Sorry, this entry is only available in English, Deutsch, Español, Português, 日本語, Français, Italiano, 한국어, Português do Brasil, Русский, Українська and 台灣中文.
24/04/2025-30/04/2025
[1] retrospect of the EU-funded OSM project EuYoutH | Map © OpenStreetMap contributors.
About us
- Raquel Dezidério Souto’s statistical analysis of weeklyOSM’s profile over the past ten years will be submitted to the State of the Map 2025, which will be held in Manila, Philippines, from 3 to 5 October. Tabular and graphical results are already available and have been updated recently.
Mapping campaigns
- The Colombian National Mapathon 2025 for risk management kicks
off on Monday 5 May. It is organised by the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management with support from HOTOSM and other organisations. From 5 May to 27 June, participants can choose from several sessions. If you complete 5 hours of mapping and participate in at least two sessions, you can request an official certificate of participation. Register here .
off on Monday 5 May. It is organised by the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management with support from HOTOSM and other organisations. From 5 May to 27 June, participants can choose from several sessions. If you complete 5 hours of mapping and participate in at least two sessions, you can request an official certificate of participation. Register Community
- Juminet has analysed the completeness of address data in Belgium and found that OpenStreetMap contains 3.9 million addresses, covering 87.6% of the 4.45 million listed in official records.
- Kumakyoo concluded his series on his new OMA file format with a larger example, a map from a micromapping project. He also summarised the feedback he has received and gives an outlook on what will happen in the coming months.
- Rphyrin recounted his experience at the OpenStreetMap Indonesia Community Mapping Party 2025, which took place at Plaza Indonesia on Saturday 26 April.
from a micromapping project. He also summarised the feedback he has received and gives an outlook on what will happen in the coming months.OpenStreetMap Foundation
- Minh Nguyễn, newly appointed as OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Core Software Development Facilitator, outlined his background, shared key initiatives, and highlighted opportunities for collaboration.
Local chapter news
- In a recent instalment of its blog series spotlighting OpenStreetMap contributors and mapping communities, OpenStreetMap US sat down with Jacob Hall and Daniel Schep, of MapRVA, Richmond, Virginia’s local mapping group. The interview delved into the group’s origins, their regular activities, and recent community-led initiatives, including their efforts during the January 2025 Richmond ‘Water Crisis’ to map the disaster’s impact.
- Following a recent discussion on the two address schemas used in France, one with the
associatedStreetrelation and one without, contributors to OpenStreetMap France have been invited to take part in a survey on whether the community should adopt a single, unified address schema. Voting remains open until Sunday 11 May.
on the two address schemas used in France, one with the Events
- The organisers of SotM LatAm 2025 have announced the extension of the deadline for submitting talks and workshops, which can be done until Friday 9 May.
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz reported that the ‘OpenStreetMap: Mapping and Hiking’ event took place on Thursday 10 April, at the University of Camerino, Italy. Participants were split into small groups for a three-hour hike in the villages and hamlets around Camerino, with each team collecting geographic data using apps including Every Door and uploading photos to Panoramax. In the afternoon, participants mapped missing buildings and roads from desktop computers. Saverio Delpriori, a technician from the regional government of Marche, also attended the event and presented the region’s geographic information and tourism infrastructure, highlighting plans to integrate OpenStreetMap data in the future.
- The third edition of the Participatory Mapping and Social Cartography Workshop aims ► to bring together researchers from Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste) who have in common the use of participatory or collaborative mapping methodologies. The event will be held online and in Portuguese. As a preparatory stage for the event, a ‘showcase of mapping projects’ is being organised ► for presentation of individual projects. To take part, simply fill out the registration form by Tuesday 20 May, giving your basic details. The team will then contact you to inform you about its acceptance and align the details. Thanks to the sponsorships of the Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (research funding agency) and the company IVIDES DATA.
