OSM Mingguan 849

22/10/2026-28/10/2026

Mapping

• Andy Mabbett has proposed a tagging scheme for the concrete arrows and illuminated beacon towers along the historic US Transcontinental Airway System. These physical navigation aids were built to guide early airmail pilots. Concrete arrows were enormous arrows painted or laid out on the ground, often on hilltops or open land, pointing pilots towards the next route segment. Beacon towers were tall structures equipped with powerful lights that helped pilots follow the route at night.

• LordGarySugar is proposing the tags flat_ride=track and water_ride=track so that, in the case of flat rides and water rides, the track can be distinguished from the ride area. Currently, attraction=log_flume is used for both, meaning that renderers cannot interpret the tag on paths. The tag attraction:part=* is intended to identify components such as stations and platforms, whilst a site=attraction relation is intended to link all parts of an attraction. The discussion is taking place on the OSM Community forum.

Community

• rtnF has analysed the diversity of addr:neighbourhood values in Indonesia.

• simaransharma has been adding and fixing temple map data in Surat, Gujarat, and is currently looking for other mappers in Gujarat who are also interested in mapping temples.

Local chapter news

• OSM US published another instalment of their Mapper Highlight series, which highlights mappers, projects, and OSM communities. This October, they interviewed William Edmisten (aka wcedmisten), a Virginia mapper who recently mapped every hospital network in the United States and kept invested followers updated on the OSM US Slack.

Events

• As part of its Gender Programme, the Unique Mappers Network hosted a virtual breast cancer awareness and geospatial education event on Friday 23 October. The theme was ‘Every Story Is Unique, Every Journey Matters’. It covered breast cancer awareness, prevention, early detection, and the importance of seeking medical advice. It also looked at the role of open mapping in community health awareness.

• The organisers of the fifth State of the Map Nigeria have postponed their conference from 10 to 13 November to 17 to 20 November 2026, as the University of Uyo has scheduled its graduation ceremony for 9 to 14 November. The venue remains the Town Campus of the University of Uyo in Akwa Ibom State, and the theme remains ‘Open Geospatial Innovation for Climate Action and Community Resilience’. The programme includes workshops, specialist talks on GeoAI, OpenStreetMap, citizen science, and climate action, as well as networking opportunities. Further information can be found on the conference website.

• The Asociación OpenStreetMap España is hosting ‘SotMes 2026’ at the TomTom offices in Madrid on 6 and 7 November. This free gathering of the Spanish OSM community combines talks with an ‘unconference’. Anyone interested can register .

Maps

• The Cunning Conquests Atlas is a free resource containing interactive maps of an ever-growing library of journeys. It was built with coastline data from OpenStreetMap and was released on 17 October. You can also watch the videos on YouTube with detailed legends.

• Proton built a web map where you can look up any ZIP code in the US and find how many surveillance devices (flock cameras) are near your home. The device locations on this Flock camera map come from independent research by cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael.

• vetsurgeo launched The Church Atlas, a free map of more than 3,000 churches in 18 languages, using OpenStreetMap data, with Wikidata and Wikipedia providing addresses, summaries, and photos. He also shared the lessons learned about church tagging in a diary entry.

• rpollock has published Walkably, a map showing pedestrian-friendliness across 31 European countries, based on OpenStreetMap data. Each hexagonal cell that intersects a road is assigned a score for the walkability of everyday destinations and for road quality (traffic, noise, shade in summer, main roads, gradient). An OSM blog post documented the checks made against census data. The full methodology is explained on the project page.

OSM in action

• ^[1] Jiri Podhorecky worked on the graphic design and cartographic preparation of a printed tourist map of Prague, built directly on up-to-date OpenStreetMap data.

• copilot.travel developed a dynamic map that shows each European capital claiming territory on the basis of the nationality of the first car to reach surrounding places, using typical road speeds and including ferries.

Software

• Chris Debian has developed PillarPoint, an open-source Android app for people who find, visit, and record British trigonometrical points (trigs) and Ordnance Survey benchmarks. For each trig the app checks whether OSM already has a matching survey point and flags any OSM node that is some distance from the recorded station location.

• GeoDesk released GOL Tool 2.5, adding support for incremental updates to keep local copies of OpenStreetMap data up to date.

• Martin Faust has built Rücksitzhelden, a free app for families on long car journeys that shows ► attractions and family-friendly restaurants along the route using OpenStreetMap data.

• Axel Piepgras has developed ► rueckenwind, an iPhone bicycle navigation app powered by OpenStreetMap data.

