weeklyOSM 568

01/06/2021-07/06/2021

[lead picture

The boundaries of the Inca Empire in OpenHistoricalMap [1] | © OpenHistoricalMap | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors]

Mapping campaigns

  • Puxan can see (es) > en a major problem for map quality in online mapathons, which, according to him, have multiplied during the pandemic. He recommends two measures to help improve the quality of data created during mapathons.

Mapping

  • Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
    • waterway=check_dam to tag structures placed across channels primarily to reduce runoff velocity.
    • leisure=bathing_place for places where access to water to bathe or swim is possible.
    • Survey markers to create a standard way of defining the structure and condition of survey markers.
  • Voting on the tourism=giant_furniture proposal for tagging any kind of giant furniture meant to be a viewpoint or a tourism attraction has started (till Wednesday 16 June).

Community

  • The Spatial Data Infrastructure agency of the province of Cordoba, Argentina (IDECOR (es) > en), is inviting (es) > en you to join the community and map the province in OpenStreetMap. The article was written by Ariel Antieri, a member of the local chapter of the Foundation.
  • OpenStreetMap Belgium’s Mapper of the Month for June is Ly Racky (racky) from Côte d’Ivoire.

Local chapter news

  • French user Lejun has mapped (fr), in his city, about a dozen vending machines for free menstrual products. While not being the first vending machines of their kind, they seem to be the first to be tagged so thoroughly in OpenStreetMap according to taginfo.

Education

  • Arnaud Champollion created (fr) a short video in which he shows how OpenStreetMap can be used to create simple maps. While dedicated to educational and orienteering purposes, the ideas given could be applied elsewhere.

OSM research

  • At the 12th International Symposium on the Digital Earth, Tahira Ullah, Dr. Sven Lautenbach and others will present their research, on deriving indicators for Points of Interest (POIs) and analysing mixed activities in urban areas. They will suggest a new approach that applies concepts from ecology to POIs from OpenStreetMap to quantify mixed activities.
  • Jan Pisl, Hao Li, and others are proposing a method of transferring a building detection model, which was previously trained in an area well-mapped in OSM, to remote data-scarce areas. The proposed model can detect individual buildings by generating bounding boxes around each of them which leads to a significant improvement in the f1-score. They have also presented a walkthrough on how to train your own building detectors using ohsome2label and the TensorFlow Object Detection API.

Humanitarian OSM

  • HeiGIT is updating the Open Healthcare Access Map to include all the countries of Central and South America as well as South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The application provides insights on travel times to healthcare facilities and population coverage at different scales for a variety of countries.
  • HOT has announced the Open Cities Latin America programme, a collaboration with the Global Fund for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and SwissRE Foundation.
  • Practical Action Bolivia has completed their microgrant supporting communities in mapping areas affected by forest fires in the Amazon.

Maps

  • The CargoBikeIndex aims (de) > en to make riding your cargo bike as smooth and effective as possible by helping you to find the smoothest route through motorised traffic. It categorises all the streets in Germany by their cargo bike friendliness, marking them with different colours.
  • [1] OpenHistoricalMappers mapped the boundaries of the Inca Empire, which could be the first interactive digital map of the Inca civilisation, whose expansion lasted approximately from 1438 to 1533.
  • VISOV used (fr) uMap to map alternative hotline numbers during the recent 7 hour emergency phone line breakdown in France caused by the telephone operator Orange.

Open Data

  • Supaplex found out that there were no Wikidata items for several villages in Taiwan, resulting in 74 OpenStreetMap villages having no Wikidata link. Supaplex called on the Taiwanese OpenStreetMap and Wikidata communities to take action (zhtw) to establish the missing village items on Wikidata, and link the newly added Wikidata items to the corresponding OpenStreetMap relations.
  • Christianlauer shared his experience working with OpenStreetMap data and using open data for business insights.

Licences

  • Nuno Caldeira is opening old wounds about a ‘lovely OSMF corporate member’. He says that ‘it’s been years and nothing changed regarding OpenStreetMap attribution from this company, but still “maps are at the centre”. Thanks @Strava & @Mapbox for your constant lack of respect towards our community’.

