Hey, this is my first post here and I think it would be fitting if I’d tell all of you why I even created an account here and started making my own edits on OSM.

Background

First, you need to know that I’m a student at Westpomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin in department of computer science. That means that me, and 90% of people there are nerds with interests like: trains, transportation, hacking, programming, opensource and… well… maps.

How it started?

It all started during a normal day at University. We were walking from one building on campus to another when I noticed that my friend has a map open with a lot of pins and some questions on his phone. I asked him what it is and he told me about “Street Complete”. That’s it! I already knew that my ADHD butt found a new hyperfocus for the indefinite amount of time. I installed it and 3 of us started adding the detail information on the map around our campus.

Street Complete era

So… for the next few days I had Street Complete open on my phone during every tram ride and every walk. I wanted to fill every question. This took some time, I answered some question around the Poland in Szczecin, Kielce, and recently in Wałcz.

Taste for more

Right now I’m at my family house in a village where most OSM information where updated several years ago. I went on a walk and - as usual - opened Street Complete. It was great until I came by a few buildings that were demolished few years ago, but were never deleted from the map. I knew that I can’t just leave them there and I couldn’t do this from Street Complete. I went back home and booted my laptop. I opened the OSM editor for the first time and started making edits around the village. Adding houses that were build recently, deleting stuff that no longer existed, updating the zones, etc.

… See full entry

My diary entries are all my own thoughts and do not represent OpenStreetMap, The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) or any organisation using the HOT systems. Any errors are all my own work.

Back in January 2025 I found myself mapping a HOT project in Kulob, Tajikstan. I had wanted to find a project to gain some experience of mapping water features and this project fit the bill. In support of a local tuberculosis screening programme, Médecins Sans Frontières required the update or addition of roadways, waterways and residential areas. No buildings. This was not a high priority project, so did not get much interest from the general HOT community. Only 11 mappers, with 3 completing tasks. Local mappers would be updating feature and area names. I mapped about 85% of the project, so I have a little stakeholder interest in the data use.

Around the same time I had started attending the Missing Maps London on-line mapathons early in month and mid-month events. As well as getting mapping advice, this put me in touch with the wider HOT mapping community. It turned out that Jorieke, the Kulob project manager, is a regular of the Missing Maps sessions. Along with several of my HOT on-line mapping colleagues, we met at SOTM Europe in Dundee .

Today Jorieke sent me a link to a podcast interview with one of the MSF doctors using the OSM data in Kulob. We rarely get to know about how our mapping supports end users, you can hear it here and discover other mapping related podcasts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/19/i-cant-think-of-a-place-more-pristine-133000-hectares-of-chilean-patagonia-preserved-after-local-fundraising

Alguien lo está mapeando?

I was visiting Sa Pa, Vietnam, and navigating with Organic Maps. I was looking for a street that would bring me back to the city center. I could not see any on OSM or Google Maps. I walked for a while and was able to see a street that led in the right direction. It turns out that it connected to another street that brought me where I wanted to go. This made me realize how much of the useful information in maps depends on people walking, running, or commuting through those streets. You cannot see these kinds of streets from satellite images. You can only know them, but knowing them, you may not use GPS tracking to record them. I think this leaves only runners and anyone who likes walking to discover most of the streets that are not currently on the map.

Klick hier für Deutsch

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Dear OSM Community

The OSM Apps Catalog presents existing apps based on OSM data.

I have plans to redesign the OSM Apps Catalog. In particular, I want to make the landing page and the detailed view of the apps more accessible to a wider audience.

To understand what this needs, I have created a survey. Please fill it out and share your perspective with me. I would be very grateful if you could forward the survey to people who are not particularly interested in technology. This perspective is especially important to me.

Click here for the survey.

