Been trying the (new) iD editor. Very nice.

Is it bad form to write 2 diary entries in one day? Possibly. But the network drives in the office have conked out, and it's Friday afternoon, and I have this all ready to go, so what the hell.

London's lost rivers have fascinated me ever since I first read about them, and since I started cycling in London the contours have fascinated me too. Finding a way to visualise these things was what first got me into OSM (via Maperitive), but I never found the time to finish the job to a reasonable standard. So here's a first attempt, see what you think:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfisher81/8746062959/

Croydon takes a lot of stick -- it was heavily bombed during the war, with any remaining traditional aesthetics being destroyed in the '60s under a council masterplan to establish it as a centre of commerce. It's a "working-class" town in unfashionable South London, with high levels of poverty, and of course was hit by rioting in 2011.

But it's also cheap (for London) and easy to get around, generally friendly, and has various places of interest if you know where to look. It also has a number of local blogs and webpages, including the excellent Completists' Guide run by Kake Pugh (http://croydon.randomness.org.uk -- a sometime OSM contributor herself I think). As you can see if you click through, it's a treasure trove of POI info. So instead of gathering POIs from scratch, I've been able to print off details from the site to take with me on surveys, making notes where needed (kinda like Walking Papers). I've now added building and shop info for all of central Croydon, with only London Road (aka West Croydon aka Broad Green) to go.

With a new shopping centre and various "public realm improvements" planned, hopefully the town is on the up, and maybe OSM (and the Completists' Guide) can help in some way, who knows.

There are quite a few ways in the database which are passing by several times the same point. Such an example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/191420773

There are lot of those in this area, but I've such seen a ways a bit everywhere in the map. It seems like it's pretty easy to do with Potlatch, and really hard to fix :-/

Anyway, is there a tool to fix such a way? Or maybe someone has a tip on how to fix them easily?

Cycle route stats

In an effort to calculate some cycle route stats in Scotland for this weekend's cycling protest called Pedal on Parliament, I created a cycle stats website.

It uses an R script to download the latest data from fabulous Geofabrik, it then cookie cuts .osm Scotland into MSP constituencies. The boundary data is from OS Open Data (simplified and processed into polylines in QGIS). The .osm data is converted into data.frames and analysed using osmar library for cycle route relations and ways.

There are more than a few assumptions and hacks in the process and some unexpected results.

Basically, I think I'm asking a bit too much of the osmar library and I need to try a database approach. But it works - kind of.

website

source code

Just a preview of what I'm working on right now

Traced the building footprints of HOT task. I uploaded without comments.

Got bored with doing postboxen now. I'm as confused as h**l about FMR's ever-changing bus routes, and their strange geometry. I've started to do the 43 route from Malvern to Upton s/ Severn, but I can't get the hang of relations. Specifically, how do I get a relation marked as "incomplete" (or does this mean "incompletely downloaded"?)? How to do spurs/loops ? How to accommodate a one-way loop where both directions of a route appear to go in the same direction ? How to accommodate the situation where a route serves the same roads/stops in the same direction on the same trip ? (There's one bus route here which serves one stop, dives into a housing estate, and emerges and serves the same stop again; sometimes the drivers go round and round this loop all day, until they reach escape velocity.)

Hentet JOSM editoren til min Linux computer.

Første waypoint er Bålplads ved waterway i Lyngby Åmose fra UU gruppens kanotur dt2011-08-03.

For details of railway lines including internal official names see:- http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/10563.aspx

subs:- http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/anglia%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/kent%20sussex%20wessex%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/london%20north%20eastern%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/london%20north%20western%20north%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/london%20north%20western%20south%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/scotland%20sectional%20appendix.pdf http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/sectional%20appendix/western%20sectional%20appendix.pdf

These documents are large and based on the electronic updating version described in the first link.

The general availability of these documents seems to change as people in the business are pushed to use the databank version rather than the pdf editions .

