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26/01/2021-01/02/2021

Commute Time Map by ¹ | © Geoapify | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

Voting on the following proposals is currently underway:
- stone_type=ogham_stone for stones with inscriptions in Ogham script (till Monday 8 February);
- wait=* for defining which lane(s) stop/give_way/traffic_signals apply to (till Wednesday 10 February);
- man_made=tailings_pond for a mass of liquid or mud where the by-products of mining operations are stored – replaces reservoir_type=tailings (till Wednesday 10 February);
- traffic_calming=mini_bumps to mark small bumps installed as traffic calming devices (till Thursday 11 February);
- funeral_hall=* for indicating the availability of a place for holding a funeral ceremony at a facility such as a funeral director’s shop or a crematorium (till Saturday 13 February); and
- healthcare=sample_collection to tag a site where samples of blood, urine, etc. are obtained or collected for the purpose of analysing them for healthcare diagnostics (till Tuesday 16 February).
Brian Sperlongano has submitted a proposal for tagging evaporation basins, which are used to precipitate solids from a solution either to harvest a product, or make handling waste easier. The suggested tag aims to replace the use of landuse=reservoir for such features.
There is now a proposal for shops offering a range of postal services either specifically for parcels or associated with a different type of shop. It is not entirely clear how this differs from post offices within a shop or other amenity.
Jess Weichler, a New Zealand based designer, enthused about how exploring her home town with StreetComplete made for a nerdy date night with her partner.
User M3232 made some suggestions on the OSM wiki as to how map data, and editing tools, could cope with objects which cross the ante-meridian (180 W/E).
OrDal wrote on the Israel forum about suggested changes to relations covering the West Bank territories. These were occupied after the Six Day War and are partially administered by the Palestinian Authority and partly areas of Jewish settlement, effectively administered, but not officially annexed, by Israel. The goal of the proposed changes is to better reflect the on-the-ground situation. One might expect changes in such a sensitive area to elicit responses but, to date, no-one has replied.

Community

Rory McCann (User ᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈) lists a personal summary of his OSM activities in November 2020, which revolved around mapping, videos, Communication Working Group (CWG), community stuff, and OSMF Board.
Frederik Ramm pointed out that many languages’ introductory wiki pages for beginners are woefully out of date. This is now particularly apparent as they refer to Potlatch 2 as an in-browser editor. He asked for speakers of any of the 45 languages the beginner’s guide has been translated into, to change any references to the web-based Potlatch 2 to an alternative editor.
Supaplex and other experienced Taiwan mappers decided, at the monthly Taipei meetup, that they will remove the map features added by an account which abuses the MapwithAI road recognition feature by carrying out mass road uploads without interpreting AI results against reality, where detected objects might be dry creeks or areas under high-voltage power lines. They will remove roads that have been uploaded by this account but have not been subsequently edited.

Imports

Dongha Hwang announced the beginning of an import from the South Korea open data portal, namely of datasets with ODbL-compatible licenses. The process is described in detail on the dedicated wiki page.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

Mateusz Konieczny asked on the OSMF-Talk list if there is a list of employees of the OSM Foundation. Currently the various tasks are split between volunteers and contractors, as summarised on the dedicated wiki page.
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Policy Special Committee of the OpenStreetMap Foundation has published a brief report on an inventory of software tools used for collaboration within the organisation, board, and working groups; and proposed recommendations to increase the use of free and/or open source software.

Local chapter news

Rory McCann (Secretary OSMF) asked the OSM community of Poland and the OSMF Membership about Stowarzyszenie OpenStreetMap Polska’s application to become an official Local Chapter of the OSMF. Please forward your questions, comments or concerns by 14 February 2021.
On 28 January, the German chapter FOSSGIS organised > a fully virtual event called FOSSGIS-UPDATE, with great success. Over 200 attendees followed presentations on live stream, attended virtual booths, and interacted in small groups on a game-like map.
In episode 57 of the Geomob podcast Ed Freyfogle interviews Jez Nicholson, one of the directors of OSMUK, the local chapter of OSMF in the United Kingdom.

Humanitarian OSM

Missing Maps reported on a successful collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières in the 2020 campaign against malaria in Burundi. Missing Maps focused on updating OSM data about buildings in the targeted region. The anti-mosquito campaign reached 97% of the population and 98% of the houses in three communes in the hotspot of the malaria outbreak.
GIScience News Blog: Humanitarian OSM Stats: How to monitor humanitarian mapping in the HOT Tasking Manager?
In order to speed up the validation process for the PhilAWARE project, the HOT Philippines team is opening a validator selection process for local volunteers.

Education

Nixintel started an introduction to overpass turbo on their blog.
UN Mappers are publishing OSM tutorials on their YouTube channel. They are available in English, French and Italian. The team is also producing training materials in several languages, which will be hosted on the Moodle platform. If you have any comments or are interested in contributing, please email un.mappers@un.org

Maps

Marcel Normann, from the OpenSource User Wheregroup, provided > some more background information about MapLibre (we reported earlier).
Delphine Montagne informed > us, on the talk-fr list, about the publication of an interactive map of the ecological transition in Pau. This map is the result of the DéCiSiF > project of the TREE laboratory (CNRS/University of Pau). The data comes from OpenStreetMap and the INPN > (National Inventory of Natural Heritage).

