11/08/2016-11/14/2016

About us

The OSM Foundation needs € 70.000 to cover its core operational expenses. Last Friday, Mapbox announced that they would “match the next ‎€10,000 in contributions“ to achieve the target. With €18,028 left to achieve the target, consider donating to keep OSM running.

Mapping

Community

Events

OSM Geography Awareness Week (OSMGeoweek on Github) aims to celebrate geography and OSM with over 120 events worldwide. This complements National Geographic Society’s initiative with many local and humanitarian mapping projects.

Humanitarian OSM

The “Red Cross climate center” in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, reported about another workshop with several partners. This involved plans for a second phase with the support of OSM in the creation of development plans, flood protection and infrastructure development.

HOT is asking the community feedback on choosing the platform that would be the best to host activities such as live training. Please fill the three-question questionnaire!

A mapathon hosted in Ivry-sur-Seine (Paris, France) with the help of cartONG brought together mappers and members of the local Malian community. Together, they mapped the area of Dianguirdé, Mali, adding some 337 km of roads.

switch2OSM

The French Ministry for the Environment, Energy and the Sea is organizing a hackathon under the name #HackRisques. The aim of the mapathon is to prevent natural hazards. In addition to Meteo France, the OSM community is also invited to participate – as Sebastian Dinot reported on OSM-talk-fr.

Software

Thomas Konrad published the austriaaddresshelper, a Java OpenStreetMap Editor (JOSM) plugin which automatically assigns addresses to an object. It uses the BEV Address Data Reverse Geocoder which uses the address data sets released by the Bundesamt für Eich- und Vermessungswesen (BEV) in Austria.

Frederik Ramm is in a look out for developers/admins, who would be interested in building and maintaining an OSM Sandbox around the test OSM APIs.

OSRM release candidate for version 5.5 features a bunch of interesting changes. It now supports oneway=reversible vs. oneway=alternating tagging, directions for the destination tag and implements new heuristics for turn angles.

vs. tagging, directions for the tag and implements new heuristics for turn angles. On the talk list, Martijn van Exel describes how OpenStreetView has been asked to change its name “by a well-known company with a similarly-named product“. As ever anonymaps is Quick to Draw its own conclusions about Google’s “evenhanded respect for trademarks”.

Programming

Mapzen describes the background of the programming of the Tangram engine with new features to import, among other things, the new TRON 2.0 styles.

Railnialtial presents the Python library OSMnx. It was written during his dissertation, and allows the visualisation and analysis of street data.

Releases

Provided by the OSM Software Watchlist.

(*) unfree software. See: freesoftware.

Did you know …

… Liberland, a new “country” which nobody is allowed to enter? Hacker News has more details about this and Wikipedia explains the border conflict that lead to its “creation”.

… Framacarte, using uMap as part of an initiative to de-Google-ify the Internet?

… the sustainable Comenius project MychOSM? It shows a lot of possiblities on how to use OSM in schools.

OSM in the media

The Genealogical Society of Ireland reported on its last edition (PDF – see page 2): “In early October the completion of the project to draw all the townlands on the Island of Ireland was celebrated in Berlin. It was on the occasion of the annual world-wide conference of the volunteer driven OpenStreetMap community”. “townlands.ie” is of course the main web site.

Other “geo” things

Archdaily reports about David Rumsey’s Map Collection of high resolution maps (we reported earlier) which now features more than 71,000 maps to download.

Apple has been granted a US patent for augmented reality maps.

Hajime Narukawa, a Japanese architect has come up with a map projection, such that a printed map can be fold up into a perfect 3D globe. For his work he received the coveted Good Design Award. We presented last week the OSM Dymaxion Projection by the Brazilian architect Sérgio A. J. Volkmer.

Real-Time GPS tracking of scavenging gulls pinpoints illegal waste dumping.

Google will retire Map Maker on March 31st 2017, moving the POI editing functions to Google Maps, and users won’t be allowed to edit geometries anymore. We wonder if this would be another boost for our community.

In an effort to enable and support machine learning using satellite imagery, DigitalGlobe, CosmiQ Works and NVidia are launching the SpaceNet Challenge. In the first round, the challenge is to automate the extraction of 2D building outlines from satellite images. Prizes worth $34,500 to be won.

Surveillance under Surveillance is a project which visualizes crowd sourced data on surveillance. The project, currently available in German, English and Spanish, is looking (automatic translation) for translators to expand it to other languages.

Google Street View vs Mapillary: Greg Oates, Skift Digital, describes – using examples – the objectives, opportunities and the know-how of the two counterparts.

Upcoming Events

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 appropiate..

This weeklyOSM was produced by Hakuch, Lamine Ndiaye, Laura Barroso, Peda, Rogehm, SomeoneElse, Spec80, SrrReal, TheFive, YoViajo, derFred, escada, jcoupey, jinalfoflia, muramototomoya, sabas88, sbiribizio, wambacher, widedangel.

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