The contents changes with operational changes but much of the route names, for areas not permanently modified after railway works, stay pretty stable. info junctions and some signal names is often also present.

Tomorrow evening we're going mapping around Marble Arch!

This will be a very beginner-friendly introduction to mapping. So if you're in London come along, and tell all your friends. Anyone who's never tried OpenStreetMapping, or curious about other ways of doing it. All you people lurking following @OSMLondon ... Come tomorrow evening!

OSMLondon events have always been wide-open for beginners to come along to, but I'm stressing this aspect in the tomorrows event. This is part of an exciting new event formula in which we alternate "pub meet-ups" and "mapping parties".

Last month we met at the Iron Duke pub with the intention of kicking off the mapping season. This is a good spot for some of the mapping priorities of central London, and I'm pleased that Derick managed to fill in some awesome details around St James Street. For my part I had signed up for a slice of cake to the South, but I spent so long in the office preparing a print-out of building outlines to check... that it go too late so I just went the pub (ohhh! That's cheating!) It was the daylight confusing me.

Outside the pub (in the new evening daylight) the hot topic of conversation was...

An academic paper all about London OpenStreetMap mapping parties! (PDF)

Amazing and slightly weird that these people have analysed this in such detail. It feels a bit like somebody wrote a ten page academic paper about my personal bad habits. It's weird that they do all of this without ever attending a mapping party themselves, but we figured it was a scientific analysis in which the scientist decides to avoid interfering with their subjects!

In judging the participation and retention rates of mapping parties, their data source was raw edit data in OpenStreetMap. Can't argue with that. But the analysis seemed to me to have a few holes. They've looked at the location and times of mapping parties over the years, based on the wiki records. They did observe that in the summer of 2008 we had a lot mapping parties. This was actually a mapping blitz. A "marathon" of epic proportions, with evening mapping happening in far-flung locations, and happening every week. We were filling in obvious gaps in the map at that time. I imagine this yields some clear and easy to correlate editing data. These days there's fewer obvious juicy gaps to tackle. As a result mapping parties have largely been in central London, a bit less frequent, and probably attracting a bit less participation in actual mapping. I like to think that these days London's map attracts more casual localised contributions from people dotted around London. The character of mapping party events has changed massively over the years. I'm not sure if this has been properly accounted for in their analysis.

In analysing edits they used a 48hour time window. Justifying it as follows: "We found that in 40% of mapping parties the peak of activity was on the day of the event, while in 89% of cases the peak activity was within 30 hours after the party. In 99% of cases, the peak activity was within 48 hours, after which the daily edits stabilise to the norm previously observed."

That's pretty interesting, but certainly doesn't fit with my own editing patterns these days. I quite often wait several days before inputting data. Also these days I often add more data (more objects) tracing building outlines in preparation for a mapping evening, with only minor tweaks and additions afterwards. Back in 2008 however, I was probably quite diligent about adding the data in (new streets!) soon after, particularly as we needed to be ready to do it all again the following week! Also back then I imagine that editing activity would have stood out a lot more from the lesser background editing.

So I had those quibbles, however reading on, there's definitely some very thorough and valid approaches. For example "OSM users greatly differ in terms of the amount of contributions they make, and over what timespan. In order to quantify the impact of mapping parties on different types of users, we have grouped them based on the number of contributions they made in the six months prior to each party". So I'll be in their "Group 4" heavy contributors category. They go on to say that these users don't actually get much mapping done at mapping parties "We cross checked the names of some of these contributors against what is publicly available in OSM wikis, and found that many of these users take on organisational roles, visiting an area prior to the party, creating ‘cake diagrams’, and identifying ‘problems’ they wish the party to fix." ...Got me down to a tee. And I think there's quite a few other OSMLondoners who probably managed to wheedle their way into the heavy contributors category despite never really bothering with any mapping at the London events.

