It has been a productive year for me on osm yet I am still reaching for a more comprehensive map of both Anchorage and greater Alaska.

Mapping Natural Features

This year I continued to map large swathes of natural features in Alaska. It is still very much an open canvas to add features and without even a goal in mind it has been easy and quick to add large areas in small osm breaks throughout the day in 2024. Corollary studies published this year on the prevalence of Alzheimer’s based on occupation points to reduces occurrences with jobs requiring constant active direction finding (ambulance drivers and taxi drivers in particular). It’s been hypothesized this is from activation or stimulation of the hippocampus. That’s something I imagine I can trigger to some degree with mapping that I wouldn’t get from my typical computer work. I feel as though osm is keeping my brain sharp at least.

My First 2025 Goal

And while the blank canvas of Alaska is a very freeing, It can be slightly frustrating that the audience for these remote areas are close to zero. To attract a larger audience, I have a plan for 2025. What really needs doing is the large natural feature additions where they can be viewed at the lower zoom levels. The natural goal for me then is some continuous line that would be interesting to see for viewers of Alaska between zooms around 6 or 7. It would be a thin line, since the distance is vast but the perfect goal would also attract help from other users as well I believe. With these considerations in mind, my goal for 2025 is to create a continuous line of natural features along the famous Alaska Iditarod Dog Sled Race. It garners more international attention then maybe any other Alaska specialty other than salmon. The race is approximately a round 1000 miles (1600 km) which fits within a stretch goal for a year I believe. Since this is still a very large goal, even as a very thin line, I will tip my toe into the community a little more to see where I can pick up edits on this goal from the international community.

My Second 2025 Goal

The overpass turbo API within R is exceptional. The workflow is fast between edits, API call, and resulting table or leaflet map. I am continuing to play with the possibilities of this like I have written before in previous journal entries beyond basic mapping. It scratched my itch for studying infrastructure both locally and far away. Of course, while only the mapped information is accessible, all sorts of informal questions I come up with from reading the news become easy querys. What’s the pipeline infrastructure of the permian basin look like? Where are the military installations within China? These are quick and answerable questions! It’s nuts this isn’t utilized more.

Taking this as my supposition, how then should I focus my attention for 2025 instead of following my curiosity? Not that there’s anything wrong with that though.

Well for this coming year, I think that I would very much like to find the right workflow to making my questions and answers more public. I’m going to make a public website to host these leaflet maps I make for myself with more of the story behind my interests. This could look like showing local combustion car infrastructure across localities (gas stations, dealerships, mechanics, etc.) given the general interest in electric vehicles or something like a regional map satellite Smithsonian museums. I will have to wait to see what moves me (and most importantly, commit to hosting my work outside this journal.

My Third 2025 Goal

2024 has included a full survey of Anchorage places of worship including contact information where I can find it. I have hope in 2025 to fill in the address information and export this information to make a kind of local directory of places of worship in Adobe InDesign with a map to accompany it with indexed locations. If my goal is achieved, I think then it would be a low labor path to produce more directories with local businesses, schools, etc. utilizing the osm database with the overpass api. I haven’t seen anyone else do this to what I would consider a finished product and while the scale of Anchorage is fairly small compared to other large metros, this would be a great way to expand the scope for how osm data could be used.

Happy 2025!