La belleza de lo vulnerable:

San Francisco Libre

Estar despierto y ser tomado, como mano altanera agitando el tormento; en mi voz un lamento, en tu cuerpo un volcán.

Capítulo I: Introducción

Reconozco que los grandes paisajes verdes o el bloque de edificios imponentes captan la atención inmediata para bien o para mal, pero ¿Qué hay de una zona llena de cicatrices que nunca sanaron? ¿De un lugar que parece haber quedado abandonado?

Las regiones vulnerables (por lo menos en mi país) suelen ser "maquilladas" no mejoradas. Únicamente cuentan con un arremedo de solución que no es más que un engaño, que muestra su verdad en un corto plazo. Pero hay un encanto de esperanza en estos sitios, a veces la población se resigna a vivir en estas condiciones pero siempre pensando en la imagen utópica de su lugar (...) y sobre esto he querido empezar este diario. Un viaje por el encantador en riesgo.

En esta ocasión elegí a la Ciudad de San Francisco Libre, municipio de Managua. Una ciudad que por su alta concentración de energía geotérmica y el impetuoso riesgo de inundación por las crecidas del lago Xolotlán en invierno, JAMÁS debió ser emplazada en esta zona.

-Garcinette-

This is a YouTube video uploaded on 7 Aug 2014 by ScoutbyTeleNav, and celebrates 10 years of OSM existence at that time, giving a visual demonstration of the month-by-month build of OSM by all it’s contributors. This video makes me proud to have added a little to OSM, even though for me that did not start until after this video was made.

And yes, I know that this is a bit old but watch it anyway, and I think that you will agree that it is an excellent video, worth watching. The music (also excellent) is Open Electro by Vincent Girès from the album Silence.

10 years of OSM: youtu.be/7sC83j6vzjo

PS
OSM Founder Steve Coast is the Head of OSM at Telenav

At the end of 2017 I was the biggest Mapillary contributor in Ireland, without really trying too hard and just using a front facing Samsung camera in my car and short diversions on the commute to and from work.

At some point around March 2018 my good buddy and OSM Ireland contributor Dave jumped ahead by about ten thousand images. I made a solemn (ahem... competitive, but sporting) promise/threat to get working on closing the Mapillary gap from me to him. I know, this sounds like General Buck Turgidson from the movie Dr. Strangelove....

I could see that other Mapillary users get more images out of a trip than me, so I set the phones to distance capture at 3m. Distance capture of course needs to be reviewed before being uploaded. Thinking about what I had learned about using Mapillary in Lesotho (mainly that you may not pass this way again) I decided to collect together my phone, the spare phone and the older android phones laying around the house and press them into service, pointing in various angles, which is another lesson from trying to map. A front facing camera on a road where there is a road clearance is next to useless unless all you want is road-signs.

After ransacking the house that gave me four working phones, so I needed to go to adverts.ie and I was pleasantly surprised that if you bargain you can easily get a reasonable second hand mobile phone for 15-20 euro (obviously caveat emptor). I bought two of these. I then went down to the discount shop and bought two cheap charging cables of 2m length for that they can reach from the cigarette lighter to any window in the car. I also realised that my emergency car starter has a USB port and two 12v cigarette lighter type ports, so without any additional purchase I also have a way to charge up three phones that have a depleted battery off an independent cell and without running the engine of the car.

I then deployed five of the window cups supplied by Mapillary and set off. I have to say this didn't last long, and in my opinion didn't constitute safe driving. So I figured out that taking another mapillary user to make sure that the phones were all capturing and set correctly is the only advantage here. I have been lucky enough to involve Tshedy and Fifi in several of the longer and more detailed trips.

I find the android Mapillary app sometimes has issues, two of my phones have effects where the captured images don't delete and then the capture randomly stops, sometimes crashing the app and sometimes not. I know this is a work in progress and will improve so that it can be more reliably deployed across a range of different devices. I had issues last year where a new phone basically didn't capture the exifs containing the co-ordinates and this was a big loss. The other thing is the more I use it the more work-arounds I figure out.

Now I am back on top, having recently passed the half million images mark (see below). All the way through this I have to remain focussed on the value that a street level image is to a mapper in terms of applying the correct tags to what's on the ground, be that a building, street furniture or a natural feature. Being top is only a temporary thing, there have got to be more clever solutions to the challenges I have overcome, and when that rocks in I will hand over the crown.

