OpenStreetMap
Why NearMap has been the best thing that has happened to Australian Mapping.
Posted by melb_guy on 29 April 2010 in English.Case Study: Wallan, Victoria, Australia
For those who don't know, Wallan is a town just out of the north of Melbourne which is on the brink of having a massive boom, which will soon see the area up among other satellite cities such as Sunbury and Pakenham. NearMap is a new Australian aerial photography company which works with OSM and vice versa to build up great maps. OSM uses NearMap's imagery (which normally has a resolution of 7cm for the 5 largest cities which gets updated monthly with new imagery, which helps to keep our maps up to date) to build our maps upon. NearMap then take the OSM data and render their own mapping layer on their site. A classic win-win situation. Imagery was released for an area of Victoria which covered most of Wallan on April 21. Having just visited the town on a drive a few day before, I thought I would make some improvements, which also involved a few other contributors pitching in too. I have captured a few snapshots of the town as the mapping progressed:
April 21:
How Wallan looked on OSM before NearMap imagery was available
April 22:
First of new roads of old part of town drawn, some newer roads drawn
April 23:
More new roads mapped, Hidden Valley Estate (roads in north east corner of town) getting mapped
April 25:
More of Hidden Valley mapped, new estate next to freeway mapped
April 29:
Town is road complete (excluding street names) for areas with NearMap coverage.
Just thought I would show others worldwide what excellent progress is being made with Australian mapping since NearMap lent it's very kind support.
Discussion
Comment from efred on 29 April 2010 at 12:33
nice job...
but on the "Danaher Avenue" are turning_circles at the corners. I think, this is a mistake, isn't it? http://www.openstreetmap.org/?minlon=144.9755&minlat=-37.406513&maxlon=144.97831&maxlat=-37.40934&box=yes
turning_circles are normaly at a end of an road: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dturning_circle
Comment from melb_guy on 29 April 2010 at 13:53
Nope. Not a mistake. There are 3 turning circles on the actual street itself!
Comment from melb_guy on 29 April 2010 at 13:58
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.408138,144.976525&z=18&t=k&nmd=20100226 if you want to look at the turning circles. Also, expect more updates because new February 26 imagery is available instead of the previous February 3 imagery, so all of Wallan can be mapped now. I'll update soon!
Comment from efred on 29 April 2010 at 14:48
oh, cool... thanks :-)