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06/07/2021-12/07/2021

Request for comments barrier=cycle_barrier [¹]

Breaking news

Kai, an active mapper with disaster management expertise, shares his urgent recommendations for mapping the impact of the flooding in western Germany which happened earlier this week on 15th and 16th July.

About us

Erratum: The StreetCompleteness web interface that lists the completion percentage for some selected StreetComplete quests (we reported last week) was not created by Tobias Zwick, who created the StreetComplete app, but by Wieland Breitfeld > . We apologise for the error.
Good news: Our Korean contributor and translator, Donga Hwang aka LuxuryCoop is back from his co-literary duty (doing military service with the Air Force) and therefore our Korean edition has been back since last week. 😉

Mapping campaigns

TomTom have created five MapRoulette challenges aimed at checking and improving OSM for vehicle navigation. Each challenge covers a different part of Africa, and TomTom indicates that they are based on both regular OSM quality control tools, such as Osmose, and data and validations internal to TomTom. No details have been provided about how to modify the tagging.
Edoardo Neerhut announced on talk-au that OSGeo Oceania has allocated $2,500 AUD funding specifically for OpenStreetMap-related initiatives.
The Swiss OSM Association’s July Project of the Month is targetted at data improvement of campsites and overnight sites for recreational vehicles (RVs or motorhomes). Detailed instructions are available on the wiki ( or ).
[1] The third UK Quarterly Project of 2021 is focused on tourism: facilities and areas of interest for visitors, such as hotels, caravan parks, public transport hubs, public footpaths, and places with historic interest.

Mapping

Naming the Schneeberg, an Austrian mountain, has turned out >
to be controversial. It is a steep-sided undulating limestone plateau with several summits (see this old account of other aspects of mapping in the area). The problem is that there is apparently no good way to name the whole range on OSM, and therefore some have advocated either using the name for the highest peak or appending the name of the range to the peak ‘Klosterwappen (Schneeberg)’.
AngocA outlined > his views on and experience with OSM notes in a detailed diary post.
PkBuzios blogged about his mapping progress at the Seale-Hayne campus, located in Devon, UK. The campus was purpose-built as an agricultural college about 100 years ago, and was later a campus of the University of Plymouth until teaching stopped in the 2000s.
[1] Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
- defensive_structure=* for tagging defensive structures at all modern and historic fortifications.
- man_made=video_wall for mapping large digital screens.
- barrier=cycle_barrier to extend the tagging for cycle barriers in order to determine the passibility of these kind of barriers for different vehicle types, especially cargo bikes, bikes with trailers or wheelchairs.
Voting on the following proposals has closed:
- leisure=bathing_place, to tag a place used for bathing and swimming, was not successful with 8 votes for, 9 votes against and 3 abstentions.
- building=fire_lookout and emergency=fire_lookout, to tag fire lookouts, was approved with 21 votes for, 2 votes against and 1 abstention.
- The survey marker proposal to tag the structure, condition, and purpose of a survey marker, was approved with 13 votes for, 2 votes against and 5 abstentions.

Community

Amanda McCann last week released her ‘activity reports’ for April, May and June.
The OSM Iran community mourns [fa]
a young contributor, Mohammed Reza Norouzi. (Translation is available on Twitter.)

OpenStreetMap Foundation

The Engineering Working Group is restarting with a new charter. Mikel Maron distributed a draft of the proposed charter and the OSMF is seeking feedback.

Events

Martijn van Exel reported about State of the Map 2021 from the perspective of task-based editors and MapRoulette.

OSM research

Oliver Fritz noted that the 2021 AGIT symposium > has accepted a new paper by a HeiGIT research team. The paper discusses a different approach to the global analysis of OSM data completeness. This is accomplished by generating reference data from demographic and socio-economic indicators, as well as sporadically available open General Transport Feed Specification (GTFS) datasets via a regression model.
Linda Sendlinger reported on a publication by Yeboah et al. concerning the analysis of OSM data quality for different stages of the mapping process in slums. The authors have developed four novel definitions of completeness based on the total number, length, and area of OSM objects. All definitions were formed at arbitrary timestamps, allowing for these objects to be assessed for completeness at any time during the mapping process, as well as the estimation of potential disparities.
Michael Szell and colleagues used OpenStreetMap data to explore the limitations of different urban bicycle network models’ growth before rendering them.