Software

NIMBY rails, a game to build and operate railway routes yourself based on real world geography, has been released. The game is based on OSM. Programme menus are offered in 27 languages.
SomeoneElse reported on his experiments with running Potlatch 3 under Wine on various Linux installations. For the most part these were successful. He makes some specific recommendations for avoiding crashes which may lose your edits.

Programming

IpswichMapper announced SwiftAddress (see earlier report) on the Talk mailing list. In response Simon Poole raised the issue of duplication in the development of OSM software. This in turn provoked a vigorous discussion about decisions to develop new software or adapt existing code.
Branko Kokanovic wrote a new console app that takes GTFS as an input and tells you the exact changes you’ll need to do in OSM to make it as close to the GTFS feed as possible. The source is available on GitLab.
In advance of the osm2pgsql virtual meetup held this week, Sven Geggus made a short list of their desiderata (things desired).

Releases

Release 5.3 of OpenStreetMap Carto rendering is now live. A significant visual change is the rendering of mini-roundabouts, which now appear closer to turning circles. Other changes, such as partial indexes on waterways, are to improve performance only.
OpenMapTiles released a new version (3.12) with a number of new features. Generalisation of buildings as blocks is designed to improve rendering of dense urban areas at mid-zoom levels. Newly added features include water areas (swimming pools, salt ponds, etc.), airport gates, and protected areas.
OsmAnd 3.90 (iOS) and 3.9 (Android) have been released.
The new release of
OSRM, the super-fast OpenStreetMap routing engine, now supports multiple via-way restrictions, Node.js release 14 compatibility, and Lua profile debug script; and comes with lots of fixes!

Did you know …

[1] … Commute Time Map allows you to create reachability maps for different forms of transport?
… OSM History Viewer lets you visualise an OpenStreetMap object’s history and link to various other OSM monitoring tools?
… OSM In Realtime by James Westman? This site shows the changesets being made in OSM every second and we’re about to hit the 100 millionth. The Weekly team is planning something around this for you in the next issue.
… OSGeoLive provides project development statistics for open GIS products? In each case the activity, the programming language, and the development team is given with statistics over the whole development time. ID Editor is represented; JOSM unfortunately has problems on Open Hub.
… that Routeshuffle can help you create a random route for running, walking, or cycling in only a few clicks? You just have to enter your starting point, which can be a place name or coordinates, how long you want your route to be, and the sport.
… you could be trapped on a roundabout forever?

OSM in the media

If you’ve integrated Mapbox GL JS Version 1.13 or older into your product, the MapLibre project is a strong open source alternative to the latest proprietary Mapbox 2.0 update, opensource.com says.

Other “geo” things

Did you try the King William’s College quiz, which we reported at the start of the year? Now you can see if your answers were correct. It turns out that it helped to have, inter alia, a good knowledge of US state capitals, the county of Somerset, the Cotswolds, Kenya, Dublin, and the geography of India in English novels.
A little geographical learning is a dangerous thing. An absence of contextual knowledge caused Facebook to identify the name of a famous English locality as an offensive term.
The Forestry Commission of Ghana (FCG) recently announced the launch of a National Map of Forests and Land Use, marking a significant milestone in Ghana’s commitment to build world-class earth observation expertise. The map can be seen here.
Fabian Kowatsch continued the series of blog posts on using ohsome to analyse street networks (we reported part one earlier). This week they are looking at the length ratio between streets that have the maxspeed tag added and those that do not.
Alex Donaldson introduced readers to the new features added to Google Maps to help the owners of electric vehicles. Routing can now take into consideration the availability of suitable charging stations and payment methods.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When
	OSMF Survey 2021		2021-01-25 – 2021-02-14
	Missing Maps DRK Online Mapathon		2021-02-09
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2021-02-09
München	Münchner OSM-Stammtisch		2021-02-10
	Hacking JOSM EasyPresets (Hungarian)		2021-02-10
Osborne County	OpenStreetMap U.S. Virtual Mappy Hour	✓	2021-02-11
Zürich	OSM-Treffen Zürich		2021-02-11
Chippewa Township	OpenStreetMap Michigan Meetup	✓	2021-02-12
Berlin	152. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch (Online)		2021-02-12
Lyon	Rencontre mensuelle (virtuelle) Lyon	✓	2021-02-16
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #20 (Online)		2021-02-16
	136. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn		2021-02-16
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)		2021-02-16
Albuquerque	MapABQ February virtual meetup		2021-02-18
	Stammtisch Köln		2021-02-17
San Jose	Virtual Civic Hack & Map Night	✓	2021-02-19
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen (Online)		2021-02-22
Ville de Bruxelles – Stad Brussel	Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting	✓	2021-02-23
Osborne County	OpenStreetMap U.S. Virtual Mappy Hour	✓	2021-02-25
臺北市	Open Data Day Taiwan 2021		2021-03-06