OpenStreetMap

Cemeteries in Texas MapRoulette Challenge now powered by Texas Imagery Service

Posted by mvexel on 20 October 2016 in English. Last updated on 21 October 2016.

Important note: The imagery I use as an example below is different in source from the imagery used for the MapRoulette imagery. The example below shows imagery that was commissioned by Texas itself, and is available in the public domain. The imagery in the MapRoulette challenge is licensed from Google by Texas and made available to MapRoulette specifically. So I can’t say positively that it’s OK to add this imagery to JOSM or iD, and removed specific instructions to do so.

Have you tried the Texas Cemetery challenge in MapRoulette? If you have not heard about it yet, I posted about it on my diary a few weeks ago. The short version: the friendly folks at TxDOT supplied me with a database of their known cemetery locations, we matched them with existing OSM, and if there was no match, we ask you to map it :)

If you tried it, you may have found though that it can be a bit frustrating :( Bing and Mapbox aerial imagery is often just not detailed enough to see if there is a cemetery or not in the location indicated. I discussed this problem with the friendly folks over at TxDOT, who are very excited about getting more data into OSM. They told me about some of the high resolution imagery that is available to the public through TNRIS, the Texas Natural Resources Information System. Here is an example of some of the amazing data they have:

example

If you compare that with Bing, it means the difference between seeing a vague blur or seeing the presence of a cemetery very clearly! Super exciting stuff. So we set out to create a TMS endpoint that we plugged into MapRoulette. See the difference!

difference

Go give it another try! Thank you and thanks TxDOT!

Discussion

Comment from ToeBee on 20 October 2016 at 22:38

Can this imagery be used for general editing as well or is there an agreement to only use it for this challenge? You could get it added to the editor imagery indexes so it shows up as an option automatically whenever users are editing in Texas.

Comment from skquinn on 20 October 2016 at 22:53

Nice work! This will come in handy fixing certain areas of Houston where the Bing and NAIP imagery are both lacking.

Comment from GOwin on 21 October 2016 at 01:44

Wow! Those are really nice imageries.

Comment from kresp0 on 21 October 2016 at 07:16

Tried the challenge and created a cemetery, but I’ve used landuse=cemetery instead of amenity=grave_yard, is it correct?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/448768969

Comment from GOwin on 21 October 2016 at 07:25

@kresp0, as long as they’re outside a church yard, their cemeteries. Otherwise, they’re graveyards.

Comment from skorasaurus on 21 October 2016 at 13:34

ToeBee,

The imagery seems to be Public Domain - https://tnris.org/data-catalog/entry/stratmap-smith-2016-6in-nc-cir/

Thanks for coordinating this M, this imagery is sharp!

Comment from mvexel on 21 October 2016 at 14:41

The imagery I used as an example is different in source from the imagery used for the MapRoulette imagery. The example here was commissioned by Texas itself, and is indeed in PD. The imagery in the MapRoulette challenge is licensed from Google by Texas and made available to MapRoulette specifically. So I can’t say positively that it’s OK to add this imagery to JOSM or iD, and removed specific instructions to do so.

I will add a note to the body of the blog post to this effect. I will see if I can clear up the legal status of OSM use of this imagery asap.

Comment from BladeTC on 22 October 2016 at 02:51

Ok, I did some! Some of them are hard to find….

Comment from mvexel on 24 October 2016 at 15:54

BladeTC I agree! Perhaps this challenge should be marked as ‘hard’.

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