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17/04/2025-23/04/2025

[1] Updated railway stations tagging diagrams | Illustration of the tagging scheme ©darkonus | Tags © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Mapping campaigns

Séverin Ménard shared ► a new Les Libres Géographes’ blog post about the ongoing damage assessment mapping of Mayotte in OpenStreetMap after Cyclone Chido. The post explains the choices of methodology, early tests, interactions with Copernicus Rapid Mapping data, ongoing mapping events, community outreach, and future steps.

Community

^[1] darkonus has prepared updated versions of the diagrams explaining railway station tagging, aiming to make them clearer for newcomers, and invited others to join the discussion in his diary post.
Karlos, the developer behind the ‘OSM go‘ 3D visualisation tool, is working to resolve issues related to the rendering of gabled roofs. While investigating the problem, he also uncovered irregularities in OpenStreetMap’s 3D tagging practices, particularly with tags tailored for the F4-renderer. However, deciphering these tags presents additional challenges, as the F4-renderer remains closed source.
Christian Quest highlighted how MapComplete simplifies the integration between OpenStreetMap and Panoramax. The tool allows users to select existing objects in OSM and enhance them by adding photos, which are then automatically uploaded to Panoramax. A panoramax=* tag is added to the corresponding OSM object to establish the connection. Christian also shared an interactive map built using uMap and powered by Overpass, which displays OSM features alongside their linked photos.
Zorun has showcased a student project aimed at improving pedestrian routing in OpenStreetMap by integrating shade considerations into route calculations using Graphhopper. The project seeks to offer more comfortable walking routes, especially in hot climates, by factoring in shaded areas along the path.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

The OpenStreetMap Foundation has announced that the State of the Map Organising Committee will offer a Travel Grant Programme (TGP) for the global State of the Map 2025 conference, set to take place in Manila, Philippines, from 3 to 5 October. Applications for the TGP are now open and will be accepted until Friday 16 May at 12:00 UTC.
Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Secretary of the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board, has announced the appointment of Minh Nguyễn as the organisation’s new Core Software Development Facilitator. Minh served on the board of OpenStreetMap US, the local chapter of the OSMF in the United States, from 2019 to 2023, and has been an advisor to the OpenHistoricalMap project since 2023.
As announced by Grant Slater, of the OSMF Operations Working Group, the OSM wiki was read-only part of saturday 26 April to facilitate a scheduled upgrade of MediaWiki from version 1.39.x to the current long-term support release, version 1.43.x.

Local chapter news

Mapillary, in partnership with OpenStreetMap US, has announced the launch of Camera Grant Programme 2.0. The initiative aims to expand 360° imagery coverage across the United States and empower local communities to enhance OpenStreetMap data through street-level imagery and Mapillary-generated content.

Events

Brazil Singh shared several important links and official social media accounts related to the upcoming State of the Map 2025 conference.
OpenStreetMap will be featured in a short course at this year’s European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly, happening in Vienna, Austria from 27 April to 2 May. The session is called ‘Understanding, using and creating open data with OpenStreetMap’ and will be led by Alessandro Sarretta (@alesarrett), Laurens Oostwegel (@laurensoostwegel), and Marco Minghini (@mingo23). The EGU is the largest European assembly of researchers in the geosciences domain. If you are attending, feel free to come by on Friday 2 May, 14:00-15:45 (CEST) in room -2.62. More info on the session is available.
The State of the Map Croatia conference is set to take place on the afternoon of Wednesday 21 May. Hosted by Dani otvorenih računalnih sustava / Croatian Linux Users’ Conference, the event will be held in Zagreb and will feature presentations focused on the liberation of spatial data. Contributions are invited on a range of topics, particularly those exploring the diverse applications of OpenStreetMap data.
OpenStreetMap Indonesia, in partnership with TomTom, organised a Community Mapping Party at GoWork Plaza Indonesia in Jakarta on Saturday, 26 April. The event aimed to highlight the role of OpenStreetMap data in driving sustainable development, while emphasising the value of community collaboration and the growing potential of geospatial technologies.

