OpenStreetMap logo OpenStreetMap

Users' Diaries

Recent diary entries

Posted by Kai Johnson on 27 April 2026 in English.

I’d like to announce the release of a new Docker container instance for Overpass.

I’ve been running Overpass locally for a couple of years and have dealt with some reliability issues by improving the shell scripts that drive database updates.

I’ve been sharing those shell scripts with people but I wanted a better way to distribute them. So, I put some effort into cleaning up the scripts (with some significant improvements – see below!) and packaged them in a container build.

Another Overpass Container?

Yes!

There’s already the excellent wiktorn/overpass-api which does a great job of setting up a local Overpass instance. If that looks good to you, you should definitely use it!

For my own use, I wanted something with all the improvements to stability and reliability that I had rolled into the shell scripts, but that would stay true to the original Overpass source code and that would expose all the same configuration options as if it were running on bare metal. I also wanted all the operational support that I already had locally, like configurable area generation intervals and periodic database backups.

Then, given the issues with the performance of public Overpass servers, and the efforts to limit large-scale usage, it seems that having more Overpass servers can only help the community.

What’s Different About This Container?

Better Database Updates

First, the database update process is much more robust. When things go wrong during Overpass database updates, the database files can be corrupted. And when that happens you have to start over with a fresh database, either from a backup or from a fresh download. That can mean many hours of downtime.

The shell scripts for database updates have been improved to shut down as gracefully under controlled circumstances and to handle uncontrolled shutdowns as safely as possible.

See full entry

ES below

The Virtual Institute for Sustainable Development - IVIDES.org® and the company IVIDES DATA® is opening two vacancies to update and translate the content of its OpenStreetMap Course


 

The Virtual Institute for Sustainable Development – IVIDES.org® and the company IVIDES DATA® are offering a partnership opportunity to update and translate the content of their complete course into English (can be US-EN OR UK-EN) and Spanish (ES).

Conditions:

  1. Both individuals and organisations are eligible to apply. However, organisations must be duly registered in their country in order to receive the funds;

  2. Expected duration of the work: two months (June and July 2026);

  3. Applicants must be citizens from an English- or Spanish-speaking country.

In return, the company offers:

  1. Permanent promotion of the partner’s brand (and/or the name of the person responsible for the translation) on the course page and in all related materials, such as advertisements and others.

  2. The full translation into each language will be rewarded with US$ 200. Complete PDF file: Raquel Dezidério Souto. (2025). Curso de capacitação em mapeamento com OpenStreetMap - Curso completo. Rio de Janeiro: IVIDES DATA, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17428748

If you’re interested in taking part, please send an email to:

ivides [at] ivides.org

with the details below. The deadline for registration is 8th May 2026. Let’s go!

  1. Your CV (and/or a letter of intent);

  2. Proof of identity (or national organisation registration document) AND

  3. Your OSM username (full URL).

IVIDES DATA® is a small IT consultancy firm based in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). We are fully registered in Brazil (CNPJ 56.127.866/0001-12) and can negotiate/operate worldwide.


See full entry

Всем привет. Поскольку я, в основном, занимаюсь правкой и добавлением объектов, которые посетил лично, то с некоторого времени начал задумываться о том, как зафиксировать максимальное количество сведений об объекте непосредственно на месте. Почему?

  1. Объекты в OSM, как правило, содержат мало тегов с информацией, поскольку они зачастую нарисованы с использованием спутниковых карт и картографирующий человек может даже никогда не видел их вживую.

  2. При достаточно долгих прогулках/походах/путешествиях очень трудно воспроизвести по памяти характеристики леса, дороги и пр., из-за чего много важной информации впоследствии теряется.

С недавних пор, чтобы улучшить качество информации о добавляемых объектах, я стал действовать следующим образом.

На смартфоне я создал таблицы для быстрого заполнения (лично я использую Numbers, но можно всё что угодно), содержащие приблизительно следующую структуру:

Точка Тег 1 Тег 2 Тег 3
1 <свойство> <свойство> <свойство>
2 <свойство> <свойство> <свойство>
3 <свойство> <свойство> <свойство>

Возможные свойства тегов (*<свойство>*) задаются в виде выпадающего списка, чтобы их можно было быстро выбрать на телефоне. Для каждого типа объекта делается отдельный лист в электронной таблице, например, "лес", "дороги", "болота" и т.д.

Когда мы путешествуем, создаём файл по описанному шаблону с каким-нибудь именем, например: OSM_20260427. Затем в нужном месте ставим в приложении карт метку с номером там, где мы находимся, например, 3 на какой-нибудь дороге, а затем в электронной таблице на нужном листе (в данном случае дороги) ставим номер метки и заполняем быстро свойства объекта. Например, вот пример трёх точек для тех же дорог:

See full entry

Hello, I wish you many happy days. Please note, all the applications you use for OSM have updated their map data, for example, Organic Maps, OSM, and other projects that use OSM, except for MapsMe.

My maps were modified a long time ago, and the data for my area, New Cairo, Egypt, has not been updated. I have contacted them and sent them messages many times, but they have not updated the map data to match OSM. MapsMe is noticeably delaying data updates.

Please advise on this matter.

Thank you.