Best regards

Markus aka ToastHawaii

dataset column i: A0025A

rel62578,r2613711,r2613712,r2613713,r2613714,r2613715,r2613716,r2613717,r2613718,r2613719,r2613720,r2613721,r2613722,r2613723,r2613724,r2613725,r2613726,r2613727,r2613728,r2613729,r2613730,r2613731,r2613732,r2613733,r2613734,r2613735,r2613736,r2613737,r2613738,r2613739,r2613740,r2613741,r2613742,r2613743,r2613744,r2613745,r2613746,r2613747,r2613748,r2613749,r2613750,r2613751,r2613752,r2613753,r2613754,r2613755,r2613756,r2613757,r2613758,r2613759,r2613760,r2613761,r2613762,r2613763,r2613764,r2613765,r2613766,r2613767,r2613768,r2613769,r2613770,r2613771,r2613772,r2613773,r2613774,r2613775,r2613776,r2613777,r2613778,r2613779,r2613780,r2613781,r2613782,r2613783,r2613784,r2613785,r2613786,r2613787,r2613788,r2613789,r2613790,r2613791,r2613792,r2613793,r2613794,r2613795,r2613796,r2613797,r2613798,r2613800,r2613801,r2613802,r2613803,r2613804,r2613805,r2776569

[out:xml][timeout:25];{{geocodeArea:Köln}}->.searchArea;rel["admin_level"~"6|9|10"](area.searchArea);out meta;

… See full entry

Panama Canal Authority–Supported Open Data Initiative

Background and Context

The Los Chorros de Ciri basin, located west of Panama City, is a hydrologically and socially important watershed that supports rural communities while contributing to regional water security. In recognition of this dual importance, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) funded a high-resolution mapping project focused on community-oriented outcomes and long-term public benefit.

This project represents a shift away from closed, single-purpose GIS deliverables toward open geospatial data that can support community planning, environmental stewardship, and collaborative mapping initiatives.

Project Objectives

The mapping effort was designed around the following goals:

• Generate high-accuracy base mapping of the Los Chorros de Ciri basin using drone photogrammetry
• Identify and document community presence within the watershed
• Release derived GIS products for public and open-source use

Data Acquisition and Processing

Drone Photogrammetry Surveys

Multiple drone missions were conducted in early September 2025, covering discrete but adjacent blocks within the basin. The surveys achieved consistent, high-resolution coverage suitable for both environmental and community-scale mapping.

Key characteristics of the datasets include:

• Area coverage exceeding 9 square kilometers across all survey blocks
• Ground sampling distance between 4 and 5 centimeters
• Full image reconstruction for all flights
• Dense point clouds exceeding hundreds of millions of points per block

These datasets were processed using WebODM Lightning and generated orthophotos, digital surface models, and digital terrain models suitable for GIS analysis and mapping.

Accuracy and Quality Control

Survey accuracy was evaluated using GPS and 3D error metrics derived during processing. Reported results indicate:

… See full entry

I am proposing a major initiative to “ratify” and enhance the military fortification data on OpenStreetMap. This project actually began with a very specific personal goal: identifying and submitting newly discovered nodes for the UKBOTA (UK Bunkers On The Air) scheme.

UKBOTA is a fantastic amateur radio award program that encourages the “activation” of historical bunkers and pillboxes. While searching for sites to submit to their database, I realized that while many valid sites exist in specialized archaeological records, our coverage on OSM is often incomplete, misplaced, or lacks the specific metadata (like precise coordinates and typology) required for schemes like UKBOTA. This led me to a broader vision: cross-referencing our map with high-quality datasets—specifically the Extended Defence of Britain (eDoB) database.

The Vision

I have been in discussion with Matt Aldred, the lead developer of the eDoB Online viewer, about bridging his extensive research with our global map. The eDoB database is an evolution of the original Defence of Britain project, offering corrected coordinates, Lidar verification, and specific structural classifications.

By aligning these datasets, we don’t just help the radio community; we create a professional-grade, ratified record of these historical assets for everyone. With tens of thousands of potential nodes to process, doing this entirely by hand would be a nightmare. Therefore, I am proposing a structured bulk import and data enrichment project, conducted in full compliance with the OSM Import Guidelines.

Integration with Wikidata

… See full entry

Normal

So it is almost the end of the year, I thought what if I created a summary blog of what I did.

