29-6-17: Malawi Mwambo west: http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/3104# 1 square upper right corner of aread: checked, added buildings and roads, finished.

Woensdag 28-6-2017. Missing maps project. Introduction and first roads and buildings added in the break of the first FOSS4G meeting in the Netherlands (Groningen).

I'm only a tourist. I'm travelling in South-America and I am very happy to have map.me, so I can use offline maps. So I startet to add correct POIs here to give back something.

In recent times I visited Baños, Otavalo and Mindo.

WHY THE HECK in Otavalo there is a huge circle in the middle of a neighberhood pretending to be a train-station? How comes that in Cuicocha Laguna there is e Lodge in the Water?? Why do many hotels have to be twice on a map? One location is for sure not the right one. ettc, etc

I only could guess that mappers like Enrique1984, NOGGYS and others make such errors on purpouse. But I'm NOT SURE who it was. I'm no so advanced to really figure out who it was.

Does anyone has knowledge to stop such morrons?

village

3D Models made with QGIS, plugin Qgis2threejs (https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/Qgis2threejs/), NASA SRTM, Images from various sources (credits printed and/or quoted in metadata of each model), some OSM data. And uMap of course.
Some models may take a while to download (6 to 12MB).

http://umap.openstreetmap.co/m/1095/

Brand new on overpass-turbo.eu: In addition to storing queries locally on your browser, you can now also save your important queries on your OSM account and access them from everywhere. Here's the new option visible on the save dialog:

Using data item from Taoyuan Open Data Portal, and merging the existing Youbike station on OpenStreetMap database, I use JOSM check and merge the data, then upload in bulk to OpenStreetMap.

Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan City, Taichung City, Tainan City and Kaohsiung City they all put the public bicycle site list on the open data portal. But unfortunately that Hsinchu City data license is vague. The datsset on National Develop Council use the Taiwan Government Open Data License. But on the link to Hsinchu City Open Data portal, the dataset page says it has they on custom license, which doesn't fit to OpenStreetMap license. There are mappers in Hsinchu had add some Youbike site in Hsinchu area.

/*
This has been generated by the overpass-turbo wizard.
The original search was:
“amenity=bicycle_rental in "新竹市"”
*/
[out:json][timeout:25];
// fetch area “新竹市” to search in
{{geocodeArea:新竹市}}->.searchArea;
// gather results
(
  // query part for: “amenity=bicycle_rental”
  node["amenity"="bicycle_rental"]["operator"="新竹市政府"](area.searchArea);
  way["amenity"="bicycle_rental"]["operator"="新竹市政府"](area.searchArea);
  relation["amenity"="bicycle_rental"]["operator"="新竹市政府"](area.searchArea);
);
// print results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;
{{style:
    node,way,relation {
        text:name;
}
}}

OverPass Query Link

WOW, I can't even think about I'll have to do a second fix for the Pearl Delta area. Here is the part II that filter out the station under construction, but labeled as in function.

OverPass Query

OverPass Query Language:

/*
This has been generated by the overpass-turbo wizard.
The original search was:
“railway=station and name~"建设中"”
*/
[out:xml]/*fixed by auto repair*/[timeout:225];
// gather results
(
  // query part for: “railway=station and name~/在建/”
  node["railway"="station"]["name"~"建设中"]({{bbox}});
  way["railway"="station"]["name"~"建设中"]({{bbox}});
  relation["railway"="station"]["name"~"建设中"]({{bbox}});
);
// print results
out meta;/*fixed by auto repair*/
>;
out meta qt;/*fixed by auto repair*/

Changeset

Inspired by dval's diary entry, I thought I should finally summarize me experience with track recording.

I use two setups on three physical devices to record my GPS tracks - my smarthphone and two old smartphones (identical models) that I've dedicated to GPS recording (taken out SIM cards, stripped the software down to bare essentials). My (newer, day-to-day use) smartphone is running the latest version of the Mendhak GPS Logger app, while the two older ones are running the most recent version of the same app that still supports Android 2.3.6 (i.e. a pretty old one). I have found that these two setups produce GPX tracks with different DOP values. The newer smartphone running the newer app usually produces tracks with DOP of around 0.4-5, the older smartphones with the older version of the app are a bit higher (DOP ~1.2-8). However, it doesn't seem to depend entirely on the smartphone model because when I was still using the OsmAnd app for GPS tracking on the newer smartphone, the DOP values were a lot higher (~4-15 or thereabouts).