- The State of the Map Europe 2025 will take place on 14 and 15 November at Abertay University in Dundee, UK. Interested attendees are encouraged to subscribe to the newsletter via the official website to receive updates on ticket availability.
►
Education
- Séverin Ménard will present an online workshop on post-disaster mapping on Monday 19 May, from 15:00 to 17:00 UTC. This session will be in Portuguese, completing the series of workshops that were previously given in English and French (we reported earlier). Please register for the event by Sunday 18 May in order to receive the alert. The session will cover the post-disaster mapping of the state of buildings and roofing material. The area of interest is Mayotte, where projects have been created on the HOT Tasking Manager, by OSM France.
OSM research
- Fatemeh Rafiei explored in her recent master’s thesis at HeiGIT how machine learning techniques can be used to predict demographic characteristics at the building level. The study integrated a variety of open urban datasets and demonstrated how spatial indicators derived from openrouteservice can enhance predictive modelling.
OSM in action
- Matt Round has just launched Comic Sans Maps. True to its name, all the map labels are rendered in Comic Sans.
- Responding to a request from the OpenStreetMap Indonesia community on Telegram, altilunium has developed BRT-tj, an interactive map that visualises Transjakarta bus routes and stops using OpenStreetMap. The application processes data directly from Transjakarta’s official General Transit Feed Specification file, which is publicly available on the agency’s website.
from the OpenStreetMap Indonesia community on Telegram, altilunium has Software
- Andrii Holovin raised the issue what the new OSMCha palette has for people with certain types of colour perception impairment. Jake Low experimented with different approaches and invites everyone to join the discussion of the issue on GitHub.
- HeiGIT reported that they will be launching their Climate Action Navigator on Thursday 15 May. This dashboard will offer high-resolution, open data-based insights into key climate action indicators, such as CO2 emissions from residential heating or urban active mobility infrastructure. There will be an online launch event on Thursday 5 June at 14:00 (CEST) for you to get valuable insights on the development and use of the navigator.
- Oliver Wipfli reported that MapLibre GL JS now supports rendering South and South-East Asian scripts through the maplibre-gl-complex-text plugin, which is powered by the HarfBuzz text shaping engine. Supported languages include Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Khmer, Malayalam, Burmese, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu as well Devanagari script.
Programming
- Inspired by a FOSSGIS 2025 talk by Michael Reichert on how and where to best complete OpenStreetMap, Daniel showed how we can use a routing engine to find and prioritise ways with missing tags which are most important for (bike) routing.
- Martin Fleischmann presented the inner workings of NeatNet, which he has developed and documented with Anastassia Vybornova and James D. Gaboardi. NeatNet is a toolbox designed to simplify the geometry of street networks by producing representations that more accurately reflect the morphological structure of urban space.
- Following last week’s in-depth exploration of space-filling curves and the BIGMIN optimisation (we reported earlier), Daniel has released a new package called zbush, which applies these techniques to spatial indexing. The release has sparked a lively discussion on Mastodon.
Releases
- The latest version of Mapnik, released on Thursday 24 April, is v4.0.7, which has added support for libc++ equal to or higher than version 19.
Did you know that …
- … you can now add location information to your OpenStreetMap profile page? This feature was implemented by David Tsiklauri, based on a pull request submitted on 5 November 2024, and was merged into the openstreetmap-website code base on Friday 25 April.
- … places.pub is a service that makes OpenStreetMap geographical data available as ActivityPub objects? This could extend the functionality of the ActivityPub protocol by describing geosocial activities and adding the location of an actor, content, or activity.
- … Arnis can create Minecraft Java Edition worlds that reflect real-world geography and architecture using OpenStreetMap?
OSM in the media
- [1] On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of weeklyOSM, the Erasmus+ programme of the German Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs reported ► on several OpenStreetMap-related projects that the EU has funded in the past. These include joint mapping activities for teachers and students for the OSM community, humanitarian mapping initiatives, and partnerships with UN Mappers to map areas for peacekeeping operations.
