Telegram messenger you can try it out.
  • Dutch mapper TauvicR wrote (nl) > en about the BuurtKaart (nl) > en project, which allows a neighbourhood map to be created collaboratively to help find potential neighbourhood improvements to be implemented via citizen referendums.

Programming

  • Amanda has published, on GitHub, a Rust CLI (command line interface) programme anglosaxon, which is able to convert big XML files to other formats, e.g. CSV. It could be used to convert an OSM changeset dump file to CSV format. This is not possible with DOM based tools because the uncompressed dump file is too large for them to handle.

Releases

  • Opensnowmap has implemented a new routing engine with PGrouting, which makes all piste:type relations routable; lifts and way directions are taken into account and access tags are evaluated.
  • osm2pgsql 1.5.2 has been released.
  • OrganicMaps 2022.01.15-3-android was released. The main improvements are updated maps, fixes in routing and search, and improved translations.

Did you know …

  • … Sarah Heidekorn wrote part 11 of the ‘How to become ohsome’-blog series? With the introduction of new contribution endpoints the user is now able to track the creation of, changes in the geometry or the tagging of, or deletion of objects in OpenStreetMap.
  • … the Historic Place, an open map of the world? In 12 languages and with special maps!
  • … the Open Brewery Map, which shows a brewery map of the world? The map was made by the still very active Sven Geggus and was featured (de) > en in the very first issue of the Wochennotiz, the German edition of weeklyOSM, on 23 July 2010.
  • … Leigh Dodds’s guide to Overpass queries? A great help in learning some of the more powerful features of Overpass.
  • …the traffic sign tool (de) > en, which can be used to compile tags for some German traffic signs?

Other “geo” things

  • Several mappers tried to display the size of the ash cloud from the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano by comparing it with France, Czechia and Bolivia.
  • HeiGIT gGmbH, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, is looking for a full-time senior spatial data science expert (m,f,d). Core tasks include the cross-departmental establishment and development of the increased use of advanced Machine Learning and Data Science methods in all groups and subject matters of HeiGIT.
  • HeiGIT gGmbH, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, is looking (de) > en for a full-time senior science manager for research and innovation management (m,f,d). Core tasks include the cross-departmental development, initiation, and implementation of new research projects and activities of HeiGIT.
  • HeiGIT gGmbH, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, is looking for a full-time international public relations manager (m,f,d). Core tasks include science communication and international outreach.
  • Even Google Maps does not always get its address nodes right. However, in Munich, at Ständlerstraße/A8, there are some addresses that do not belong there.
  • Pentagon – Hexagon – Octagon – Oregon

Upcoming Events

WhereWhatOnlineWhenCountry
GrenobleRencontre mensuelle du groupe OSM Grenoble osmcalpic2022-01-24flag
BremenBremer Mappertreffen (Online) osmcalpic2022-01-24flag
OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting osmcalpic2022-01-24
HoeseltRode Kruis Mapathon – Hoeselt osmcalpic2022-01-25flag
City of NottinghamOSM East Midlands/Nottingham meetup (online) osmcalpic2022-01-25flag
DüsseldorfDüsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (Online) osmcalpic2022-01-26flag
OSM Utah Highway Classification Documentation Sprint osmcalpic2022-01-27
Missing Maps online Mapathon des DRK osmcalpic2022-01-26
Decatur CountyOSM US Mappy Hour osmcalpic2022-01-27flag
[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting osmcalpic2022-01-27
HOT Training Webinar Series: Advanced JOSM editor osmcalpic2022-01-29
AmsterdamOSM Nederland nieuwjaarsbijeenkomst (online) osmcalpic2022-01-29flag
Bogotá Distrito Capital – MunicipioReunión Trimestral OSM-LatAm osmcalpic2022-01-29flag
Town of ClaremontSocial Mapping: Claremont osmcalpic2022-01-30flag
京都市京都!街歩き!マッピングパーティ:第29回 鹿王院 osmcalpic2022-01-30flag
MilanoMappy Birthday OpenStreetMap Italia! osmcalpic2022-01-30flag
Ville de Bruxelles – Stad BrusselVirtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting osmcalpic2022-01-31flag
Greater LondonMissing Maps London Mapathon osmcalpic2022-02-01flag
San JoseSouth Bay Map Night osmcalpic2022-02-02flag
Landau an der IsarVirtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen osmcalpic2022-02-01flag
BerlinOSM-Verkehrswende #33 (Online) osmcalpic2022-02-01flag
LyonEPN des Rancy : Technique de cartographie et d’édition osmcalpic2022-02-05flag
WashingtonMappingDC Mappy Hour osmcalpic2022-02-09flag
OSM Utah monthly meetup osmcalpic2022-02-10
MichiganMichigan Meetup osmcalpic2022-02-10flag
BochumOSM-Treffen Bochum (Februar) ONLINE osmcalpic2022-02-10flag

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 JuliaBesaB, Lejun, MatthiasMatthias, Nordpfeil, PierZen, RCarlow, SK53, Sammyhawkrad, SeverinGeo, Strubbl, TheSwavu, YoViajo, cafeconleche, derFred, s8321414.

4 Replies to “weeklyOSM 600”

    1. Thank You for Your comment. You are absolutely right. It was a mistake from my side.

  1. So you assume every edit with Rapid has used AI? AFAIK, the Rapid editor is just a fork of iD and it is possible to add map changes, which are not supported by AI. I am not 100% sure, but if i remember correctly instead of iD the default editor for employees of FB or Amazon is also Rapid.