12/09/2017-18/09/2017

Mapping

Contributor Cascafico has their own instance of OSM Analytic Tracker for Northeast Italy running on an Orange Pi minicomputer. This is a changeset observer with its own graphical visualisation of the changesets (example).

Tom Pfeifer asks on the Tagging mailing list if the contact:*=* tags are being misused for review websites, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp.

tags are being misused for review websites, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. Contributor dega reports on talk-ca that Telenav added nonexistent roads. These planned roads were stopped by Environment Canada. In the same changeset, motorway temporary deviations have also been added. These problems seems to be related to interpretation of road navigation data coming out of some softwares. To be use very carefully!

on talk-ca that Telenav added nonexistent roads. These planned roads were stopped by Environment Canada. In the same changeset, motorway temporary deviations have also been added. These problems seems to be related to interpretation of road navigation data coming out of some softwares. To be use very carefully! User GOwin reports about HailHydra(nt)!, an initiative he launched in the Davao region (Philippines), in collaboration with the local fire officials. Its goal is the mapping of fire hydrants, fire stations and volunteer brigades. The tools used during the mapathon were OSMHydrant and OsmAnd.

Giacomo Servadei continued to work on the PT_Assistant plugin for JOSM, which makes editing public transport on OpenStreetMap a lot more convenient. It provides visual feedback, validation and some extra tools. Now, the plugin also reports to the user any problems with continuity in hiking and bicycle-route relations. And it helps with adding forward/backward roles where these routes fork.

User praktikyadav from Mapbox reported in his user blog a major update to the Mapbox satellite-imagery base-map layer.

The proposed feature, Language Information, (we reported earlier), has been rejected.

Simon Poole reported on a major update of the editor presets for suggesting the names of shops and other branded businesses. He requests that users check the suggestions in non-Latin alphabets, as many more have been added.

Community

Visit downtown Tarija, a Bolivian city (South America) with images you can use to improve maps.

Marena Brinkhurst tweets saying Imagining 2020 headlines about a poster stating ‘No maps are missing’. Let’s hope that it will be added «They are exact and of great quality».

Dave Corley rebooted the idea of an OSM Ireland chapter.

Yuri Astrakhan starts the name search for his Wikidata+OSM SPARQL query service. The JOSM Wikipedia plugin was extended. Once installed, you can download data using a SPARQL query, combining conditions based on OSM and Wikidata details.

Jo is looking for students with knowledge of Java and the OSM data model. Interest in route relations would be an advantage.

This month’s “Mapper of the Month” in Belgium is Jonathan Beliën aka jbelien. Read the interview.

Imports

Statistic Canada hosted a mapping workshop during the HOT Summit 2017. They presented the results of the Pilot project with the local OSM community in Ottawa-Gatineau to import building footprints. The aim is to map every Canadian building by 2020. StatCan counts on municipalities to release building footprints as Open Data.

Vincent Frison plans to import building heights in Nice, France, following the same process he used for Paris two years ago. He asks for feedback on Talk-FR and on the French forum.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

On the Talk mailing list, the discussion on the draft directive about the use of the trademark “OpenStreetMap” (“Trademark Policy”) has resumed (we reported). Among others, this directive concerns those whose projects are based on “OpenStreetMap” or “OSM”.

Events

The detailed program of SotM-US 2017 in Boulder, Colorado has been published on the event’s website. Mark the dates: October 20th to 22nd!

SotM-Asia 2017 will take place in Kathmandu, Nepal on September 23-24. The chosen theme is “from creation to use of OSM data”: the increasing amount of available data about the Asian continent needs further ideas and tools able to process them. More details on registration, location and schedule are available on the event’s website.

Humanitarian OSM

Daniel Mietchen writes some detailed notes, including feedback and critiques, whilst using MapSwipe for the first time.

[1] In Mexico, mappers and reviewers are still needed. For current cause: new earthquake, new task.

Martin Noblecourt reminds that satellite imagery is not necessarily correctly aligned, and shows how you can deal with the problem.

On Talk-US, Jeffrey Ollie mentions that Digital Globe has published post-Harvey and Irma images, promptly made available as tiles by OpenAerialMap.

Maps

kocio-pl suggests in a pull request to add boundary=protected_area to OSM Carto.

to OSM Carto. math1985 wants to darken the colour of farmlands in OSM Carto and submitted a pull request for that purpose.

switch2OSM

Pierre Béland (aka pierzen) reports on Talk-CA that the “Canadian Press” agency releases OpenStreetMap maps via the MapBox services.These maps should appear in the in various Canadian newspapers subscribed to the Canadian Press.

Open Data

The provincial administration of New Brunswick (Canada) has donated its aerial photos to ESRI.

Software

On the Talk mailing list, Nicolas Guillaumin seeks a new maintainer for OSMTracker for Android.

StephaneP’s OSM diary shows usage of low-cost GPS RTK with open-source software RTKLIB to create an RTK base station and obtain a few centimeters precision with correction of the satellite signal. To learn more, you can ask questions in the diary.

Programming

The OpenRouteService backend is now available under the Apache license on Github. As this is a GraphHopper fork, the ORS was eventually converted from its own implementation to a GraphHopper-based system in recent years.

During his Google Summer of Code, Bogdan Afonins has developed many improvements for the search and download dialog of JOSM.

Releases

OSM Carto 4.3.0 fixed mostly bugs.

Did you know …

… a map of time?

… you can upload the photos from your Mapillary trail to Wiki Commons?

… the list of members of the Advisory Board of the OSMF?

OSM in the media

The New York Times published an article about the humanitarian needs after Hurricane Irma. The maps showing the information are OSM based.

The magazine We Demain reports that the French organisation “Hackers Against Natural Disasters (Hand)” has sent equipment worth €30,000 to the area affected by Irma Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélémy. Among other things, drones were delivered for mapping. (automatic translation)

Other “geo” things

Nothing for nerds, but a nice advertising video for the GraphHopper API.

OSM is also frequently used for visualisation of geographically relevant content: here in the macroplastics project of the University of Oldenburg, Germany.

Mercedes-Benz decided to use the proprietary and patented What3words geocoding method in their navigation aids. These codes must not be entered into the OSM database due to their restrictive licence policy!

Upcoming Events

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This weeklyOSM was produced by Anne Ghisla, Nakaner, PierZen, Polyglot, SK53, SeleneYang, Spanholz, Spec80, YoViajo, derFred, jinalfoflia, techlady.