Weekly Reflection of my HOT DQI 2021

Hello everyone! This is my first OSM Diary. All the views and opinions are my own. I have summarized every week of my HOT DQI 2021 and added here. Hope you will like my experience and learnings. Happy reading! Any comments, suggestions and feedbacks are highly appreciated.

September

Week 1 Reflection (2021-09-06 to 10)

It was wonderful feeling to finally start this amazing internship journey from diverse community across the globe. The official kickoff of this internship was done by Sam and Becky. Later, on the same day the training on Introduction to OSM and Id editor were carried out by Mikko and Sam. This week we also learned basics of JOSM editor from Becky. Other comms orientations and contracts works were signed this week. We started mapping using ideditor this week. After years of working on JOSM, I felt a difficult start to get my hands on id editor again. This week was full of excitement rather than learning for me personally.

Week 2 Reflection (2021-09-13 to 17)

Week 2 where the main training was advanced josm training which i was eagerly waiting for. I learned so many things about filter, multi-polygon and conflict resolution in this week.Besides, i explored osm plugins and installed few of them as well and find them really useful. Now i knew why josm is called powerful editing software. The training on Importance of data quality on humanitarian mapping session 1 & 2 was so informative. I learned so many things from experts.One of the effective way to retain mappers or even validators is to give them appreciation and opportunity for their work. Validators need to give feedback to every mappers because once we were all beginner. Project creator must add proper sets of instructions and imagery while creating project. Those were some gist that i learned from training on importance of data quality. Besides, on osm tips, tricks and challenges i learned so many things by playing game with all. Some of the keypoints and tips that i noted were proper structered osm community is needed, inclusivity is required, national security and border data issues needs to be handled with utmost care, distribute responsibilty and make them feel wanted to all mappers and validators and localising the maps. These were keypoints that i noted and were truly remarkable. And in week 2, i learned some part of validating as well. I mapped paths most of the time in this week. Till now my intern journey is going great anad i want to thank HOT, specially Becky and Sam for being so friendly and available when needed.

Week 3 Reflection (2021-09-20)

In week 3, we had JOSM validator training where i learned so many things about map paint styles and plugins that i had to learn during validation. On the second day, i got mentioned in so many tiles that i had validated the day before because there were so many fixme=* tag that i had not noticed and on the same day i revalidated those all tasks and aligned them to map building footprint as well where necessary. The meeting with HOT Executive director made me realize and learn so many things. He said” Its not just Data quality intern but its data quality for greater impact” which made me think for a moment. He mentioned about Nepal and felt thankful for it. I asked Sam regarding the imagery, regarding the photo comment which he described so passionately that i learned it real quick. Besides the other best part of this week was coffee chat with Pascalina and HOT Interns and staffs party. With pascalina, we talked about different culture, drone piloting, festivals, busy time schedule etc and in HOT party we played game and had fun. It felt really glad to see all those faces of HOT staff which i had just heard name. And the problem that i had during this week was, i had contributed so much on validating but my time on tasking manager doesn’t get updated daily. During 7 days it just get updated once. Many beginner mapper here in our community also ask me same problem but i had no answer for the reason behind it.But later got to know from the tech team that time on tasking manager only represent for mapping not for validating. In a gist, this week was a complete package of learning, fun and contributing.Thank you!

Week 4 Reflection (2021-09-27)

This week’s training was a bit different as we learned something different like Keep right, Osmose and OSM inspector. I find these tools equally useful as difficult to use and be handy with these tools. I hardly understand the training until i watched it again and again. And i think because of my poor English, i make simple questions complicated while asking. Aplogies for that! Validated all days of the week. Knew the topography of Zambia well. Had to stretch eye to see if there are missing buildings or unmapped buildings due to presence of more grassland. Submitted invoice for stipend and eagerly waiting to receive first stipend. I think now i have confidence to distinguish anthills and charcoal kiln and not map them. Awesome week of learning. Thank you!

October

Week 5 Reflection (2021-10-04)

Week 5 was learning week. I learned about more opportunities and career prospects in our Asia pacific hub even after this intern. Session with Asia pacific hub and eastern and south africa hub help me learn so many things about HOT objective and it’s mission to map billion of people on map. The most important thing i loved about HOT is it’s future vision and mission by initiating the different hubs in different regions which are so effective and crucial for overall development of OSM commnities. It was so great to hear from Mikko and Geoffrey about the hubs. And regarding the validation, for 2 days i validated Zambia and after 3rd day i started validating Barbados, Covid-19 project. Each home there had a swimming pool and viewing the buildings, topography i can notice that the lifestyle of people there are advanced. I wish to be there someday. haha. The presence of beach, managed settlement, proper road networks to every buildings and in a gist proper land use planning is what makes me feel good. Thank you and hoping to learn more about interpreting maps and imageries in further days!

Week 6 Reflection (2021-10-11)

This week was the most productive week amongst all of other week. We had Disaster Ninja session which was so useful to me while creating tasks on HOT as we can check the population stats, OSM Data stats on particular area using the Disaster Ninja. And on the second part of the session I represented my Group and presented about Disaster Ninja which was wonderful experience and opportunity. I chosed area, shortly described the area, gave some insights, explained data quality, compare osm buildings and road data and find this very useful. Similarly from Tuesday i started validating Zambia again and in the task there i notice the title where Mapswipped was written and i explored about it and knew about it in detail. Similarly on day, we had training on OSMCha where the presentor described OSMCha in detail such that he didn’t leave any thing unexplored.