Education

David Thompson is currently developing a series of modular illustrations designed to serve as visual aids for OpenStreetMap tagging documentation. The illustrations aim to enhance clarity and support the mapping of pavements, kerbs, and pedestrian crossings.

OSM research

William Cook and colleagues have published a study that found the shortest distance between 81,998 bars across South Korea using 44 years of CPU time (three months of wall clock time). They used OSRM and road data from OpenStreetMap to navigate the route and presented the results via Leaflet. This is the largest road-map instance of the Travelling Salesman Problem that has been solved to provable optimality, exceeding the 57,912-stop tour through the Netherlands solved in February 2021.

Humanitarian OSM

Russell Deffner announced that HOT was accepting applications for two appointed director positions on its Board of Directors (the deadline was 24 April), marking the first time these director seats were opened to non-members. The organisation was specifically looking for candidates with strong backgrounds in financial sustainability, diversified fundraising, and innovative hybrid business models. Ideal applicants would have had a demonstrated history of guiding mission-driven organisations through strategic growth and transformation.

Maps

The MapLibre-powered fork of OpenRailwayMap (we reported earlier) has dropped support for OSM’s railway=razed/abandoned tags in favour of historic railway data from OpenHistoricalMap.
Steve Kim and Jamie Fletcher have created a web map using MapLibre and OSM data, showing the retirement homes of Ontario.

Open Data

In ‘How Transport Data is Like Your Mom’s 1990 AOL Account’ the Trufi Association compared closed transport data to 1990s-era home internet services.

Software

Mbernasocchi confirmed that QGIS is undergoing a major transition to Qt6, prompted by Qt 5.15 entering extended support in May 2025, which restricts continued security updates and bug fixes to commercial licence holders, limiting access to upstream improvements for open-source users. The QGIS team has chosen to synchronise the Qt6 migration with a major version update, scheduling the release of QGIS 4.0 for October 2025, following QGIS 3.44.
OSRM v6.0.0 brings improved routing performance, enhanced plugins, and full compatibility with the latest OSM data format.
valh is a package that provides an interface to the Valhalla API from R. It allows you to query the Valhalla API for routes, isochrones, time-distance matrices, nearest point on the road network, and elevation data.
Alex Oppo has created a user script for Wikipedia that displays an OpenHistoricalMap map and updates it as you hover over words in the article.

Programming

In a deep dive into computing history, Daniel revisited a lesser-known paper from the 1980s that explores how spatial index queries can be performed using space-filling curves.
Paul Norman explained why islands appeared to be missing from the place labels in the new OSMF Shortbread tiles. After investigating he discovered that the Lua table for places was still defined as a node table, despite most place=island features being mapped as areas.
To address the difficulty of writing map styles using existing style languages, Paul Norman is currently developing a new language that uses minimal pre-processing to generate MapLibre GL styles. He is also seeking feedback on issues related to authoring styles for MapLibre GL.

Releases

Eugene announced the release of OsmAnd Android version 5.0, introducing a suite of new features and improvements. Highlights include upgraded widgets with added Route Information and Route Manoeuvres options, resizable side panel widgets, and an explore mode designed to help users discover nearby points of interest more easily. The iOS update comes with enhanced full-screen gallery, smart folder track organisation, new appearance settings for track group and favourites.
movingpandas has a new release, v0.21.3, which fixes missing CRS information in the ValueChangeSplitter results.
iD has a new release, v2.33.0, featuring various improvements to street level photo layers, including a slider to more quickly select relevant up to date street level photos or the new keyboard shortcut Shift + P to quickly toggle street level photo layers on and off. There are also improvements in how oneway arrows are rendered on dashed lines (such as cycle paths or tram tracks).
Version 1.4.0 of the Panoramax mobile app has been officially released.
Alexis Lecanu has announced the release of version 1.9.0 of Baba. Baba is a mobile application for Panoramax. Among other things, the new version shows on the map where street photos are already available – and where gaps can still be filled.
trajectools has a new release (v2.5) that fixes some split routines and adds descriptions to help to manage strings.