Every time I return from a trip or a hike, I download the GPX tracks from all three smartphones and in all of them I throw away all points with a negative elevation (<ele> tag) to get rid of complete rubbish. Then, for the newer smartphone, I throw away all poins with HDOP higher than 0.7 and for the older smartphones higher than 1.5. When I say "throw away", I mean that I replace the track points in question (<trkpt> tag) with "</trkseg><trkseg>" so I don't just connect the adjacent points. This way, I get a GPS track full of "holes" but since I'm recording three tracks at the same time and I often record the same trip on multiple occasions, I have a pretty decent coverage of the whole trip, as well as pretty good accuracy, I dare say.

Now, what do I do with this? I have 360 files so far and JOSM is starting to notice when I display them all at once. Of course, I'm thinking about uploading them to OSM because that way:
- other people could use them
- I would be able to only load the portions of tracks for a particular area, rather than needing to display them all in full in JOSM

However:
- I don't keep track of where I recorded a particular file and I certainly don't feel like tagging them all for location etc. - the maintenance is tedious enough as it is.
- Many of them are next to useless on their own because they're just a sparsely dispersed points or short dashes - it's only after you combine more of them together that you see something meaningful.
- I don't want to lose the HDOP information - the OSM server strips that, doesn't it?
- I don't want them to get lost in the vast number of other uploaded tracks, many of them low quality.

Basically, I'm looking for some place whence I could load them into JOSM along with tracks recorded by other people and then filter the lot by HDOP.

Any ideas?

Not sure if this is what these journal entries are for, but hello! I'm new to map tracing, having just attended my first mapathon, so if you're a moderator checking my work then I appreciate any feedback.

Please introduce yourself

I am Julien Minet. I come from the Luxembourg province in Belgium, from the border between the Ardens and the Gaume. I have a degree as Bio-engineer and worked for 8 years as a researcher at UCL and now ULg - Arlon. At the moment I work in web development, GIS and digital maps.

When and how did you discover OpenStreetMap ?

I heard about OSM quite some time ago, via news sites on mapping and GIS. I started contributing in 2012. I have to admit that I did not believe in the project in the beginning. Due to the empty, white map I was really attracted to contribute. Nevertheless, there were some brave pioneers that started the work and mapped the main roads, the villages, etc. J’ai entendu parler d’OSM assez tôt, par le biais de sites d’infos sur la cartographie et le SIG. Je me suis mis à contribuer en 2012. Au début, je dois dire que je ne croyais pas trop au projet et le fait que la carte était toute blanche dans le sud de la Belgique ne me poussait pas à y contribuer. Puis, de courageux pionniers ont initié le travail en cartographiant les routes principales, les villages, etc.

How do you map ? Is this different from your early days ?

I started in 2012, at the moment, several small villages were missing from the map in my neighborhood, which I added since then, as well as some main roads. In the beginning I mapped forestry roads after registering them via GPS traces. Afterwards, I started focussing on points-of-interests, mainly shops, pubs, restaurants, banks, etc. Later on, I moved to mapping the signposted walks in my area. Since a few months, I became addicted to map the landuse. The longer one participates in the project, the more subjects one finds to map! I believe it is always a good moment to get engaged in OpenStreetMap, since there is a always a lot of details remaining to be mapped, especially in rural areas.

In the last year, I started to use the error detection tool Osmose as lot. It is a very good way to learn about the rules, to discover other mappers in "your" area and to discover new features that can be mapped.

Initially I thought that OpenStreetMap was mainly constructed via imports of open data. Later on, I discovered that this was not the case (at least not in Belgium). Since then, I believe in the "craft mapping", mapping of items that one knows or has seen in the real world. Wanting to import open data at all costs, is no longer interesting for me, since 1) in case the data is open, it is available anyhow, 2) official data is not perfect and 3) OpenStreetMap demands some time to be constructed, so let some work to future contributors !

On the other hand, open data can be used in for analysing and validation of our map data, or in some specific cases. For examples, one day I would like to import the traces of the small waterways in Wallonia, because they are often missing in OpenstreetMap and they are difficult to map from aerial images. Since this would require a group of passionate people to follow the course of the rivers and streams, this seems like an import that is almost useful. Although swimming and walking along the streams is a great activity !

How do you map ?