I sometimes have 3 but other times 7 angles on my trips. As a parting nugget of wisdom I have also realised a blurred image is better than no image if you are a mapper. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Ireland is a very small community when it comes to mapping and Mapillary. The way I look at it images taken now should be of ongoing value to mappers for the next few years, as Ireland doesn't have the urban areas and built environment mapped in detail yet on osm.

We have very bad weather here, which would mean at least 6 months of the year give the only option to be armchair mapping. When the sun comes out it is great to get out and about and capture it for others to enjoy, and map.

It been a year almost 6 months since You passed and I had gotten a little easier but I miss you a lot more I love you and I more lonely now than I have ever been in my life. I’m lost without you and I don’t have the energy or will to keep pushing through my meaningless life.

A Monterosi, come in molti altri paesi del Viterbese, tutte le tradizionali fontanelle pubbliche sono state chiuse o rimosse perché nell'acqua delle sorgenti che le alimentano ci sono tracce di elementi, come l'arsenico, al di sopra dei limiti consentiti. In alternativa, sono stati installati dei distributori di acqua potabile purificata e refrigerata, naturale o frizzante. Il distributore funziona con monete (0,05 Euro per ogni 1,5 litri di acqua) oppure con chiavetta ricaricabile. Quando vado in bicicletta da quelle parti ora porto sempre con me qualche monetina, in modo da poter riempire le borracce in caso di bisogno. Ho visto che a Monterosi il distributore non era riportato sulla mappa quindi ho pensato di fare una cosa utile per i ciclisti e i camminatori della Via Francigena aggiungendo questa informazione.

En los últimos años he visto como la cartografía se ha vuelta una palabra de la que muchas personas hablan y su importancia ha empezado a resaltar en muchos procesos sociales, en general los mapas son y han sido de vital importancia para el desarrollo de las sociedades. Hasta el dia de hoy entendiendo esta importancia junto con la comunidad de OpenStreetMap Colombia hemos estado creando el mapa del país para atender emergencias como lo que paso en Salgar en 2015 o lo que pasó en Mocoa en 2017, los mapas para la gestión del riesgo son algo fundamental y es por eso que en Mayo de 2018 emprendimos la tarea de hacer el mapa de todo al Bajo Cauca Antioqueño, Bolivar y parte del Cesar, departamentos por los que transcurre el Río Cauca y que hoy algunos de sus municipios se encuentran en riesgo debido a algunas fallas en la construcción el embalse conocido como HidroItuango.

Para este proceso empezamos con la creación de la tarea 108 en el servidor de tareas de OSM Colombia esta tarea tiene como objetivo principal poner en el mapa las viviendas o edificaciones al rededor de las riveras del Río Cauca, es una tarea muy extensa ya que empezamos en la zona de construcción del embalse HidroItuango y vamos hasta la zona conocida como la mojana que son todas áreas de influencia del Río y que pueden están siendo afectadas por el crecimiento del Río y que pueden ser mucho mas afectadas en caso de una posible falla de toda la presa. Hacer este mapa puede ayudar a las entidades a entender un poco más el territorio y quizás medir la cantidad de personas que pueden ser afectadas por el crecimiento del Río.

Durante el proceso y como hemos evidenciado a lo largo del territorio Colombiano, nos hace falta información cartográfica de calidad que podamos usar para múltiples propósitos, desde la gestión del riesgo, la planeación, la defensa del territorio por parte de las comunidades, la creación de aplicaciones o diferentes usos comerciales, etc. Pensando en esto aprovechamos la coyuntura para gestionar la creación de tres tareas de Mapeo en la aplicación MapSwipe del proyecto MissingMaps en estas tareas se pueden involucrar todo tipo de personas sin necesidad de tener experiencia en la creación de mapas con OpenStreetMap, el proceso es muy simple solo tienes que instalar la aplicación en tu celular, funciona en Android e Iphone, luego ingresar con usuario (Registrarse), el correo electrónico y la contraseña, ubicar las tareas de #Hidroituango y comenzar a mapear, el reto es ubicar pequeños cuadrados en zonas amplias que corresponden a edificaciones. Mas o menos el proceso es el siguiente: 1. Presionar para seleccionar 2. Deslizar para avanzar 3. Presionar el recuadro para aumentar.