Software

  • HeiGIT presented another ‘evolution-animation’ dealing with the development of mapped buildings in Nairobi using the ohsome API, in their blog post series ‘ohsome Region of the Month’. The blog post series provides information on potential applications of the ohsome API.
  • raphaelmirc is introducing a road mapping tool in OpenStreetMap where it makes mapping in OSM very easy. The tool detects unmapped roads in OSM through artificial intelligence and makes life easier for the mapper.

Programming

  • HeiGIT and the GIScience group at Heidelberg University are releasing the R code underlying their intrinsic data quality analysis of the completeness of the road network and health sites in Jakarta. The analysis is based on OSM data.
  • As part of the Summer of Code, four people showed what they are working on to improve OpenStreetMap software:
  • Rob Grant, an open data specialist, explained how to access OpenStreetMap in R, a free programming language that allows you to analyse and visualise large datasets.

Releases

  • HeiGIT and MapAction have announced two updates to the ohsome quality analyst (OQT). The new version 0.3.0 includes new OSM layers and a brand new data quality report with indicators about completeness and last edits. With this release it is now much easier to use OQT from your command line to calculate the data completeness for regions you are interested in. Starting now, OQT will also be improved publicly via GitHub, thereby improving collaboration with other researchers.
  • Angel Cervera has released osm4scala version 1.0.8. osm4scala is a high-performance library and a Spark Connector used to read osm pbf files using Scala or Spark in any of its languages (Python, Scala, R, etc.)Two main improvements in this new release:
    • Added an ‘Info’ field. With this step, all fields are supported, even if they are not usually used.
    • New site with detailed documentation and examples at osm4scala site and documentation.
  • Merkaartor 0.19.0-rc1has been released.

Did you know …

  • … there is an OpenStreetMap based site, with correct attribution, displaying all air traffic?
  • … what to consider when inventing new tags? Have a look at Jochen Topf’s guide from 2010 and Christoph Hormann’s recent additional suggestions.
  • … it’s the one year anniversary of TafLeVelo’s project ‘Temps-velo’? The tool creates a network map from multiple OpenStreetMap based services, in order to give an overview of how much time is needed to cover a custom location by bike.
  • Waymarked Trails (de) > en? A map that shows you all mapped routes on foot, by bike/MTB, on horseback, on inline skates and for winter sports?

OSM in the media

  • M.P. Praveen, from the The Hindu, reported on the collaborative mapping of the local body wards of Kerala.

Other “geo” things

  • The site ‘Lyon in 1700(fr) offers a 3D reconstruction of a part of the city as it was at the beginning of the 18th century. It is the result of 10 years of work using numerous municipal and departmental archives and the collections of the municipal library. You can explore the city street by street and icons allow you to access additional information on the visible monuments. This first version is only available in French but an English version is under development.
  • Eric Rogers from The Daily Californian reported that after after analysing OSM data PeopleForBikes found Berkeley to be the best mid-sized city in the US for cycling.

Upcoming Events

WhereWhatOnlineWhenCountry
140. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn osmcalpic2021-06-15
BerlinOSM-Verkehrswende #24 (Online) osmcalpic2021-06-15flag
LüneburgLüneburger Mappertreffen (online) osmcalpic2021-06-15flag
OSM US Mappy Hour osmcalpic2021-06-17
AlbuquerqueMapABQ June virtual meetup osmcalpic2021-06-19flag
DRK Missing Maps Mapathon – Digitaltag osmcalpic2021-06-18
Missing Maps German Red Cross Digitaltag Mapathon osmcalpic2021-06-18
San JoseVirtual Civic Action & Map Night osmcalpic2021-06-25flag
[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public meeting osmcalpic2021-06-25
XIV. kerületPestújhely mapping party and eating some ice cream osmcalpic2021-06-25flag
DüsseldorfDüsseldorfer OSM-Treffen (online) osmcalpic2021-06-25flag
DublinOpenStreetMap Ireland AGM osmcalpic2021-06-26flag
BremenBremer Mappertreffen (Online) osmcalpic2021-06-28flag

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 Climate_Ben, Lejun, Nordpfeil, SK53, TheSwavu, derFred.

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