Humanitarian OSM

Spatial Collective, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and OpenMap Development Tanzania facilitated a final workshop with key government officials to share the methodology, collected data, and had discussions on how they can use the data for disaster management and risk reduction in Ilemela and Nyamagana. The aim was to ensure that they have the data collected, update and add more data according to their needs by using free and open-source software and other cost-effective tools used in data collection.
Seven OSM communities in Tanzania have been selected to receive OpenMap Development Tanzania Community Impact Microgrants.
OpenMap Development Tanzania recently held their first workshop for potential ‘Open Skies Fellows‘ candidates. Sixteen people from different regions of mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar attended. The candidates were exposed to different technologies including drones and 3D printing. They learned how to assemble 3D printers and design, assemble and fly drones, as well as plan drone missions.
HeiGIT, TdLab Geography and the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University are collaborating on the transdisciplinary HEAL project which supports people, especially at-risk groups, during heat waves. This is accomplished by involving target groups and stakeholders, as well as by integrating public smart city data into a routing system.

Open Data

Geoalert, a startup, published an Open Urban Mapping update using new Mapbox satellite imagery, which is aimed at contributing to OSM. The number of extracted building footprints increased by x2.5. They explain why why Chechnya is the most poorly mapped among all the regions of Russia.

Software

AntoJvlt gave a few insights into his Google Summer of Code project ‘Nominatim QA Analyser Tool’, capable of analysing Nominatim’s database to extract suspicious data from it and presenting the results in a graphical interface so they can be corrected.
Baato announced the beta release of a tool to compare OSM mapping of a particular area at two different times, thus facilitating before–after comparisons.
The Android app GeoNotes creator, hauke-stieler, gets feedback from time to time and they have made some changes. Among other things, the export to GeoJSON, a list of all notes and a feedback option via email for non-GitHub users have been added.
goodudetheboy gave an update on the progress of the OpeningHoursEvaluator and also an outlook for the next steps.

Programming

rainerU showed > how to use the UNIX bash shell to download the locations of Mapillary sequences in a given bounding box and convert them to a format usable as an overlay on a Garmin GPS.
Ujaval Gandhi announced a major update to his Mastering GDAL Tools on SpatialThoughts (free access to course material).
Yunzhi, a Facebook employee, describes with examples in her blog post how Facebook uses automated validation processes to find erroneous data in OSM before creating their fork ‘Daylight’.

Did you know …

… that you can use Martin Raifer’s osm-tile-access-log-viewer to view the logs of frequently viewed tiles we mentioned last week?

OSM in the media

The Addison County Independent interviewed Adam Franco, OSM contributor and creator of Curvature, a website for planning motorcycle rides on curvy roads.

Other “geo” things

Reddit user Morwon posted two versions of a population map of Europe where each square represents ~500,000 people,
OpenCage’s geoweirdness thread of the week: South Africa 🇿🇦

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When
	OSM Africa Monthly Mapathon: Map Nigeria		2021-07-02 – 2021-08-02
	NetHope webinar: Mapping With AI and Communities		2021-07-20
Derby	~~East Midlands OSM Pub Meet-up : Derby~~		2021-07-20
Bonn	141. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn	✓	2021-07-20
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #25 (Online)		2021-07-20
City of Nottingham	OSM East Midlands/Nottingham meetup (online)	✓	2021-07-20
Lüneburg	~~Lüneburger Mappertreffen~~		2021-07-20
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2021-07-20
	Charla/taller en línea de introducción a OpenStreetMap		2021-07-21
Berlin	Missing Maps Ärzte ohne Grenzen Mapathon		2021-07-21
	Virtueel treffen OpenStreetMap NL		2021-07-24
Bogotá Distrito Capital	Resolver notas de Bogotá creadas en OpenStreetMap		2021-07-24
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen (Online)	✓	2021-07-26
Ville de Bruxelles – Stad Brussel	Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting	✓	2021-07-27
Aubière	Rencontre OpenStreetMap Clermont		2021-07-28
Zürich	Missing Maps Zürich Mapathon		2021-07-28
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OSM-Treffen (online)		2021-07-28
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public meeting		2021-07-30
臺北市	COSCUP 2021 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata 開放內容議程軌 (CfP)		2021-07-31 – 2021-08-01
London	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2021-08-03
Landau an der Isar	Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen	✓	2021-08-03
Nordrhein-Westfalen	OSM-Treffen Bochum		2021-08-05