These groupings also allowed them to scientifically conclude what we already know, that we suck at retaining newcomers. In this graph we score quite well on retaining experienced mappers (pink and blue), but pretty hopelessly with the newbies (red and grey)

CONCLUSION! "mapping parties do cause an increased editing activity during the events themselves; they also sustain engagement over time, though mostly for already active contributors; however, they largely fail on their third goal of engaging new-comers. After just a week following the party, these users stop contributing to OSM and do not come back to other mapping parties again"

In our huddle of "Group 4" retained mappers outside the Iron Duke pub, we had a good chat about all these things ...then we went for burritos

So it is with these things in mind, that I've shifted the way the events are organised just a little bit. Alternating "pub meet-ups" and "mapping parties" Not a major shift, but half the time we'll just call it what it is, a "pub meet-up" in which people who know each-other are meeting-up. We don't preclude newcomers of course, but we face the fact that it will most likely be the usual crowd (Nothing wrong with that. It's always fun!). But then for the "mapping parties" we try to angle it a little more towards newbies. I'm not under any illusions that this small change will make much difference, but it's probably taking things in the right direction. Also if I can chill out on the promotion effort and the cake diagram drawing effort for some of the events, that will be welcome, and maybe I'll have more time to do better promotion of these less frequent "mapping party" events.... was the plan... but I didn't get much time this time around. Promotion is a job for everyone though. Please reach out to people who may be interested, and pass on the link: http://bit.ly/londonosm9

...and I'll see you tomorrow evening for a beginner-friendly mapping session!

Looks like I’ve been a member for 330 days. Most of my edits have been in Canberra.

Incomplete list of edits:

Added footpaths in local suburb & surroundings (Weston Creek).

Added some green spaces.

Minor fixes of redaction things when it happened.

Parliamentary Triangle. Including memorials in Kings Park/Commonwealth Park. Surveyed Nerang Pool surroundings.

Named landmarks around lake e.g. Rond Terraces, Kurrajong Point, RG Menzies Walk, Aspen Island etc.

Parliament House grounds. Including all (AFAIK) water coolers.

Charles Sturt University.

Governor General’s residence (Government House).

Lake Burley Griffin circuit. Including most water coolers.

Also Yerrabi Ponds, Tuggeranong Lake and Lake Ginninderra circuits.

Circularising roundabouts—including State Circle and Capital Circle.

Retagged all ACT nature reserves (AFAIK).

Naming some residential areas e.g. apartment blocks, and also the local shops in several suburbs (incomplete).

Office areas in Deakin (surroundings of John James Hospital, and south of Alfred Deaking High).

Swinger Hill

Adding dog parks.

Realigned Forest Drive and added some new National Arboretum features.

Minor Canberra University edits.

Parking aisles here and there.

Latest project: surveying, drawing, consolidating, and cleaning up all Canberra off-road signed cyclepaths. I did this for the area south of the lake, then for Lake Burley Griffin itself. Most recently, I’m trying to fix up the northwest (Belconnen to Dunlop) and northeast (Gungahlin) areas. Currently fixing up Harrison. There could be some places I’ve missed, particularly the inner-south, ANU and Fyshwick areas. That may have to wait till after our winter.

I am not able to find a tool to tag a photograph of a particular location/feature in openstreetmap edit environment. please help

Summary

Amaroussi is working around the clock to resolve Greece's road classification nightmare.

OpenStreetMap users and editors may be aware that I am trying to solve a major issue regarding road numbers and classification in Greece, following my visit to the country last year. Additionally, I have discovered a very old government document regarding the classification of Greece's Provincial Roads.

The problem

At present, many of the National and Provincial roads are unnumbered, and I have been trying to introduce numbers based on interpolation and the 1963 list of national roads. As an interim measure, secondary roads had refs based on their destinations, whereas the Leonidos-Sparta road had ref=Leo-Spa (in Greek).

Last weekend I stumbled upon SkyscraperCity's forum topic on Greek highways and it appears that the road numbering system is very patchy.

