27/11/2018-03/12/2018

About us

The Swahili version launched with great enthusiasm shortly after the SotM 2018 in Milan, unfortunately, had to be discontinued. Laura Mugeha will continue to inform the Swahili speaking community on her diary.

Mapping

PoliMappers, the YouthMappers’ chapter at Politecnico di Milano (Italy), is organising the second edition of PoliMappers Adventures. During the month of December, you can complete a daily quest related to the world of OpenStreetMap. Quests range from mapping, humanitarian help, and many other subjects. Follow them on Twitter for more updates.

CartoRoute (“MapRoad”) is a collaboration between Michelin and the OSM Ivory Coast association aiming to map the main road network across the country: road status, surface, speed limits, traffic signs, dining areas, hotels, and gas stations in the area surrounding the roads, etc. The pilot phase of the project has started in the commune of Plateau (Abidjan) where 11 local OSM contributors collected data during two days using OsmAnd, as related in this Twitter moment.

The tag cycleway:surface has already been used over 500 times but it was only now properly documented in the OSM Wiki. The tag allows specifying the surface of just the cycleway, for example for a cycleway on a road, where the surfaces differ.

has already been used over 500 times but it was only now properly documented in the OSM Wiki. The tag allows specifying the surface of just the cycleway, for example for a cycleway on a road, where the surfaces differ. The new Organised Editing Guidelines have been approved by the board during the previous OSMF board meeting on November 15th. The guidelines, which were drafted by the Data Working Group, aim to improve the documentation, transparency and the practices of organised mapping initiatives.

The lack of maintenance of the electoral boundaries in Germany led to the proposal (automatic translation) to delete the data. The proposal received a lot of support but also some opposition.

(automatic translation) to delete the data. The proposal received a lot of support but also some opposition. The voting for mapping ‘tramtrack on highway’ failed. However, the originator Jukka Nikulainen is preparing a new proposal based on the feedback he received during the proposal process.

Community

Can Ünen (OSM unen), university lecturer in Istanbul, Turkey, is the new Mapper of the Month. As usual, OSM Belgium published a background interview with the winner.

South Korean mapper GPIOIPG made a survey as to whether OSM public transport station names should have the suffix -역 (i.e. station). Usually, the official names are without the suffix. Apparently, the suffix is widely used by people and even some signs show the suffix, but ‘station’ isn’t attached after station names in other countries. In a blog post at his user diary, GPIOIPG writes about the result of his survey, that he has advertised at the forum and the mailing list, and provides some more background information.

(i.e. station). Usually, the official names are without the suffix. Apparently, the suffix is widely used by people and even some signs show the suffix, but ‘station’ isn’t attached after station names in other countries. In a blog post at his user diary, GPIOIPG writes about the result of his survey, that he has advertised at the forum and the mailing list, and provides some more background information. Nakaner has loaded all the e-mails from all public mailing lists on lists.openstreetmap.org into a database. Two entries (1, 2) in his user blog contain the number of messages per year and per mailing list and the list of the most active authors.

SunCobalt notes that shortly before the current and the past election the number of OSMF members increases strongly and visualises this by a graphic. Honi soit, qui mal y pense.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

The official manifestos and candidates responses for this year’s OSMF board election have now been published. Christoph Hormann has written a summary and Paul Norman has written an evaluation guide. There are discussions in the Forum as well as on osmf-talk mailing list.

The Membership Working Group (MWG) reports about its recent activity. The MWG is currently busy with the new membership fee waiver program and has to deal with countries that have no suitable money transfer options for paying the membership fee. As with weeklyOSM, and other OSMF working groups, the MWG is looking for volunteers.

Mikel Maron, OSMF board member, announced the launch of Welcome Mat. The website Welcome Mat was started to help external organisations to understand OSM’s difficult structure, to explain how OSM works, and how and where to engage.

Events

FOSS4G Italy announced (automatic translation) a call for papers or workshops proposals for the third Italian FOSS4G 2019, which will be held in Padua from 20th to 24th February. Proposals are due by the 13th December.

Humanitarian OSM

OpenGovHub hosted a mapathon on December, 4th with the HOT Staff at the OpenGov Hub in Washington, DC.

HOT provides an update on their Microgrants 2018 program that was launched in April 2018. Eight communities received microgrants in order to improve OSM and help to minimise the impact of disasters.

Maps

OpenStreetBrowser now has a new category under “Leisure, Sport and Shopping”. According to skunk’s blog post, the new category “Swimming and Bathing” includes all kind of swimming and bathing facilities and saunas.

switch2OSM

Qwant, a search site, based in France, is now using OSM vectorial data and a lot of OSM inside.

Programming

Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group introduced API Playground, which allows you to explore OpenRouteService API services, parameters, and responses.

Matthias made a prototype of an external voice controller for JOSM. The tool speech2JOSM is available on GitHub.

Releases

A new stable version of JOSM has been released. Version 18.11 saves the height of each panel on the right when JOSM is closed, it comes with a dedicated button for Download as new layer , instead of a tick box and improves a lot of other features. The most notable change is probably the fix of the glitched GPS traces caused by the OSM website API change.

Did you know …

The MapOSMatic instance at osm-baustelle.de recently exceeded 40,000 rendered maps. The website further enhanced its functionality with user interface improvements and hyperlink support in multipage PDF outputs.

Stefan Keller, Computer Science Professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Rapperswil, has created a Fog Map. The map shows how to find your way to the sun on grey, foggy November days. The website Bluewin.ch provides (automatic translation) some background information and tests if the map works. Unfortunately, the map only covers Switzerland.

(automatic translation) some background information and tests if the map works. Unfortunately, the map only covers Switzerland. …. the service kinderkiez.net? The service, that is available in English and German, lets you create a children’s play mat with a map based on OSM.

… the long list of links to places where you can find a suitable tag if you can’t find one in your editor’s presets?

Other “geo” things

Upcoming Events

Where What When Country Alice PoliMappers Adventures 2018: One mapping quest each day 2018-12-01-2018-12-31 Niamey OSM and GIS training camp at CNF 2018-12-03-2018-12-07 Tångstad Foundation board elections voting opens 2018-12-08 – Ouagadougou Mapathon Independance Day at La Ruche 2018-12-10 Rennes Réunion mensuelle 2018-12-10 Lyon Rencontre mensuelle pour tous 2018-12-11 Zurich Jubilee Stammtisch Zurich with Fondue 2018-12-11 Salzburg Maptime Salzburg 2018-12-12 Mannheim Mannheimer Mapathons – now in Ludwigshafen! 2018-12-12 Helsinki Missing Maps Mapathon at Finnish Red Cross HQ – Dec 2018 2018-12-13 Munich Münchner Stammtisch 2018-12-13 Berlin 126. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch 2018-12-14 online via IRC Foundation Annual General Meeting 2018-12-15 Cologne Bonn Airport Bonner Stammtisch 2018-12-18 Lüneburg Lüneburger Mappertreffen 2018-12-18 Nottingham Pub Meetup 2018-12-18 Reutti Stammtisch Ulmer Alb 2018-12-18 Rennes Recensement des panneaux publicitaires 2018-12-23 Leipzig OpenStreetMap assembly 2018-12-27-2018-12-30 Heidelberg State of the Map 2019 (international conference) 2019-09-21-2019-09-23

Note: If you like to see your event here, please put it into the calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM. Please check your event in our public calendar preview and correct it, where appropriate.

This weeklyOSM was produced by PierZen, Polyglot, Rogehm, SK53, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, derFred, jinalfoflia.