In Hungary: I’m only doing small edits in my neighborhood if some changes happen

Outside of Hungary: Had a small “let’s map Europe” thing, and added forest/farmland land cover/land uses to several countries (Lithuania, Greece, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Austria, Republic of Cyprus) And also mapped in some U.S. states, main focus on West Virginia (finally finished it after almost 5 years of mapping: June 2020 till Feb 2025 - read diary entry here: @ottwiz/diary/406073) and Pennsylvania, where I clean up the huge multipolygon mess after some users not taking enough care broke a huge 1k sq km big multipolygon.

So this led me to start fixing up. Of course my goal is to map the forest cover of Pennsylvania as much as possible but it’s a way harder task than West Virginia was. Quality-wise, I try to make the quality of it better than it was, so more accurate and more aligns to the imagery than it’s just a roughly drawn something. (Of course if the terrain is rough, i compare the imagery with other services’ available for OSM)

Other than that, I mapped other states a bit as well like Washington, Alaska, Virginia, Texas just to name a few, but not all of them.

I wish you all a Mappy New Year! - Ottwiz

随时补充, 同时作为参考.

中国

• 函谷关 (灵宝, 河南)
• 明水古城 (章丘, 山东)
• 淮军公所, 清河道署及周边 (莲池, 河北)
• 冠世榴园 (峄城, 山东)
• 颜神古镇 (博山, 山东)
• 恐龙公园 (诸城, 山东)
• 郭子仪墓 (礼泉, 陕西)
• 松塘村 (南海, 广东)

美国

• FDR 故居 (Hyde Park, NY)
• 玛利诺修会总部 (Ossining, NY)
• 魏尔农场 (Ridgefield, CT)

.

I worked on Norse and Orchard in Golden Colorado. The area could use some mapping love.

Info from:

https://gis.jeffco.us/webmaps/pzpublic/index.html

I am going to make some improvements to the Walla Walla Washington area over the next week. I’ve just found the Rapid editor uses the Microsoft Building Footprint data to suggest features. That’s excellent. Speeds things up significantly.

I worked on Lloy street today in Portage MI. It could use some mapping love. Streets are there but not much else.

Porage GIS: https://mi-portage.civicplus.com/177/GIS-City-Maps

Today while looking at the hand drawn parcel maps that the county provides I learned the creek that runs through my neighborhood has changed it’s name. On the maps it’s called Sulphur Spring Creek. On all the other maps I’ve seen, road signs, and from what we locals call it, it’s just Sulphur Creek. There’s even a nature center / animal rescue that is named for the creek. They don’t use the spring in their name either.

OK… after getting the comment re sulfurous springs, I did some digging. I haven’t found any historic proof of the claim in this article from last year, but …

“Nestled in the Hayward hills, the Sulphur Creek Nature Center is home to dozens of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, including a coyote and a fox. The site straddles a small section of Sulphur Creek, named after the sulphur water bubbling up from nearby springs. In 1970, H.A.R.D. acquired the property, then a wellness retreat, and transformed it into the animal sanctuary it is today.”

The “spring” part of the creek is shown to be at the current location of the nature center. The other creeks that feed into it have been conflated into all being “Sulphur Creek” I suppose.

https://tricityvoice.com/sulphur-creek-nature-center-completes-renovation/

在中国大陆，OSM 要素的缺失是众所周知的事实。然而，具体的缺失程度如何？哪些要素相对完善、哪些要素更加稀少？“一片空白”的区域又主要分布在哪里？当前，社区对此的认识大多是定性的，少有具体的数据支撑。自己动手，丰衣足食。为此，本文旨在尝试构建一种定量化的评价指标，用于界定某个地区的“空白”程度，比较不同类型要素的缺失程度，此即该地区 OSM 要素的完备性。

然而，何为“完备”实际上是非常主观的判断，对于相同的地理区域，不同需求的数据使用者可能会有不同的判断。例如，一个城市的路网和公共交通被绘制得十分详尽，或是植被和用地类型被划分得尤其清晰，就足够“完备”了么？对 POI 有兴趣的数据使用者可能不会这么觉得。然而，调查的进行仍是需要一个标准，哪怕是比较粗略的标准。

