26/06/2025-02/07/2025
Mapping
- A request for comments has been made for
social:*=*
; aiming to separate contact methods from social media in OSM. - A request for comments has been made for the proposed tag
developer=*
. This tag aims to complement the existingengineer=*
andarchitect=*
tags and to identify the company or organisation that developed a building. - Voting for
power=circuit
routing is open until Thursday 10 July. Power routing aims to document what actual paths power can follow over a physical network, mainly between actual substations and along power lines. - Voting on the proposed road marking revision is open until Thursday 10 July.
- The tagging scheme for windmills and watermills can be voted on till Saturday 19 July.
Community
- Koreller proposed making OpenStreetMap diaries more discoverable and engaging by adding features like keyword categorisation, upvotes, and search filters, aiming to highlight valuable content and foster community interaction.
- Krittin reflected on approaching 10,000 changesets as a deeply personal journey of mapping Bangkok, blending nostalgia, identity, and a passionate belief in open geographic data as a human right.
- adreamy is conducting two surveys for the OpenStreetMap community. The first aims to assess levels of active participation and opinion-sharing within local communities. The second focuses on how actively OSM members engage with the global community, what barriers they face, and how these can be addressed.
- Negreheb updated the OpenStreetMap community on their improved 360° image capture in Salzburg, highlighting a switch to bike-mounted cameras for better safety and image consistency while continuing to enhance OSM data through Mapillary and Panoramax.
- UrbanRoaming shared how Strava’s heatmap can enhance OpenStreetMap accuracy by revealing misaligned, missing, or obscured paths, while cautioning against blindly mapping informal, private, or temporary tracks without further on-ground verification.
Local chapter news
- FOSSGIS e.V. reported
►
on its participation in KonGeoS 2025, a biannual geodesy student conference held at the University of Bonn.
Education
- Pablo Sanxiao has written Fina and the Maps, a book aimed at inspiring young readers to explore collaborative cartography in the hope that some will participate in the OpenStreetMap project. The story follows Fina, a tech-savvy girl who bikes to visit her grandmother for stories and cookies. When a power outage leads her to an old atlas, she learns how maps were once drawn by hand. Inspired, Fina discovers OpenStreetMap, begins mapping locations with her grandmother, and becomes a digital cartographer.
OSM research
- Professor Stefan Keller’s team at OST has developed ‘Vampire-Routing’, a footpath navigation mode on routing.osm.ch that suggests shadow-rich walking routes in Zürich to help users avoid the heat, using OpenStreetMap data and 3D shading models from swisstopo.
OSM in action
- Smoggy3D has developed Map2Model, a web-based application that converts OpenStreetMap and elevation data into 3D-printable
meshes right in the browser. Users can select an area on the map, adjust the settings to their preferences, and export ready-to-print files in STL or 3MF format.
- The basemap.world Web Vector dataset outside Germany was updated
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with data from OSM as at 1 July and has switched to international place names in Latin script.
Software
- Following the discontinuation of Bing Imagery services, Vespucci announced that Microsoft has updated its access key, allowing continued use of the service until sometime next year.
- CoMaps, the community-driven fork of Organic Maps has just announced its first official release (we reported earlier), on the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and F-Droid.
- In a recent interview, Robin Cole spoke with Shahab Jozdani about Chat2Geo, a web-based application that streamlines remote sensing and geospatial analysis through an intuitive, chatbot-style interface.
- The OSM-based climbing app OpenClimbing.org has officially launched out of beta. Designed as an open platform for climbing guides and maps, the service stores information and photos on collaborative projects such as OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia, enabling users worldwide to contribute and edit content.
- The OpenStreetMap website now displays element version navigation using a pagination system.
Programming
- Mateus de Souza Junior has extracted
►
data related to urban parks and squares in a region of Florianópolis (Brazil), using the OSM API and GeoPandas. The code is available
►
on GitHub.
- Kaxtillo demonstrated
how to create walking distance isochrones with the Python packages NetworkX, a tool for graph analysis, and OSMnx, which integrates OpenStreetMap data with NetworkX.
- There is an initiative to offer thematic layers of OSM data in Parquet and flatgeobuf formats (we reported earlier). You can contribute on GitHub.
- Valentin announced
that Fedikarte.de, a website that displayed a map allowing Fediverse users to pin their locations, is now seeking at least two new maintainers to keep the project running.
Releases
- The June 2025 MapLibre newsletter highlighted: the new features in MapLibre Native and Web, Compose Playground’s 1.0 release, GitHub Codespaces support for workshops, and FOSS4G Europe event details and community meeting times.
- OsmAnd version 5.1 has been released on both the iOS and Android platforms.
- Every Door version 6.0 has been released, featuring a new plugin system that enables custom imagery, presets, fields, and workflows.
- OsmAPP version 1.7.0 has been released, introducing a new relation editor, support for indoor maps, multi-destination routing, and a preview feature for Wikimedia Commons categories.
Did you know that …
- [1] … that the Map of GitHub, developed by Andrei Kashcha (aka anvaka), of course, has a territory with projects related to OpenStreetMap?
- … you can follow the Everest trail from a drone? Or via the North Col if you prefer.
- … you can now select your preferred language directly on the OpenStreetMap website?
OSM in the media
- OpenCage interviewed Jochen Topf, the developer behind some key OpenStreetMap tools including Osmium, osm2pgsql, and taginfo.
Other “geo” things
- Richard Harries has built a History of Cycling Maps website, which delves into the evolution of maps designed primarily for cyclists in the British Isles, covering the period from around 1870 to 1970. It covers over 130 restored extracts, detailed commentary on publishers, and resources for dating maps, structured as an informative, non-interactive digital reference book.
- Here & There detailed how iOverlander’s transition from a free, community-driven app to a paid subscription model triggered a backlash due to user expectations and unresolved UX issues, highlighting the complex tension between sustainability and user trust in grassroots tech platforms.
- The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that access to key data, used in hurricane forecasting, will be cut by the end of July, as the US Department of Defense will stop providing data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
Upcoming Events
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This weeklyOSM was produced by 115c7a5fac, MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, TrickyFoxy, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
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