Usually, I map what I know well, and after verifying it on the ground. I do not have a dedicated GPS-device for hiking, I only use my smartphone with the OpenGPSTracker app. I use it for all my outdoor activities, be it on a mountain bike or for walking. The latter happens less and less the past few years. Often, I take pictures of shops, especially of the notes indicating the opening hours and contact information, so I can later on add this information to the map.

Most of my edits where done with ID. I like this editor for its simplicity. I always use it for adding information such as opening hours, contact information, or to repair mistakes indicated by Osmose. Recently, I also started using JOSM for mapping landuse and lancover, using the "contourmerge" plugin, which is a great time saver for this type of mapping. I also use Maps.Me and Vespucci on mobile devices.

Where do you map ?

I mainly map what I know well, thus I work in my immediate surroundings and in the places I visit. I am interested in the helping out humanitarian projects such as HOT, but I hesite to start, because I do not know those places. In the beginning, I found some serieus problems in my neighborhood, clearly made by contributors that do not know the area. There has to be people in each region of the world that have an interest in becoming a contributor. Of course, the number of possible contributors interested in the project is alwayls limited, so we have to start with students following geography or IT courses. But we do not have to reach millions of people to get good results. It could be a surprise to see who is interested in the project and contributes to it. I had the possibility to meet some African students of the ULg in Arlon and I tried to introduce them to OpenStreetMap. They are often exited about the project, since it is valuable in areas where no other digital maps exist. So, yes to humanitarian mapping if one does not forget to involve local mappers, all over the world.

What is your largest achievement so far ?

I am proud of "my area", roughly described as the Forest of Anlier and Rulles, where I made most of my contributions. I am especially happy with the result, as the official IGN maps of the forests are not always up-to-date. Some paths can disappear rapidly under the vegetation and new ones are created by the exploitation of the forest and by mountain bikers.

Why do you map ?

I always loved maps, hiking and outdoor activities. That is what attracts me the most in OpenStreetMap: going out on a bike or by foot and later on edit the map to reflect what you have noticed. I also like the geek aspect, the fact that you have an unbelievable passion to share when you are invited for a dinner on a Wednesday evening.

What is the most difficult part ?

To keep the map up to date ! And to find the motivation to update or improve what is already present.

What are you plans in the near future ?

I talked about that on my blog, mainly the landuse and the sign posted hikes. And why not, mapping the small streams ?

Do you have contact with other mappers ?

I am subscribed to the talk-be mailing list. One warning: this list generates a lot of emails, so set up your mail program to keep them in a separate, dedicated folder. I only visited a few face-to-face meetings, as they are rarely organised in Wallonia. By accident, I met Julien Fastré during one of them and we have met a few times since then. I initiated some people around me to contribute, but they only do this from time to time. And at the State of the Map in Brussels in 2016, I finally met some of the legends of the Belgian community! I think this was the best day of my live ! :-)

Do you use OpenStreetMap yourself ?

I use OpenStreetMap on my smartphone, via the OsmAnd and Maps.me apps. Having the map available offline, is always useful. I also use it to calculate routes. And finally I use it in my activaty as GIS consultant: either as background map or as data source.

Are there other things you do that are related to OpenStreetMap?

I made OpenStreetMap part of my jobs. A project that I would like to develop further is a map of businesses and services in rural areas. A map, where one can rapidly find the opening hours and phone numbers. I have developed a prototype for my village, and I use it often to see whether a shop is open. I would like to present it to other villages and collaborate with local development agencies and trade associations.

To conclude, is there anything else you would like to mention?

For me, OpenStreetMap has an enormous potential, one that is not completely known yet. And even though OSM data is not always complete nor accurate, -- which largely depends on the theme and area -- it should not hinder the invention of new applications. There are a lot of professions that use geographical information, often only sporadically, but thet can still have benefit from using OpenStreetMap. The data model of OpenStreetMap and its open tagging system, are both part of the success of the project and contribute to its use in innovative solutions. But there are also disadvantages. One of the challenges is the completeness and the exactness of the data. Maybe, by creating derivations, or mirrors based on the original OSM data, that we can create more easily professional applications or services that are more reassuring to its users.

There are still a lot of features that have to be added or corrected in OpenStreetMap. I hope to encourage new people to get interested in the project and to get them contributing. It does not matter whether one is an amateur or a professional, everybody can contribute.

