21/11/2017-27/11/2017

Mapping

Martijn van Exel is working on a new version of MapRoulette and asks users to name the feature they miss the most.

Selfish Seahorse asks on the mailing list how to tag correctly a street with a barrier but double-sided passage for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Telenav Mapping Team is active in Ecuador and invites the community to collaborate. Activities will initially focus on Quito, Guayquil, Cuenca, Machala and Loja.

On Reddit the question was raised if it is useful that StreetComplete adds the tag cycleway=no to roads that were reviewed with the app.

Community

[1] Frederik Ramm has published a visualisation website which shows the currently most active OpenStreetMap users in almost realtime.

Edward Betts has written a tool that makes it easy for OSM newcomers to find a mailing list relevant to them from the OSM environment. Local mailing lists could be added to the tool.

Geochicas celebrate their first anniversary!

This week SotMLatam 2017 in Lima is underway! Mappers from communities in Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico and Peru meet at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the National University of San Marcos in Peru. There is also the participation of public officials, technology researchers and open data to explore solutions for different topics.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

Four people are now candidates for the two vacancies in the OSMF board of directors. The additional candidates are: Paul Norman who is seeking re-election and David Dean. Although the mailing list osmf-talk discussions can be heated, dedicated mappers will certainly find good arguments for their election decision. The discussions revolve around: gender equality (although it remains unclear how this equality is to be measured); the possible influence of HOT US Inc. on the OSMF; to a possible influence of companies; and the under-representation of areas where few people are mapping. See also the Q&A with candidates on the wiki.

The Data Working Group released a draft Directed Editing policy (formerly known as ‘Organised Editing Policy’ or ‘Paid Editing Policy’). There is a short discussion on the Talk mailing list and a longer discussion on the OSMF-Talk mailing list where some people express their concern that the policy will impede the work of humanitarian mapping activities.

After many years of activity, the OSM community in the United Kingdom announced the decision to form an official OSM Local Chapter. The formally registered organisation plans to continue the good work on improving data collection, import and use, and on strenghtening the local community.

Humanitarian OSM

Nate Smith reports about HOT’s technology planning for 2018: more recognition and validation of volunteer roles; development of further partnerships for more training and tool development; more involvement of the community in the planning of core HOT tools and processes.

ThinkWhere, a Scottish GIS company, worked with HOT – the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – to develop version 3 of the Tasking Manager.

The University of the Philippines is using OSM to develop resilience and natural disaster planning for its campuses.

Maps

OpenStreetMap is used in newly published paper Michelin maps for the islands of La Reunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe.

switch2OSM

Milad Moradi points out an MSc thesis on the quality of OSM for the Canadian road network. Hongyu Zhang from the University of Western Ontario finds OSM data is of comparable quality to other sources.

Open Data

The UK Finance Minister Phillip Hammod announced that a new Geospatial Commission will be formed to maximise the value of all UK government data linked to location. The mention of the possibility of the release of the national map agency (Ordnance Survey) MasterMap has excited lots of commentary: here, here and here; discussion on talk-gb; and a statement from OSM-UK.

Programming

Oleksiy Muzalyev writes that he has written a simple tool to report averaged values of ele tags on OpenStreetMap

Simone Primarosa (aka simoneepri) published a tool that

extracts GeoJSONs of the boundaries of OpenStreetMap and other open databases.

OSM in the media

Bike Citizens Mobile Solutions a Graz software company (automatic translation) helps cities to better understand cycling. Their app allows cyclists to share issues with the cycle network. This generates data that provides information about behavior, obstacles or the choice of routes in urban cycling. Kofler explains, “We help the city planners to better understand the cycling traffic and thus adjust the infrastructure accordingly,”

Other “geo” things

Richard Fairhurst uses a railway map to offer a few hints about poor cartographic choices.

Helios Pro, an augmented reality app for iPhone and iPad, uses, among other data sources, OpenStreetMap buildings to render a 3D reconstruction of buildings.

ESA will soon be launching Galileo satellites number 19 to 22 from Kourou. (automatic translation)

(automatic translation) GIS finds its space on campus at the Center For Geospatial Analysis (CGA), it is housed on the second floor of the Earl Gregg Swem Library. This would become a space for anyone who is working on any type of GIS project.

Ahmed Loai Ali from the University of Bremen looks for participants for a study on the influence of human cognition on data classification in OSM.

Inside Culture, a programme on the Irish Radio station RTE1, provides an introduction to the Situationists, and also covers the recent 4th World Conference of Psychogeography (4wcop) in Huddersfield and psychogeography in Dublin. OSMer Tim Waters’ blog gives more links to 4wcop talks.

Wired suggests that “cartography is the new code” and that there is a developing skills shortage of skilled cartographers.

The weekly journal “Der Spiegel” published an article “How to dream” and talks about four interesting books (also for the wish list 😉 ) (automatic translation) – Please observe all books are available in English as well. Alastair Bonnett, New Views, The World Mapped Like Never Before: 50 maps of our physical, cultural and political world Edward Brooke-Hitching, The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps Georg Braun, Franz Hogenberg, Cities of the World, The Colored Tables from 1572-1617 Jasmine Desclaux-Salachas, The Art of Cartographics

(automatic translation) – Please observe all books are available in English as well. The MIT Media Lab Emerging Worlds programme discusses on their blog the suitability of various address schemes for India.

Upcoming Events

Where What When Country Lima State of the Map LatAm 2017 2017-11-29-2017-12-02 London Pub meet-up 2017-11-30-Invalid date Yaoundé State of the Map Cameroun 2017 2017-12-01-2017-12-03 Denver Online High School Mitchell Foundation board elections 2017-12-02 Dortmund Mappertreffen 2017-12-03 Grenoble Rencontre groupe local 2017-12-04 Rostock Rostocker Treffen 2017-12-05 Albuquerque MAPABQ (join us!) 2017-12-06 Stuttgart Stuttgarter Stammtisch 2017-12-06 Montreal Les Mercredis cartographie 2017-12-06 Antwerp Missing Maps @ IPIS 2017-12-06 Praha – Brno – Ostrava Kvartální pivo 2017-12-06 Dresden Stammtisch 2017-12-07 Berlin 114. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch 2017-12-08 Thessaloniki Ελληνικό OSM Party 2017-12-08 Dar es Salaam State of the Map Tanzania 2017 2017-12-08-2017-12-10 Denver Online High School Mitchell Foundation board elections 2017-12-09 online via IRC Foundation Annual General Meeting 2017-12-09 Rennes Réunion mensuelle 2017-12-11 Lyon Rencontre mensuelle 2017-12-12 Nantes Réunion mensuelle 2017-12-12 Toulouse Rencontre mensuelle 2017-12-13 Munich Stammtisch 2017-12-14 Moscow Schemotechnika 13 2017-12-14 Berlin DB Open Data Hackathon 2017-12-15-2017-12-16 Rome FOSS4G-IT 2018 2018-02-19-2018-02-22 Bonn FOSSGIS 2018 2018-03-21-2018-03-24 Poznań State of the Map Poland 2018 2018-04-13-2018-04-14 Milan State of the Map 2018 (international conference) 2018-07-28-2018-07-30

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 Anne Ghisla, Laura Barroso, Nakaner, Polyglot, SK53, Spanholz, YoViajo, derFred, jinalfoflia.