So it is almost the end of the year, I thought what if I created a summary blog of what I did.

In Hungary: I’m only doing small edits in my neighborhood if some changes happen

Outside of Hungary: Had a small “let’s map Europe” thing, and added forest/farmland land cover/land uses to several countries (Lithuania, Greece, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Austria, Republic of Cyprus) And also mapped in some U.S. states, main focus on West Virginia (finally finished it after almost 5 years of mapping: June 2020 till Feb 2025 - read diary entry here: @ottwiz/diary/406073) and Pennsylvania, where I clean up the huge multipolygon mess after some users not taking enough care broke a huge 1k sq km big multipolygon.

So this led me to start fixing up. Of course my goal is to map the forest cover of Pennsylvania as much as possible but it’s a way harder task than West Virginia was. Quality-wise, I try to make the quality of it better than it was, so more accurate and more aligns to the imagery than it’s just a roughly drawn something. (Of course if the terrain is rough, i compare the imagery with other services’ available for OSM)

Other than that, I mapped other states a bit as well like Washington, Alaska, Virginia, Texas just to name a few, but not all of them.

I wish you all a Mappy New Year! - Ottwiz

Hi OSM folks,

Yesterday I finished mapping West Virginia’s forest landcover for OSM in 5 years! It was a big project and definitely the next one will be a bigger one but because of that I’m gonna do it in a pace that I can maintain. If I have to stop, then I stop. Well, it’s just a hobby for me. As I announced on Mapping USA, I’m mapping Pennsylvania from now on. I’m really interested in the history of that state, The Keystone State.

And yes, I just wanted to try myself out how I could map forest landcover outside of Europe. It seems everyone seems hyped and I like this!

I’m not a robot so I can’t work on it 24/7 due to my personal life and I know i’m not making a 100% accurate landcover, but hey, I learnt some tricks which I’m taking advantage of! Sometimes I also criticise the quality I do but well people usually improve as time flies.

I’d like to thank everyone in the OSM community for giving me help and guidance, and I’m sure I’ll still have questions if it comes to specific areas. :)

Sziasztok! Június 25-én mit szóltok egy mapping partyhoz Pestújhelyen? A környék nagyon üres POI és házszám ügyben. Gyertek térképezni velünk! Tali helynek a Vanilin Cukrászdát javaslom.

További infók, programok, elérhetőség: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Hungary/2021-06-25-pestujhely-mapping-party

Rákospalota sometimes has dumb addressing like

Sződliget utca 30, 34, 32, 36

or Mátyás utca 64/a 64/b 64 64/c

Aporháza utca 13-15, 13, 17, 17-19, 19, 29 (i mean, what the hell)

and i could list it all the way along, but it wouldn’t make any sense. Also, the area has outdated imagery, today I discovered there is a dog park behind Énekes utca 19-35 apartment block, which is not on neither of the imageries available here, because it’s so new. I mean, I made a lot of photos for surveying purposes but I wish there was a 2020 imagery in my area. I think i’m mostly done with my area, it was a VERY hard work, and there is still housenumbers missing in the 15th district, but because of me, i did around 25-30% of it, and I’m proud of it. :)

I think i’ll be short about how I map addresses in Rákospalota. I once got some addresses from a document to OSM but didn’t notice it that it’s just for reference, so lot of addresses were inaccurate in it.

Because I’m now a university student (actually a freshman), studying in my 2nd semester, I have to register for P.E. classes (in the 2nd and 3rd semester as suggested). That’s what I did in January, when registering for subjects started. The problem is that university is closed because of COVID-19, so nobody can enter the area of the university without written permission from the rector.

Every student who now are completing P.E., have to track 100 kms (62 miles) of walking/running or rowing (or 200 km by bicycle, 20 km/trip and 40 km max a week) in the semester totally with Strava application on smartphone, minimum 5 km (3.1 miles) per trip, and 15 km (9.3 miles) can be signed a week.

So because of that, I started walking in my area, but I was like “Hey! I don’t wanna get bored, I want to survey my area, because OSM is still lacking lot of addresses and some are inaccurate, let’s fix this!”

In Budapest every district has their street signs at each street corner to show where you are and what are the interpolations between the two ends of the street segment. I started to write down the interpolations into my phone, and then when I arrived home, I put the data on OSM.

But also, we Hungarians have a different address reference than the one I was using, and it seems a bit more accurate, even if it’s not a map, but it has some false addresses(I gotta know this because I know where a street starts and where it ends), so at least I can report to the maintainer that there is an issue (https://osm-gimmisn.vmiklos.hu/)

I usually use this website to check out what “/A” “/B” etc. addresses to look for when I’m surveying on the spot, because my neighborhood is full of those divided plots, like Sín utca for example.

… See full entry