Firstly, According to user ea1969, new numbers were added without proper consideration for the growing motorway network. Motorways then completely replaced National Roads without considering prohibited traffic.

Secondly, there is a provincial road numbering system and there is a pilot of the scheme at Alexandras Avenue since this morning using ref=EΠ8, based on the position it appeared for the entry regarding Attica's provincial roads. The problem is that it dates from 1956. Yes, 1956 - it has not been updated since.

This means that there going to be roads between towns and strategic municipality-maintained roads without the recently-discovered EΠ numbers, which makes the situation complex.

The solution (?)

The objective of OpenStreetMap is to be as useful to cyclists and pedestrians as much as motorists. In the UK, we know very well that road numbers are very useful and I hope to make it useful to our Greek users as well.

The advantage for OpenStreetMap over other Internet maps of Greece is that other maps either mistake Motorways for some National Roads, or simply just guess the route, which leads to overlapping sections. In both scenarios, they leave out Provincial Roads completely.

I have been doing actual research to figure out what the exact route of every National Road was and what it might look like today. That means that with consultation with actual government documents and Greek road enthusiasts, OpenStreetMap has the advantage to represent the most accurate road network of Greece to date in respect of road numbering.

As you will have noticed, I have been reviewing National Roads in Attica and the Peloponnese, as well as provincial roads between villages and towns. Over the next few months, I will be piloting a new provincial road system in the area with EΠ numbers, based on the position it appeared for the entry regarding each province's provincial roads at the time.

However, to implement this I am proposing major changes to how we classify roads Greece:

1. National Roads may be re-tagged as Trunk roads instead of Primary roads, so that Provincial Roads will become Primary roads instead of Secondary roads. This will free up the Secondary road tag for key municipal roads and roads between towns that were built after 1956.
2. To disambiguate between Expressways and National Roads, Expressways will be tagged with motorroad=yes. At present the trunk road tag is visually underused in Greece, and this has a negative effect of making National and Provincial Roads appear barely visible on MapQuest Open.

I just hope that one day the Greek Government will tidy up the road numbering system. Maybe our intervention will restore credibility to Greece's patchy road numbering system.

Footnote

Just before I sign-off this post, I want to enquire how I could start my own OSM server for creative and testing purposes? Thank you.

Updated geometry and attribute updates to Bob Hope Airport, Burbank California. Some people make some elaborate geometry edits to follow the taxilines for aircraft, but when you do this it makes labeling (naming) the geometry very difficult. Happened quite a bit at Bob Hope Airport.Taxilines don't neccessarily equal taxiways. My wife and I fly out of Bob Hope every time we go home to visit family.

Updated geometry and attribute data for Sacramento Mather Airport, in Rancho Cordova, California. I flew T-43s here in 1983 and again in 1989-1991 when it was Mather Air Force Base. Updated geometry and attribute information for University Airport, near Davis, California.

Updated geometry and attribute data for Reddding Municipal Airport, in Redding, California. It is a wonderfful airport. I used to fly through there a lot in the late 1980s. Updated geometry and attribute data for the Lake Tahoe Airport, near South Lake Tahoe, California.

Added attribute information to Vance Amory International Airport, near Newcastle, Nevis, West Indies.

Blogged about @ http://clockwerx.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/consuming-georss-and-querying.html

Relatively low effort to pull together - 10 hours perhaps? from start to finish, split over two sessions.

Demonstrates * SimpleXML/PHP to consume the overpass API and results * Simple Leaflet usage * Rendering of polygons from OSM data.

Toady I started using OSM Marker to take GPS Data.

I think there must be a very large number of GPS trace points at the intersection of the equator at the prime meridian (what's that place called anyway?).

I'm afraid I've been fool enough to add quite a few of these myself! Oops. Sorry.

I've modified one of the gpsbable scripts that I use to prepare NMEA files, chopping out anything around (0,0), so all should be fine from now on.

I really love this new editor