思考过后，本文决定将“完备”的定义对象设定在中国大陆具有一定工商业活动和人口聚集规模的最小行政单位——乡、镇和街道等——所应当存在的设施，如道路、学校、医院、建筑等，设定由行政节点和边界、道路交通、公共和商业设施、建筑和土地利用四个维度构成的 OSM 基础要素“完备度”评价指标。这些基础要素既与当地居民的日常生活息息相关，亦与不同绘图者的兴趣有所重合，希望能给各位社区同好寻找补充目标提供小小帮助。

此项工作由个人一时兴起完成，思虑不周之处，还请各位海涵。本文展示的是此项工作的先期结果，涵盖中国大陆 31 个省、市、自治区中的 9 个。后续工作倘若顺利预计会在农历新年前后完成。待全部工作完成以后，本文使用的脚本、示例及数据将会以 GPL-3.0 协议共享于 GitHub，有相关兴趣的读者可以自行取用。报告本身欢迎以 CC BY 4.0 协议转载 。如有不当之处，敬请通过评论和私信指出，我会尽量及时更正。

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2026/01/25 更新：

• 本文的续篇2025 年中国大陆乡镇 OSM 要素完备度分析报告（二）已经发布，本篇中展示的结果已和全国结果同步更新

• 根据评论区和其他群组中的讨论，更新后的结果采纳了部分意见，主要修订了判定行政节点相关的结果，具体参见本篇的章节 2.1

• 本文统计时使用的脚本统计脚本和统计数据已开源于 GitHub，感兴趣的读者可以自行取用，并以 GPL-3.0 协议进行二次开发

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1 统计对象

1.1 乡镇中心

本文的统计对象限于中国大陆各乡级行政区划的行政中心周边区域，而非整个乡级行政区划的下辖范围，其原因是：

1. 乡级行政中心通常集中了整个区划范围内最多的人口和基础设施，应当作为 OSM 要素和公众兴趣点最多的区域
2. 比较未被普遍标注的乡级行政边界，乡级行政中心的位置容易界定，周边区域范围较小，统计难度较低

具体地，考虑中国大陆普通乡镇的规模，本文将周边区域限定在行政中心所在节点的 1 km 和 3 km 之内，前者用于搜寻人口密集区所需要的建筑、居民道路、医院、学校和商店等设施，后者则用于搜寻可能离行政中心更远的政府机关、大型道路和各种用地类型等。对于行政中心所在坐标，根据 中国大陆地区行政区划标注指北 的建议，其在 OSM 应以 place=suburb 或 place=town 标注，因此本文的想法是通过 overpass 接口进行匹配。然而，由于存在 place 节点未被标记，或 name 标签中名称不清晰的情况，完全依赖 OSM 获取乡镇列表及其坐标显然是不合适的。为此，本文将 GitHub 上存档的 2024 年中国全国 5 级行政区划 列表作为参考，使用 overpass 接口尝试匹配 OSM 数据库中相应的节点并从中获取行政中心的位置信息。对于未能匹配到相应节点的乡镇，则由其他地理信息平台（如高德 API）补充其行政中心的位置信息。

在中国大陆，乡级行政区划涵盖街道、镇、乡、民族乡、苏木、民族苏木及县辖区共 8 种类型，但在这 8 种“由民政部门确认的单位”之外，中国大陆还存在数量可观的“类似乡级行政单位”，如开发区、产业园、农场、林场、牧场、兵团等，即俗称的“黑区”。考虑到此类“黑区”的种类较为多样，并不一定满足人类定居点的定义，本文并不将其通常意义上的“乡镇”，在统计时会将其大部排除在外。具体的排除方法则以行政代码为准，即剔除掉列表中乡级行政代码为 400–999 的条目。唯一的例外是占据相当比例，且正在实行“团镇合一”体制的新疆生产建设兵团，其因符合人类定居点的定义而被纳入统计范围中。

