Road Transport Network in the city

Made an attempt to map some of the sidewalks in Kottayam City. Kottayam has a well established Road Transport Network provided by private parties as well as the government, so there is always a good number of vehicles inside the city. Using sidewalks ensure the safety of pedestrians. In a city like Kottayam, some of the major roads do not even have sidewalks. Hence I decided to take a stab at mapping some of the important ones in the city as a first step to provide a pedestrian/wheelchair friendly map for the city.

Mapping Alternatives

I decided to map the sidewalk a separate way next to the road for the sake of simplicity. Would like to know if adding a separate geometry is considered redundant and makes the maintenance more difficult. Is it better to tag Sidewalk as refinement to a highway?

Limitations/ Next steps

Also noticed that the satellite imagery does not display enough details to complete the mapping mostly due to tree cover and other features blocking the view. Will need to personally visit the city with a GPS device and record the details before I can complete the side walk details for the entire city.

Mapping Sidewalks

Area:

The district of Kottayam lies in the South Indian State of Kerala. It is also known as Akshara Nagari or the city of alphabets. Kottayam is well known for its spices production and trading.

Mapping

I attempted to map a canal connecting multiple villages in Kottayam. It passes through the villages of Kidangoor, Kadappoor, Vempalli, Kalikavu and so on. There are lush green fields visible at both sides of the canal in most of the villages it passes through - was able to quickly map them once the canal was marked.

Experience

Though the area covered is quite large, I was able to digitize these features in reasonable time.

Canal and farmlands mapping

The Beginning

I started mapping with OSM on 4th March 2016. I used JOSM and used the Bing imagery to get started. “Interesting” and “Exciting” are the two words that best describe my experience so far.

The best part is that OSM is free and my updates become immediately available for the entire world to use!

The JOSM interface is extremely user-friendly and easy-to-use. I could easily update roads, buildings, offices, religious institutions, paddy fields, water bodies and almost anything that I wanted. Different plugins makes the mapping experience a lot easier.

I started my mapping experiments with my native place (Kottayam, Kerala). I found it really easy and enjoyable since I know the place so well. Seeing the OSM getting populated with the details that I upload has been exciting and truly rewarding.

Digitizing Buildings in JOSM

Mapping Roads