Most links point to websites written in Dutch

Last summer I noticed that Tourisme Pajottenland was using an OpenStreetMap-based map to promote a walk they organised together with Pasar. Unfortunately, the attribution was missing. So I contacted them asking them to add it and proposed to come over to explain OpenStreetMap to them.

I got a very positive reply back and the following maps with walks all got the attribution. And I was invited to discuss a possible collaboration. This meeting was in the first week of October.

Before I describe the meeting and their needs, I will try to explain how their organisation works.

I actually met the people from Regional Landscape P & Valley of the Zenne. This is one of the 17 regional landscape organisations in Flanders. Flanders is the Northern part of Belgium, where people speak Dutch. Together, those 17 regional landscapes cover most of Flanders. They all work around the same topics:

• Landscape: they work together with local governments, civilians and other organisations to improve the environment. They give advice to landscape gardens and fields with local trees and hedges.
• Nature: they set up projects to protect fauna and flora
• Education: they organise workshop, courses and activities related to nature and landscape
• Recreation: They promote recreation with respect for nature, maintain slow roads and set out signposted walks.

Perhaps this is better explained on the website of Regional Landscape Rivierenland (in English).

Besides those regional landscapes, we also have organisations in which villages work together on heritage. They are called “intergemeentelijke onroerenderfgoeddienst” (IOED). More information can be found on the website of the Flemish agency for heritage.

There is one of those IOEDs that work together with the regional landscape Pajottenland-Zennevallei: it’s called Erfgoedcell Pajottenland-Zennevallei.

Those IOEDs are now asked to update the inventory of heritage items both man-made and natural in the villages where they are active. Both organisations have to run with limited budgets and they want to use their network of volunteers to help out with the inventory. They are looking at a workflow that would make it easy for those volunteers to navigate to the heritage item and collect data about the item.

And this is the reason why I was invited. They are thinking about OpenStreetMap to support this workflow. It can be as simple as having the items available as POIs in a navigation app, or they could go all the way to add all required data to OpenStreetMap.

The data they want to collect is very extensive, but most of it is observable. That is exactly the reason why their volunteers will have to visit the place in person before filling in the form.

I received an example of such a form for a farm, but since it is still a draft, I was asked to only share it with a small group to discuss possible tags. Some information they want to collect about farms:

• shape of the building(long, square, semi-square, etc.)
• buildings materials of walls, roof,
• shape of doors and windows
• the number of bays

This seems to be more detailed than we do at this moment in OpenStreetMap.

If you have done such a project or are interested to help out to define the tags, feel free to contact me.

If you have ideas on a simple workflow on how we can turn a collection of items in OSM into POIs in e.g OsmAnd, I will be more than happy to hear from you.

We also talked about the walking networks in their area. There are plans to update the network and slightly reorganise them. And they also plan some pure digital sections, without visible signs.

After the meeting I contacted an alderman from my contacts. He got in touch with me to map a particular heritage building in his town. Turns out they are also part of a IOED named Polderrand and they have the same inventory task to do. I will visit them in the coming weeks.