… See full entry

Danh Mục Các Đường Dây 500kV Hiện Hữu

1. Đường dây 500kV Bắc-Nam mạch 1

Chiều dài: 1.487 km

3.437 trụ tháp sắt

Từ: trạm biến áp 500kV Hòa Bình

Đến: trạm biến áp 500kV Phú Lâm

Khởi công: 5/4/1992

Đóng điện: 27/5/1994

Công suất truyền tải thiết kế: 600 – 800 MW

Sản lượng điện truyền tải hàng năm: ≈ 2.000 GWh

Tổng mức đầu tư: 5.488,39 tỷ đồng (~ 544 triệu USD)

2. Đường dây 500kV Bắc-Nam mạch 2

Chiều dài 1.596,3 km

4 dự án độc lập: Pleiku - Phú Lâm, Pleiku - Dốc Sỏi - Đà Nẵng, Đà Nẵng - Hà Tĩnh và Hà Tĩnh - Nho Quan - Thường Tín.

Khởi công: Đầu năm 2002

Đóng điện: 19/4/2004, 30/8/2004, 23/5/2004 và 23/9/2005

Công suất truyền tải thiết kế: 1.300 – 1.500 MW

Tổng mức đầu tư: 7.510 tỷ đồng (~ 476,7 triệu USD)

The Belgian OSM community is importing buildings from governmental data into OSM for some years now. In December I was supposed to present a analysis about this process regarding the import of buildings data from the PICC, the source of data for the Walloon region.

Unfortunately I got sick and I could not present. Anyway, here are some key numbers about this process not only for Wallonia but for Belgium.

The big picture

In Belgium, there are 3 different sources of government data for buildings, each one for the 3 regions of Belgium: Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels. All these sources are integrated in what we call the “building import tool”: the web application buildings.osm.be. People who want to use this tool are encouraged to learn about the import process and to conflate (merge) with existing buildings. In many places indeed, there are already buildings in OSM and integration of every single imported building with existing ones is the preferred way, rather than “delete and replace”. We also ask to not blindly trust official data and to always look if current data in OSM does not bring interesting added value in terms of accuracy and/or local knowledge. After all, it is one of the key force of OpenStreetMap.

What are the lessons

Having imported thousands of buildings myself in the past 3 years using this tool, I found some weird situations in the government data: oddities in house numbering, strange shapes of buildings compared to aerial imagery, etc. Honestly, these are very rare situations, but still it might be interesting to report it to the administration. What is more frequent are update of buildings compared to official data: during the import, by comparing with the aerial imagery or local knowledge, one can find some new buildings, or demolished ones, or some changes in the building outline.

For other opinions, see this thread: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/feedback-about-the-buildings-import-process-for-the-picc/138241

… See full entry

In regards that the tool https://wiki.openstreetmap.orgdata.link works best with smaller administerey areas I will break it down on the municipality level(Kommun in Swedish) we have 290 in Sweden.

Goal:

To be served a table which have the following data:

municipality(kommun)	Amount of linked lakes	Total amount of lakes	Precentage
Total amount of municipality(kommun)	Total amount of linked lakes	Total amount of lakes	Total Precentage

Main category of all lakes in Sweden on sv.wikipedia.org:

• Kategori:Insjöar i Sverige

The catgory I will use to get total amount of lakes in each municipality(kommun)

Kategori:Insjöar i Sverige efter kommun

Approach

I will then query each municipality(kommun) using Sophox in the SPARQL language on each municipality(kommun) (by name). I will then get a list of QID of all the wikidata lakes that I then can use to ask Sophox if any element has that wikidata QID. If anyone has that

Acknowledged drawbacks/limitations of this strategy:

1. This database query will not detect cases which multiple elements in OSM has the same QID. The tool https://wiki.openstreetmap.orgdata.link will make you aware of this but not i a table which can give you an overview. For that it is best to update the code at that project, see issue #680 I created in it´s repostory.

Where does the data off the lakes come from in wikidata?

They are inported some time the last 10 years from the national database of lakes and bodies of water called VISS Bots created the articles on Swedish wikipedia from this database and this is the reason we now can link the data from OSM to the wikipedia articles through the wikidata QID on the water=lake polygons(enclosed ways/areas and multipolygons).

Why didn´t I just use the Overpass Turbo API?

… See full entry