Image Source: Pinterest

Vishakapatnam

ఉల్లాసభరితమైనటువంటి తీర ప్రాంతంతో విశాఖపట్టణం ఎల్లప్పుడూ నిత్యనూతనంగా మరియు ప్రశాంతంగా ఉంటుంది. నిత్యం అభివృద్ధి చెందుతున్న నగరంతో పాటు డేటా కూడా ఎప్పటికప్పుడు మెరుగుపరచడం అనివార్యం. విశాఖపట్టణంలోని కూర్మన్నపాలెం నా జన్మస్థలం అవ్వడం వలన, నాకున్న అవగాహనతో ఈ ప్రాంతాన్ని మ్యాప్ చేశాను. గతం లో ఇక్కడ మ్యాప్ చేయని ఆస్పత్రులు, ఎటిఎం'స్ ,సినిమా థియేటర్స్ వంటి ప్రాథమిక సౌకర్యాలు మ్యాప్ చేయడం జరిగింది. అభివృద్ధి చెందుతున్న పారిశ్రామిక ప్రాంతం అయినప్పటికీ జాతీయ రహాదారుల క్రమం సరిగ్గా లేకపోవడం వలన దీని మీద పని చేయడం జరిగింది. కాలంతో పాటు జరుగుతున్న పట్టణీకరణ మరియు వ్యాపారీకరణ గమనార్హం. పూర్వం మామిడి తోట అయినటువంటి ప్రదేశాలు కూడా పట్టణీకరణ వల్ల ఆధునిక అడవిలా మారిపోయింది. భవిష్యత్తులో పారిశ్రామిక మరియు గ్రామీణ పరిసరాలలో ప్రాధమిక వసతులని మ్యాప్ చేయాలనీ ఆకాంక్షిస్తున్నాను.

Visakhapatnam is full of life and buzz round the clock. The coastline has its own vivid panorama. Everyday is a new start with amazing developments, be it the pharmaceutical companies or automobile industries or the urban sprawl around Steel Plant. With the improving cityscape, the map data should also be equally updated and maintained. My area of interest was Kurmannapalem and how it gradually evolved over time. I mapped the main transport network, basic amenities like hospitals, ATMs and several recreation facilities which were not mapped in good detail before. A major concern was the impact of urbanisation and commercialisation. My locality which used to be a mango plantation is now a concrete jungle.

The change from dominant flush green to the grey is evident

This is the link to go through.

Going forward, I would love to map the sub urban areas of Visakhapatnam which have major industrial units like Pharmaceuticals and also the basic amenities for the public.

Here's a map I got out of our Open Source Routing Machine when I built a validator for sharp turns onto ramps. The idea behind this validator is that turns onto highway ramps should never be sharp (i.e. < 90'ish degree). There is a high chance a turn restriction is missing at those locations.

With these checks enabled I found roughly 30k intersections on the planet. I visualized the results in the map below; the redder the circle, the sharper the turn angle onto the ramp.

Click for interactive map

In the results I found an issue that frequently re-occurred. Consider the situation below: heading east on Goff Mountain Road (the yellow line), there is a ramp on the right that you can legally take. Around the bend, there is another ramp onto the same road for drivers going west on Goff Mountain Road.

If you are driving east on Goff Mountain Road and happen to miss the ramp, re-routing will kick in. When generating a new route past the ramp that you initially missed, OSRM sees in the road network that there is conveniently a second ramp onto the same road. It then basically gives you the instruction to make a nearly 180 degree turn on the the next ramp! A turn restriction onto that second ramp from Goff Mountain Road would fix this issue.

Given that the navigation is able to pass in your bearings data (what cardinal direction you’re already moving in) to OSRM, OSRM won’t try and tell you to make a fast u-turn and try the first ramp again like in the third frame of the gif. Making a turn onto the second ramp isn’t considered problematic though.

• Router
• OSM

There are definitely false positives in the data and cases you will never hit in reality. But there are also missing turn restrictions onto ramps that will result in bizarre instructions given back to re-routing requests.

And even though the sharp-turns-onto-ramps validator was just a quick evening hack it would be great to add more static road network property validators that detect situations like u-turns on high-speed roads or sudden changes in road class.

I am thinking of bringing OpenStreetMaps.org in Tamil. Imagining a world, where a GPS device or smartphone, showing paths in Tamil and giving instructions in Tamil to the driver.