The other best part of this week is the coffee chat. I was so grateful to have coffee chat with Director of Technology and innovation at HOT who is Bo Percival. Since the Week 3 of this intern, i was having trouble on update of my contributions on HOT Tasking Manager. And i asked him everything regarding the issue and he explained it so perfectly from tech perspective. He explained me some backend programming and also demonstrated the OSM Galaxy which is going to be lauched soon and said i was first person out from the tech team to see this demonstration and hear more about OSM Galaxy. He added there won’t be more problem once OSM Galaxy portal will be launched as it will shows all the user stats, hashtags and other different data under this same portals. Besides, we also discussed about the reason behind difference between stats in HDYC, HOT TM and missingmaps. And i was so glad to know that he lived in Nepal for more than a year and he loves Nepal and the festival of light(Tihar) which is coming soon. And also talked about other festival “Dashain” that we are celebrating now. Discussed so much things that i couldn’t sum up all in these few paragraphs. Best coffee chat ever!!! And during week catchup i knew about mobile app Vespucii which i found useful for mapping and i also attended CrowdMap volunteer training. This week was so productive than other. Great!

Week 7 Reflection (2021-10-18)

This week we got training on GIS and QGIS. Learned a lot from both Sam and Geoffrey about QGIS as i have attended both the sessions. I have been trying to make maps since the training using QGIS. Learned about Map service and Quick Osm plugin. Assigned 11031(Zambia) to validate which was the hardest task ever mapped. Had a wonderful catchup with group members @Lassine and @choolwe. Both of them are like miles ahead in mapping and GIS. We discussed about OSM Communities in our country, digital mapping and GIS. Great interactive session.The task to validate was so hard this week. Even a single task takes more than 1/2 hours to map. Hardest task ever validated.

Week 8 Reflection (2021-10-25)

Sorry to say this week, I had to go for a field work as a part of HOT Microgrant. I informed Sam and Becky regarding this and i won’t be available for the trainings sessions. But in this week i had validated for few hours about 10+ hours. And i hope I can adjust this week’s working hour on next week. And while going to field verification of the OSM edits and data, I learned lots of things. During mapping Makwanpur, Nepal on OSM, mappers have mapped paths in the middle of the road but while validating i thought that as wrong and deleted such paths in the middle of river. But during field supervision, i was wrong and they were correct. Those were seasonal paths and people follow that path when the water current is low.So, ground truth data is necessary and reliable data no matter what. Similarly, forest boundary were mapped squared which we corrected. Apologies for this week reflection being different than the HOT Intern. But this week was productive as well and i got chance to implement the OSM data on real field in this week.

November

Week 9 Reflection (2021-11-01)

Had a wonderful week. In this week 9, I learned about Overpass Turbo and U-map. I knew Overpass turbo earlier but don’t know properly how to write lines of code there. After the training i am quite familiar with Overpass Turbo.Learned to make interactive maps using u-map. And this week we validated Task 10422 where all the features were mapped in Bing but we have to align them on Maxar. I used filter to select only buildings and shift them according to the Maxar.Also, we attended Ask me anything session with Jeremiah who is pro at GIS, Data science and Remote sensing. Asked him few question relating to data science and GIS. This week i had validated 50+ tiles most of the day to overcome earlier week working hours. Besides, our team (Lassine, Viji and myself) had team catch up where we discussed about OSM activities that are undergoing in our region, different mapathons, GIS Day which is coming soon, HOT Summit, state of the map US, and many other OSM related talks. And since day 5 we started validating task 10138. In a gist, it was productive and busy week.

Week 10 Reflection (2021-11-08)

Started week 10 validating from task number 10090: Zambia. Mapped pivot irrigation area. And i also attended Mobile tools where i learned about many mobile applications like maps.me, Osmand, Kobo, ODK by Mikko and Becky. Similarly, for fews days i keep validating 50+ tiles everyday on same task of Zambia. And on Wednesday, we attended cleaning field data and OSGeo live training. I learned about Open refine tool. But the training was not productive and fruitful as expected. So i tried exploring and learning open refine tool by myself. Similarly, this week i had team discussion with amazing guys @gustavo and @micheal. We talked about GIS, Mapping, our OSM journey, OSM Opportunities, problems we are facing in mapping and validation of allocated task. Another productive week as well.

Week 11 Reflection (2021-11-15)

I was so eagerly waiting to learn about 3rd pass validation. I have heard of it many times, search it on youtube as well but i do not find anything. And in this week 11, we get 3rd pass validation Training from Becky which was so fruitful and informative. I always used to wonder “Are there anyone who can validate or monitor certain project after it is completely validated?” And i knew the answer which is yes. Sometime, because of area boundary limit in tiles we get trouble editing outside the tiles. So i think this 3rd pass validation has helped me alot to view and monitor on certain project from even wide range of birds eye view. And i find it absolutely amazing. Besides to this in ths week i also attend QGIS training organised by Youthmappers and learn new things on QGIS. Similarly, i also attended training on building web maps using mapbox. And prior to these all training, i spend this week in 3rd pass validation most of the time. I also validated the project assigned to me. And i also started writing intern report. Thank you!

Week 12 Reflection (2021-11-22)

Last week of the internship. Feels like everything started yesterday but it is coming to end. Had a great game at the end of internship which is won by our group. On this same day, i won other game as well hosted by HOT-AP HUB and got chance to win a drone. We shared last smile with all fellow interns and supervisors. Don’t wanted to end the zoom call but had to. Thank you HOT for this wonderful opportunity for which I will be indebted forever. Many thanks again to everyone!