Con estas tareas tendremos información un poco mas precisa de las zonas en donde hay edificaciones y poder luego ponerlas en el mapa por medio de nuestro servidor de tareas, de esta forma podremos hacer el mapa de todos los municipios del Bajo Cauca y mejoraremos el mapa de Colombia.

We're very proud to announce that JOSM 13791 is now available in Korean!

Want to help to translate your favorite editor into your native language? The procedure is explained here and the translation is done on Launchpad.

Thanks a lot to everyone contributing to the JOSM translations!

I'm continuing to add accumulated institutional knowledge and references to source materials on Turkmenistan and so far two of its cities in the wiki, Ashgabat and Mary. If anyone has thoughts on what more needs to be added, I will welcome suggestions. Time permitting I will add the other provincial capitals (Balkanabat, Dashoguz, Annau, Turkmenabat) in the coming weeks.

The upload of Mapillary imagery from Balkan welayat continues--down to about 1,800 images out of the 31,000 collected. Most are boring shots of the M37 highway or other major roads, good for mapping but otherwise not terribly interesting. I'll look through them for shots of camels on the highway and other items of interest.

I also shot Mapillary images of the busts of Turkmen literary and musical notables in Ylham Park. You may see the busts here and here. These are all now mapped in OSM for use by tourists and others.

Nombre de la Plaza de Toros de Córdoba "Los Califas".

Parada Oficial de Taxi. Zoco.

Ubicación Restaurante MacDonald en el C.C Zoco.

Centro Comercial Zoco. La leyenda en el mapa o Rótulo "Plaza de los Califas" es errónea. Corresponde al edificio Centro Comercial Zoco. La Plaza de los Califas, es el espacio abierto de esparcimiento y ocio que está delante y con orientación al Sur, de la fachada de acceso principal a dicho Centro Comercial.

Instituto de Educación Secundaria Zoco. Puerta de acceso principal al edificio por Calle José María Martorell, s/n. Esquina Juan Molina

Comprendida y delimitada la Calle Manuel Cano "El Pireo" por las calle José María Martorell y la calle Manuel Fuentes "Bocanegra". Tiene números impares solo son 1, 3 y 5. Van en sentido creciente dicha numeración desde José María Martorell hacía la calle Manuel Fuentes Bocanegra. Esta calle tiene circulación de tráfico en ambos sentidos. Habría que corregir el sentido de dirección del tráfico actual por la calle José María Martorell, está calle tiene sentido de tráfico desde Avenida Manolete hacía Avenida del Aeropuerto. Así mismo, la dirección del tráfico va en una sola dirección desde Avenida Guerrita hacía la Avenida Manolete. Estando actualmente erroneos dichas direcciones en Open Street Map.

Bylo by dobré v aplikaci, aby bylo mozne rozlišit nakladni dopravu do 3,5t a nad 3,5t. Někdy jezdim dodavkou do 3,5t. Pak by bylo dobré, aby třeba aplikace mohla bez připojeni k internetu sbírat data o mé cestě (trase) a poté údaje vložit do map. Jsou cesty, které v mapách nejsou. A tím by se nemuseli zadávat ručně, nebo zakreslovat. Až bych se připojil k internetu, tsk by se do navigace pro ostatni automaticky přidalo.

Warning: this post contains irony that might not be immediately obvious to all readers.

So you are an OpenStreetMap mapper and consider the task of the mapper to be to draw the map. All this talk of a generic geo-database and we don't map for the renderer sounds like esotheric nonsense to you. OpenStreetMap is a map. Mappers create this map. Period.

But map style designers make life really difficult since your mapping work is interpreted in a way that makes it hard to properly draw things on the map.

This in particular applies to labels. Sometimes you just need to draw a label somewhere. Here you learn how you can do this without also having other stuff show up in the map that you don't want.

The classic method to do this is using place=locality. This is really nice because place=locality just means an unpopulated place with a name but no other verifiable properties. This means it cannot be easily falsified without local knowledge meaning it is fairly unlikely that another mapper will come along and remove your label because it does not actually describe something verifiable on the ground.

The big disadvantage of place=locality is that it is not rendered before zoom level 15 and you have no way to influence the label design.