- Argentina’s Postal Service has faced sharp criticism after an interactive map on its website referred to some disputed South Atlantic islands as the ‘Falklands’ rather than ‘Malvinas’, and listed their capital as ‘Stanley’ instead of ‘Puerto Argentino’. The state-run agency attributed the mistake to an ‘involuntary error’ caused by their map provider, OpenStreetMap, accessed through Leaflet. Amid the mounting backlash on social media and political protests, the map was taken down. In a subsequent statement, the Argentine Post reaffirmed its support for Argentina’s sovereignty claims over the archipelago.
Other “geo” things
- On Tuesday 29 April the European Space Agency successfully launched ► its ‘Biomass‘ satellite. This satellite, which was sent into orbit from the Guiana Space Centre aboard the European-made Vega C rocket, will spend the next few years measuring the global biomass of forests, a task that has previously only been based on estimates. Biomass goes beyond surface imaging by sending radar waves through tree canopies to the forest floor, capturing tree trunks and branches. The satellite aims to create detailed three-dimensional models of forests to enhance our understanding of their role in the global carbon cycle.
- Werner Pluta, of Heise, provided ► a concise overview of the history of GPS, beginning with US President Bill Clinton’s landmark decision to remove Selective Availability in May 2000, its transformative impact on global navigation, and how this move spurred the development of alternative satellite navigation systems by other nations worldwide.
Upcoming Events
| Country | Where | What | Online | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Ludwigsburg | MA1PPING 2025  | 2025-05-01 | |
| UN Mappers #ValidationFriday Mappy Hour | 2025-05-02 | |||
| OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting | 2025-05-02 | |||
 | Wien | EGU OpenStreetMap Short Course | 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 | |
| Heidelberg | Heidelberger OpenstreetMap Treffen | 2025-05-05 | |
 | Žilina | Missing Maps mapathon Žilina #17 | 2025-05-06 | |
| Salzburg | OSM Treffen Salzburg | 2025-05-06 | |
 | Brno | Květnový brněnský Missing Maps Mapathon na Geografickém ústavu | 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 | |
 | Dundee | Dundee OSM Meetup – Spring 2025 | 2025-05-10 | |
| Alipur Tehsil | 16th OSM Delhi Mapping Party | 2025-05-10 | |
 | København | OSMmapperCPH | 2025-05-11 | |
| Kiel | Stadt-Spaziergang mit OpenStreetMap | 2025-05-11 | |
 | Grenoble | Atelier applications mobiles autour de la contribution à OSM & Panoramax | 2025-05-12 | |
 | 中正區 | OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #76 | 2025-05-12 | |
 | Salt Lake City | OSM Utah Monthly Map Night | 2025-05-14 | |
| San Jose | South Bay Map Night | ✓ | 2025-05-14 |
| Hamburg | Hamburger Mappertreffen | 2025-05-13 | |
 | Αθήνα | Mapping Hidden Stories: reflecting on pedestrian accessibility in Athens | 2025-05-14 | |
| City of Perth | Workshop & City of Canning Hackathon | 2025-05-14 | |
| München | Münchner OSM-Treffen | 2025-05-14 | |
| Essen | FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen im Linuxhotel | 2025-05-16 – 2025-05-18 | |
| Olomouc | Missing Maps Day Olomouc 2025 | 2025-05-17 | |
| Manchester | Joy Diversion | 2025-05-17 | |
 | Comuna 13 – San Javier | Junta OSM Latam – Avances SotM Latam 2025 Medellín | 2025-05-17 | |
| Estrablin | Microcartopartie Estrablin (38) | 2025-05-17 | |
| Mamoudzou | Aprendendo sobre mapeamento pós-desastre: estado das edificações em Mayotte | 2025-05-19 |
Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.
This weeklyOSM was produced by HeiGIT, MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.