OpenStreetMap
The local Missing Maps organisers are keeping up the pace with the mapathons happening in Edinburgh every couple of weeks at the moment.
This time the word got out to the OSM community with plenty of notice, and the mapathon was duly mobbed by the Usual Suspects. I enjoy the pub meets as much as some, so it was a good chance to catch up with chrisfl, drnoble, fozy81 and eisa, while stevefaeembra was busily OCD mapping up a storm again, and we even flushed out Bob Kerr from his OSM semi-retirement, full of curiosity and helpfulness as ever.
This was my first attempt to ever use the HOT tasking manager in anger and I remain unconvinced about the validity of the task. The interpretation of aerial imagery remains delicate and uncertain, and the currency of date in the imagery is unknowable. How useful this is to displaced communities seeking shelter, who can tell? Are tracks to farm buildings really missing on the map? Is tagging for the renderer appropriate at the level of detail where a road may be a service road, residential, or a track, according to the iD pre-sets?
Meanwhile, many of the tasks marked as open seem almost complete; as a casual mapper, not familiar with the HOT standards of quality, i would have a hard time marking most squares as “Done” and it appears others have similar existential problems. One wants to create useful work, not busywork, for those validating the maps on the ground. As I’m mildly stricken with a cold and indulging in a “duvet day” today, I may keep going with some of the random tasks on the grid.
I’m partially converted to the iD editor, though the usual gripes came up in the general discussion - it remains far too easy for a new user to start deleting objects without an explicit check or warning or an obvious means of rowing back. We hear that RichardF has a relevant patch in, and deserves cake, let’s hope it gets accepted and released soon.
Thanks again to the redoubtable Margaux Meslé for so much organising and communications work, and for really making extra effort this time to reach out to the local OSM mapper community, it can only be of benefit to all, and i look forward to future mapathons.
Discussion
Comment from malenki on 25 February 2015 at 21:34
For armchair mapping:
I am convinced that mapping from remote is useful and that a lot of persons with good common knowledge can do it with good results after a basic explanation with some examples with hopefully some on-the-ground photos.
For example one could explain: Big highways (primary or trunk) connect big cities, smaller highways (secondary, tertiary) connect smaller ones and between a lot of residential houses highway=residential is mostly appropriate. It doesn’t matter if the surface is paved or not.
Even if the imagery is quite old it is unlikely that (major) highways disappear or inhabited places vanish completely.
Not sure what task(s) you worked at, but for example in ebola regions the organisations first hand needed to know where the people lived and how to get there. If you map all the houses (or the residential area) and the ways connecting them better guesses or even calculations can be made. It doesn’t matter if you overlooked a dozen houses in a town or accidentially chose the wrong category of highway – the settlement and the street is there and thanks to you the people can be helped.