A much more powerful tool for label placement is place=island. Large polygons tagged place=island are drawn with a label (and only with a label) starting at zoom level 4 already and the label size depends on the size of the polygon. This mean you can use this to place a label anywhere on the map in a wide range of sizes just by drawing a suitably placed and sized polygon and tagging it place=island + name=whatever.

neutral labels from z4 upwards

The big disadvantage is that this is very easy to falsify. What an island is is very well defined. Using this tag for other things will, in particular if the feature is large and prominent, quickly be reverted as vandalism.

The next method for placing labels is to use shop=mall which creates red labels starting at zoom level 10. This has more or less the same disadvantage as place=island - if it is used on things that are not actually malls this can easily be seen on high resolution images - outside of settlements it is often obvious without consulting images at all.

A bit less of this problem comes with tourism=attraction, likewise starting at zoom level 10 but with a different styling and in dark magenta. Meant as a secondary tag to indicate something is of touristic significance (which in itself is obviously difficult to falsify) it is rendered as a primary tag independent of the type of feature it is applied to. It is therefore much more popular than shop=mall for labeling - despite the duller color (see here, here, here and here for examples).

colorful labels from z10 upwards with shop=mall and tourism=attraction

And finally since recently we also have a way of generating blue labels without at the same time generating other visual clutter. This is completely unrestricted in terms of zoom level (i.e. you can even place a label on zoom level 0 if you want to).

To do so you once again need a polygon (a closed way or a multipolygon relation) and tag it natural=bay + name=whatever. This is easy to falsify if the polygon extents over land but it is just about as hard to falsify as place=locality for polygons over water and does not have the zoom level and size restrictions of that.

...and the easiest way to spam OSM so far

And in case you are hesitant to use this because verifiability of mapping might seem not such a bad idea in the end - don't be afraid, you are not alone. Here a few examples:

• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/380398915
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/548210592
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/338983423
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7827644
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/49257289
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7826226
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/298997032
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/544856564

Some prefer to use natural=water to natural=bay - this has the disadvantage of being rendered with a solid color fill, which of course does not matter much if you use it only over water - at least in the standard style. And it is not rendered before z5. But it has been possible to use that for much longer for label placement over water so it is quite popular as well:

• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/559890032
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/561633601

As a data user i can just sigh and contemplate on how to reliably normalize these free style drawings into properly placed nodes which then can hopefully be used to interpret the data with the help of verifiable geometries like the coastlines. This would be funny in its irony if it wasn't so sad because of the work hours wasted in mapping and data maintenance for nothing.

Rendering non-default language in OSM-Carto standard map

Introduction

OpenStreetMap's standard map rendered in OSMCarto style use only the name tag, for good reasons but what happens when you want to create raster maps in a language of your choice? How do we use the name:xx tags?

Problem

India's map is in English but it officially recognizes 22 languages for its culturally and lingually diverse states including English, Tamil, Malayalam etc.

How do I render OSM Standard map in my mother tongue - Tamil?

Apparently it is just an if statement of three lines in the right place.

Solution

The only hack AFAIK is to change the name tag before data is dumped into postgresql, to do that we need to sideload a lua script to osm2pgsql during the dump using the --tag-transform-script parameters, documentation for it is available here.

The documentation states that the following three methods should be implemented in the tag transformation lua script to filter out specific information from the source .pbf or .osm.xml

• filter_tags_node
• filter_tags_way
• filter_basic_tags_rel

These are the three functions osm2pgsql calls on every tag it adds to the Postgresql database, therefore we would have to implement the same functions in our script.

function filter_tags_node(tags, num_tags)
   if tags["name:ta"] then
    tags["name"] = tags["name:ta"]
   end
return 1, tags
end

So we are checking if the current node has the tag name:ta and if it does, we are replacing its name tag with the Tamil name.

We have to repeat this with the other two functions to change everything into Tamil or language of your choice.

This makes sure that the default name for all data in the rendering database is in Tamil if available.

Making it actually work

This alone isn't enough to render the OSM standard tiles in Tamil. As mentioned in switch2osm we already use openstreetmap-carto's lua script to filter out tags.

osm2pgsql -d gis --create --slim -G --hstore --tag-transform-script ~/src/openstreetmap-carto/openstreetmap-carto.lua -C 2500 --number-processes 1 -S ~/src/openstreetmap-carto/openstreetmap-carto.style ~/data/tamil_nadu-latest.osm.pbf

Therefore, it would be better at add our code to openstreetmap-carto.lua, something like

function filter_tags_node (keyvalues, numberofkeys)
  if keyvalues["name:ta"] then
    keyvalues["name"] = keyvalues["name:ta"]
  end
  return filter_tags_generic(keyvalues)
end

Remember to repeat for all three methods mentioned in the earlier section.

