mapper | scientist | human

TL;DR I am deeply involved in different aspects of OSM. I am running for the OSM US board to extend my contributions beyond data creation, community organization and research.

About me

I am Levente, originally from Hungary, now living in sunny South Florida for about a decade. I came across OpenStreetMap in the early 2010s and instantly became fascinated by it. I actually decided to become a scientist because of it, and much of my research career is dedicated to understanding different aspects of the OSM project, data, and its community. Now I am running for a seat on the OSM US Board to continue my long standing commitment to the project in a different role.

During the day I am a Research Assistant Professor and currently I also serve as the Assistant Director of GIScience at Florida International University. I also teach Environmental GIS there. At night, I usually sleep. Prior to FIU, I spent a few years at the University of Florida (where I earned my PhD in Geomatics) and also held short-term visiting appointments at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Villach, Austria, and at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. In industry, I spent a few wonderful years at Mapillary (see e.g. here and here) and was also a full-stack GIS Developer at some point. I am an OsGeo Charter Member since 2023. While I am originally trained as a geographer, my background is more on the computational and data intensive side of the discipline and ventures into computer science and data science.

My involvement in OSM

I recognize that contributions are not limited to data creation. Below is a short summary of the different ways I have been involved in OSM over the last 10+ years.

As a contributor

I made my first edit while in college. I completed the street network of my village and neighboring areas. Having access to free, open and complete datasets in post-communist Hungary was a big deal then. I have been editing the map since, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have also been involved in convincing organizations to release their data openly for OSM mapping and in data imports in Miami. My first SotM US was 2015 in NYC.

As a community organizer and advocate

South Florida is proportionally underrepresented in the OSM community. I joined Maptime MIA and later became a co-organizer, hosted meetups as well as organized data imports. We are about to re-launch this in February 2024 with a sidewalk Mapathon with Meta (link TBD).

I have been involved in the OSM Science (previously known as the Academic Track at State of the Map) conference series where our goal is to promote the use of OSM in the sciences as well as to build an active scientific community around it. It has become a great platform for early-career researchers to showcase their work. I have been fortunate enough to co-chair this initiative with wonderful colleagues from all around the world in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. The latest proceedings is available here.

As a researcher

Some of my research aims to understand the quality of OSM data as well as the community, this includes investigations into cartographic vandalism, data fusion between OSM and Mapillary or the use of generative AI as a mapping assistant. Sometimes I do research about fun stuff, like Null Island. Here is an interview about it by Bloomberg.

Plans as a member of the OSM US Board

My background and experience are diverse. I am an immigrant from Eastern Europe, my extended family is Cuban-American. I have extensive academic and industry experience in the geospatial domain, and a deep commitment to open initiatives. I plan on supporting the project with my expertise and bringing my opinions shaped by my diverse background forward while serving on the board.

More specifically, my main contributions will be to:

• Bring scientific rigor and data-driven insights into decision making

• Create greater collaboration between US-based research and education institutions and encourage investigations using OSM data in different domains, as well as research into OSM data and community

• Advocate for inclusion of marginalized communities as well as balance openness with indigenous data sovereignty

• Actively listen to and work with the community

Thank you for considering me! You can connect with me online. OSM: jlevente. OSM Wiki: User:Jlevente. X: @juhaszlevi. LinkedIn: profile.