• The well-known ‘Strava Slide’ algorithm, which allows drawn routes to be automatically adapted to and optimised for the Strava heatmap, is now available both as a browser extension ‘strava-heatmap-extension’ for Chrome and Firefox, or a JOSM plugin ‘josm-strava-tracer’. This tool allows the geometry of routes to be captured much more quickly and accurately based on aggregated GNSS tracks.

• Ukrainian developers Vladyslav and Daryna Shinkarenko have developed Орієнтир, an iOS navigation app that works without GNSS. Instead, the app uses smartphone sensors to estimate the car’s speed and turns. It also offers offline maps of the whole of Ukraine, powered by OpenStreetMap data.

• Victor explained how OsmAnd’s new search engine, built from scratch and recently released in version 5.5, works.

Programming

• anthaas described how he automated marking small tasks, related to the Ebola campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as done in the HOT Tasking Manager using JOSM and the TM API.

Releases

• HeiGIT has introduced a new openrouteservice web client, which replaces the two previous route planners. This article explains the new features, current limitations, and what users need to know before the old clients and deprecated API URL are shut down on 16 November.

Did you know that …

• … the Magic Earth navigation app is based on OpenStreetMap data? It offers turn-by-turn navigation, offline maps, and speed camera alerts for iPhone, iPad, and Android; navigation is free, whilst additional features are available via a freemium model. The source code is not open. mobilsicher.de tested the Magic Earth navigation app back in 2019 and gave ► it a positive review (we reported earlier).

Other “geo” things

• Geografías acuáticas: espacios de conectividad y sociabilidad, edited by Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos and Flor Trejo Rivera and published by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, demonstrates how aquatic environments, rather than being peripheral or serving as spaces that separate societies, should be viewed as settings for diverse forms of connectivity, and within which forms of social interaction were also established that are, in fact, of great significance in a region such as this, where bodies of water deserve greater attention.

• Sven-Erik Volberg posted a map of the approximate historical boundaries of the larger European states (those with an area over 100,000 square kilometres). The map covers around 1500 years from 500 CE.

• The Direção-Geral do Território has announced ► the ‘XVII Jornadas Ibéricas de Infraestruturas de Dados Espaciais’ (Iberian Conference on Spatial Data Infrastructure), to be held from 11 to 13 November in Porto, Portugal. Those interested can register ► now.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇲🇽	Ciudad de México	Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso	State of the Map Latam 2026	2026-10-27 - 2026-10-29
🇨🇭	Rapperswil-Jona	OST RJ Gebäude 6, Rapperswil	20. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2026	2026-10-30
🇮🇹	Pesaro	Biblioteca-Archivio “Vittorio Bobbato”	Linux Day Pesaro	2026-10-31
🇮🇳	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-11-01
🇩🇪	Hannover	Kuriosum	Stammtisch	2026-11-02
🇭🇺	Budapest	United Platforms, Fény utca 16.	OSM térképest – 2026 november	2026-11-03
			Missing Maps London Mapathon Beginner Friendly (with Training) (Online) [eng]	2026-11-03
🇨🇭	Bern	Provisorium46	Berner OpenStreetMap-Znacht	2026-11-03
🇩🇪	Stuttgart	Forum 3 Café	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-11-04
🇫🇷		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-11-05
🇪🇸	Madrid	TomTom, Edificio Aqua, Calle Agustín de Foxá 4	State of the Map España 2026 (SotMes 2026)	2026-11-06 - 2026-11-07
🇫🇷	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-11-06
🇦🇹	Salzburg	HTL Itzling	Maker Days Salzburg	2026-11-07
🇮🇹		Angera	Mapathon @ Angera	2026-11-07
🇩🇰	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-11-08
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-11-09
🇹🇼	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #94	2026-11-09
🇺🇸	Salt Lake City	Woodbine Food Hall	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night	2026-11-10
🇩🇪	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-11-10
🇺🇸	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-11-10
🇬🇧	City of Westminster	The Volunteer pub	London pub meet-up	2026-11-10
🇩🇪		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-11-10
			iD Community Chat	2026-11-11
🇩🇪	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-11-11
			OSM US Mappy Hour: Mapping Route 66 Past & Present	2026-11-11
🇮🇳	Kottayam	Kottayam, Kerala	State of the Map Kerala (SoTM Kerala)	2026-11-14 - 2026-11-15
🇮🇪	Dublin	4 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin, D08 XY00	OpenStreetMap Ireland AGM - 2026	2026-11-14
🇮🇳	New Delhi	South Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.34 (South Zone)	2026-11-15

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, vicksun.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.