To achieve this, we need all the street names to be filled in OpenStreetMaps.org

I checked for the streets in my area, Tambaram, Chennai. Found that there are many street names are missing. Editing the street names on the browser seems difficult for the lazy me.

Was looking for any alternate ways to add streets in OSM. Found the Open Source android app “StreetComplete“.

It simply shows the streets that dont have a name and ask to enter a name for it. Thats all.

From the description of the app.

Help to improve the OpenStreetMap with StreetComplete!

This app finds incomplete and extendable data in your vicinity 

and displays it on a map as markers.

Each of those is solvable by answering a simple question to complete the info on site.

The info you enter is then directly added to the OpenStreetMap in

your name, without the need to use another editor.

As it says, it is really simple to add details like street names, road types, shops opening hours etc.

Install this app in your android phone and help OpenStreetMaps to have all the street names. It will lead to various super projects like “Maps in our language” and more.

Help to to build truely open maps.

Few links to explore:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost.streetcomplete

Source : https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/

I can't stand anymore that the station still in construction labeled as a normal function station. So I do a little Overpass+Level0 tricks. These stations could be change to railway=station when the station construction is finished and operated.

/*
This has been generated by the overpass-turbo wizard.
The original search was:
“railway=station and name~"在建"”
*/
[out:xml]/*fixed by auto repair*/[timeout:225];
// gather results
(
  // query part for: “railway=station and name~/在建/”
  node["railway"="station"]["name"~"在建"]({{bbox}});
  way["railway"="station"]["name"~"在建"]({{bbox}});
  relation["railway"="station"]["name"~"在建"]({{bbox}});
);
// print results
out meta;/*fixed by auto repair*/
>;
out meta qt;/*fixed by auto repair*/

I talked to a German mapper who is actively mapping in China, mentioned the life cycle concept. He was a render guy. He knows the concept but was not convinced by me.

So, I've started mapping monuments from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Monuments_of_National_Importance_in_Gujarat to OSM. I guess this will be good start for newbie like me.

Feel free to give suggestions to make work faster and efficient!

Today(June 21, 2017) I have registered the site and started using it.

Tagondaing တံခွန်တိုင်

My weekend adventures in editing the “Papanui Parallel / Puari ki Papanui" raised a big question: how could I demonstrate personal knowledge of this major cycleway developed by the Christchurch City Council? ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Adam%20Heinz/diary/41739 )

I decided to try OSMTracker to see if I could demonstrate where I had been. ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSMTracker_(Android) )

Within minutes of finishing work I had downloaded OSMTracker for free from the Google Play store and was on my bike. ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.guillaumin.android.osmtracker&hl=en )

I whipped out my phone at the intersection of Bealey Avenue and Colombo Street and opened the app. It asked me to enable GPS in Google Location services. As soon as I had a "GPS fix" - the accuracy wavered from 3 to 5 meters - I hit the "cycle track" button followed by "cycleway" and pedalled northwards.

The route itself was a dream to ride on a road bike. I felt so safe that it was a rude shock to realise I was crossing an intersection and hadn't looked out for my own safety. Fortunately the drivers were very considerate and gave way to me. After being cocooned on the segregated cycle track, the section of "greenway" along Trafalgar Street was a sharp reminder of just how frightening it can be to cycle on the road at night.

Before I knew it I had arrived in comfort and style at the end of the cycleway at the railway crossing on Sawyers Arms Road. A quick hit of the save button and I had my first GPS trace. ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Adam%20Heinz/traces/2436735 )

The return journey southwards was just as quick and easy and I had my second GPS trace. ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Adam%20Heinz/traces/2436734 )

The "Export to Open Street Map" option was greyed out so I hit "Export as GPX". This was the first moment where I was left scratching my head - I even had to resort to reading the instructions. ( http://learnosm.org/en/mobile-mapping/osmtracker/ )

Within minutes I had transferred the GPX files to my laptop and uploaded the GPS traces to Open Street Map.

The accuracy on a cheap android phone was enough to indicate the streets that I had travelled along when editing the route details. It was enough to remind me where the track had crossed from one side of the street to the other.

(I would look at using a proper GNSS receiver if looking to accurately map things - such as one of the segregated cycling paths that are a reasonable distance from motorway centerlines, for example).

In all, I was astonished at how easy the quick start to OSMTracker was. It left me wanting to learn more and to use the more advanced functions on my next ride.

Adam Heinz is a cyclist, citizen of Christchurch, and a staff member of Christchurch City Council

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