GSoC 2019 Project

Hello again OSM community! This summer, I will once again be working on a GSoC project to improve the iD editor. This time, my goal is to improve the link between HOTOSM’s Tasking Manager and the iD editor. The Tasking Manager is an incredibly valuable management tool that helps target mapping and gives new users guidance. However, the Tasking Manager has a weak connection with it’s primary OSM editor, iD. Starting an edit changes some settings on the Tasking Manager side, such as locking a task. A user is then sent to the iD editor who makes edits normally, guided by a task bounding box. Beyond this, there is little integration. A user cannot see details of the task, lock, or unlock a task without switching back to the Tasking Manager webpage.

About the project

Members in both the OSM and HOT community want a tighter integration. My approach is to start simple and make sure that details of an active task are sent to the iD editor. This will allow a user to see a description of the task, lock and unlock the task, and comment on the task. One possible UI for an active task can be seen on HOTOSM’s mapping flow mock-up, and development discussion will be in this iD issue.

The next major step will be to suggest projects to work on. Much like HOTOSM’s Tasking Manager project grid view, iD will support a list of filterable projects. Throughout this process, I will be posting updates of my progress and reaching out the community for feedback. Time to get to work!

About me

I am a PhD student in the UCSB Geography department studying geographic information retrieval (GIR) and geographic relevance (GR). After my studies, I hope to apply my experience of cognitive-driven GIR to help improve geographic search tools and geospatial information processing pipelines.