Did you know that …

… if you see outdated map tiles on OpenStreetMap then reloading the page without cache might help you?On Windows and Linux this can be done using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F5, on macOS CMD+SHIFT+R (or CMD+OPTION+R for Safari). In Firefox for Android, hold down the page reload button.
If these keyboard shortcuts are not available to you, then open the site in a private window (incognito mode).
… a feature in OsmAnd allows users to fully disable map rotation, keeping north fixed at the top of the screen? This helps prevent unintentional map shifts caused by touch gestures and may improve battery efficiency by reducing constant map animation during navigation.

Other “geo” things

Hemed tooted a beautiful map showing the land cover of East Africa in 2023, using the dataset from Earthmap (Esri Land cover, 10 m), Blender and QGIS.
Tommy Jark revealed ► new findings regarding the locations of historical siege positions at the Prosnitzer Schanze, a former military fortification on the island of Rügen in northern Germany. The breakthrough was made possible through the analysis of a detailed 17th-century battle map discovered in Sweden’s National Archives in late 2024, combined with high-resolution terrain data provided by the State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Finnish scientists have launched the development of defence software aimed at countering GNSS signal disruption attacks. The initiative comes in response to a sharp rise in interference incidents, with the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) reporting approximately 2,000 cases in 2024, up from just 239 the previous year.
Polish authorities will implement ► a nationwide photography ban at selected public sites starting 17 April. The measure, part of an amendment to Poland’s national defence and anti-espionage laws, targets approximately 25,000 locations, including military facilities, bridges, tunnels, railways, airports, seaports, post offices, energy infrastructure, and government buildings. Individuals who violate the ban risk having their recording equipment confiscated, facing fines of up to €4,600, or even imprisonment.
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), a partnership between the United Nations and the European Commission, provides global disaster information through an RSS feed that delivers real-time alerts for disasters worldwide.
According to WinFuture, Australian tech firm Q-CTRL is developing ► ‘Ironstone Opal’, a next-generation navigation system that uses quantum magnetometers, ultra-sensitive sensors that detect subtle variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, to determine precise locations without satellite signals. Unlike GNSS, it operates entirely passively, emitting no signals and making it resistant to jamming or spoofing. However, the system relies on detailed magnetic field maps, which are not yet available globally.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When
Aketi	Mapathon for Kinshasa City		2025-04-21 – 2025-04-25
	UN Mappers Mappy Hour		2025-04-25
Bergdietikon	SOSM Annual General Assembly		2025-04-25
	OSMF Affiliation Focus Group Discussion: Thematic and non-geographical groups		2025-04-26
斗南鎮	雲林六房天上聖母土庫、虎尾維基街景資料工作坊		2025-04-27
Yelahanka taluku	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2025-04-27
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2025-04-28
Korbach	Wheelmapevent Stadt Korbach + Landkreis Waldeck-Frankenberg		2025-04-29
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2025-04-30
Vogtei	OSM Radinfra-Mapathon #1		2025-04-29
Rostock	Rostocker Treffen		2025-04-30
Wien	74. Wiener OSM-Stammtisch		2025-04-30
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2025-04-30
Ludwigsburg	MA1PPING 2025		2025-05-01
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2025-05-02
Wien	EGU OpenStreetMap Short Coiurse		2025-05-02
City of Vincent	Social Mapping Saturday: Mount Hawthorn		2025-05-03
Alipur Tehsil	16th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online)		2025-05-04
Brno	Květnový brněnský Missing Maps Mapathon na Geografickém ústavu		2025-05-06
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2025-05-06
Žilina	Missing Maps mapathon Žilina #17		2025-05-06
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2025-05-06
	iD Community Chat		2025-05-07
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2025-05-07
Oslo	OSM Pils #1v1.1 2025		2025-05-08
Bochum	Bochumer OSM-Treffen		2025-05-08
Alipur Tehsil	16th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2025-05-10
København	OSMmapperCPH		2025-05-11
Kiel	Stadt-Spaziergang mit OpenStreetMap		2025-05-11
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #76		2025-05-12