Resources

Following the steps on switch2osm was enough to create a rendering setup.

https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04-lts/

I found state wise .pbf extracts for India on OSM-fr

http://download.openstreetmap.fr/extracts/asia/india/

mod_tile renders new tiles only when it is requested, therefore if you want to prerender all tiles, this can be helpful, though selective rendering has been a hit or miss for me.

http://www.volkerschatz.com/net/osm/offlineosm.html

More images can be found here https://imgur.com/gallery/MZmiKsP

In der Adresserfassung entstandene Duplikate und Redundanzadressen findet man mit folgender OverPassTurbo Abfrage. http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/yWn

// Die Query findet Mehrfacheinträge von Hausnummern, berücksichtig addr:street, addr:place auf way's und Nodes. Mehrfach eingetragenes Gewerbe wird über eine Namensabfrage ebenfalls angezeigt. Bitte zur Vermeidung unnötiger Serverbelastung, den zu prüfenden Kartenausschnitt manuell festlegen, oder das Fenster nicht zu groß wählen.

Gefundene Duplikate auf Nebengebäuden können wir sofort entfernen. Wurde hingegen eine Nachbaradresse versehentlich als Duplikat gemappt, so setzt man anschließend dort eine Note dass diese Adresse fehlt. Noch besser man versucht die entdeckte Adresslücke sofort wieder mit der korrekten Adresse zu schließen.

Der OverpassTurbo Code kann übrigens auch direkt im Editor JOSM angewandt werden. (code Text ohne Tilen ~~~ in JOSM einfügen)

~~~ // Abfrage doppelter Hausnummern. Nodes und Gebäudepolygone ohne Adressen mit Namen oder Gewerbe. (addr:Place und addr: street wird berücksichtigt). Bitte zur Vermeidung unnötiger Serverbelastung, jeweils einen Kartenausschnitt manuell festlegen, oder das Fenster nicht zu groß wählen.

[bbox:{{bbox}}]; nwr["addr:city"]["addr:housenumber"]; for(t["addr:city"] + " " + t["addr:street"] + " " + t["addr:unit"] + " " + t["addr:flats"] + " " + t["addr:place"]+ " " + t["shop"] + " " + t["addr:housenumber"] + " " + t["name"]+ " " + t["amenity"]+ " " + t["shop"]) { if (count(nodes) + count(ways) + count(relations) > 1) { (._;>;); out meta;/fixed by auto repair/ } }; ~~~

All Mapbox users, using an access token from their own account, are allowed to create derivatives from Mapbox Satellite for contribution to OpenStreetMap via manual or automated processes for free.

Guidelines

• All extractions must be non-commerical or OSM-improving. Examples:
  • an academic researcher could use the imagery for a non-OSM use
  • a company or individual could use the imagery for adding to OSM
• All use of this service is subject to the Mapbox TOS, with a link to our TOS.
• If you have another purpose for your extractions, get in touch with us via sales@mapbox.com.
• You’ll need to have a Mapbox account and to use a token from your Mapbox account for all your ML requests. This will help us interpret any traffic issues and communicate with you if they come up.
• Safe rate limit for downloading satellite tiles is 100 request per second. If you want to exceed that rate, please reach out to community@mapbox.com .

Whether powered by machine learning or not, we’d love to hear about your imagery use cases. And as always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us!

I have geolocated and mapped all Russian Orthodox Churches cited on the website www.pravoslavie.tm/prikhody. Some were already mapped, but not all. This has involved in a few cases driving to the cities in question, asking locals where the church is located, and driving to it to mark it. In other cases it has involved querying locals as to the location and having them point it out in Digital Globe imagery for me. That last one we found was the Church of the Apostle Thomas in Tejen, which someone had mistagged as a mosque. Many thanks to all who helped!

This week I traveled to Mary and collected a few thousand Mapillary images along the M37, which are in the process of being uploaded. I identified some more POIs plus have updated some obsolete street names. There are three major hotels in Mary (Mary, Margush, and Yrsgal), and all three are now well marked in OSM for the convenience of travelers. There is also a new supermarket, Belent, and it is marked now as well. That's not to mention the out-of-the-way Gas Station 19 on a rural road that we stumbled across!