Posted by あじさか on 25 April 2026 in Japanese (日本語). Last updated on 26 April 2026.

鹿児島市の建物数集計(2026年4月24日時点)


  • noteなどで、建物の集計を行っている記事を見て、自分もやってみたくなった。
    市内建物の総数を推定するのは、自分は数字が得意ではないので、国土地理院タイルの建造物を利用させてもらった。
  • せっかく集計したので、日記として公開してみる。


検証用データ

  • 基準建物数
    • 国土地理院ベクトルタイル(PBF)
      • 2026年1月1日時点
      • 建築物を抽出し、分類別にディゾルブ処理
      • 異形状、微小ポリゴンを除くため、ポリゴン面積 15㎡以上 を抽出
        (車1台分の車庫程度)
      • 境界をまたがる建物は二重計上されないよう、ポリゴン内の代表点に変換
  • 比較対象数(OSM)
    • Geofabrik(PBF)
      • 2026年4月24日時点
      • building=* areaのみを抽出
      • 同様にポリゴン内の代表点に変換
  • 抽出エリア(行政界)
    • e-statより国勢調査(2020年小地域(町丁・字等))
      • 町丁・字でディゾルブ処理で一意化


集計結果

  • 集計は町・字単位で行ったけど、300以上に分かれるので、地域単位にまとめて掲載
地域 GSI OSM 網羅率 残り
全域 262,204 135,984 51.9% 126,220
中央地域 87,835 63,323 72.1% 24,512
谷山地域 69,559 34,740 49.9% 34,819
伊敷地域 27,458 7,790 28.4% 19,668
吉野地域 27,676 12,638 45.7% 15,038
桜島地域 6,829 4,960 72.6% 1,869
吉田地域 11,154 5,413 48.5% 5,741
喜入地域 10,981 2,484 22.6% 8,497
松元地域 11,446 2,958 25.8% 8,488
郡山地域 9,266 1,678 18.1% 7,588


感想

  • 鹿児島市の建物マッピングは全体で51.9%。先輩方に感謝。
  • 中央地区が7割超えている一方、周辺地域は5割未満、郊外はさらに低い。
    • マップからでも新興住宅地で建物が起こってないところが多いのを確認できる。
  • 参考値なので100%または上回る必要はない。9割いけば、ほぼ網羅として判断してよさそう。
  • 毎日100件追加したとしても、全域カバーには3年以上。先はまだ長い…
    • 焦らず、空いた地域を少しずつ埋めていきたい。




おまけ(鹿児島市内の消防水利)


鹿児島市消防局令和7年版消防年報より

  • 消火栓: 6,741基
  • 防火水槽: 924基
  • 計: 7,665基
    • 防火水槽は地下式消火栓のようなマンホール型もあるので、総数で比較する。


OSM

  • emergency=fire_hydrant: 1,407基
  • emergency=water_tank: 15基
  • 計: 1,422基


感想

See full entry

Location: 鴨池, 鹿児島市, 鹿児島県, 892-8677, 日本

I was interested in finding walkable areas in a city I had never visited before. After using OpenClaw bot to summarize my JSON files, I thought I could do the same for OSM-based metrics.

I started by generating an OSM extract with a 5km radius from my hotel. I then extracted the geometry and tags for every way, park, building, and tourist attraction in this area. I normalized the raw data into a handful of generic classes like “Food & Café” and “Nature / Quiet.”

I then assigned each way and point of interest to an H3 hexagon. I calculated aggregate metrics for each hexagon, like the length of roads and the area taken up by parks and water. Then I simply fed the metrics for the hexagon to Ollama with Mistral Nemo, asking it to generate a short one-sentence vibe of a place based on the collected metrics and label it as positive, negative, or mixed.

To visualize the results, I created a KML file and imported it into Google My Maps. I had to iterate on the LLM prompts, as there are a lot of fields in the generated JSON and the LLM struggles to interpret what the numbers mean.

I also discovered a number of bugs in how I calculate features per H3 hexagon, but I eventually arrived at a reasonable overlay showing how walkable each area is. It’s not perfect — partly because OSM data is incomplete for the area I picked, and partly because I need to make my prompts more specific.

The recommendations are generic, but they add an extra dimension to the map. I think this is really exciting because you can create any perspective you like on OSM data with your own overlays for driving, finding a house, or finding a place to eat.

Location: Hoằng Tiến Commune, Thanh Hóa Province, Vietnam

Hallo allerseits,

ich bin dabei, in Südfrankreich in einem Waldgebiet neue Wege zu kartieren. Die Wegpunkte habe ich mir als GPS- bzw. UTM31-Koordinaten notiert. Aber um sie auf der OSM-Karte an der richtigen Stelle einzutragen, bräuchte ich eine Karte mit Gitternetzlinien (am besten im Abstand von ca. 10-100m). Wie geht das? Danke! Martin

Location: Metropolitanes Frankreich, Frankreich

From February 21th to April 23th I spend 192 extra hours on iD and iD tagging schema, thanks to funding from OpenStreetMap Foundation. This grant is now complete and I want to report on progress made thanks to it.

And I want to also thank for other help:

  • Kyℓe Hensel (k-yle) and Martin Raifer (tyrasd) for multiple meetings to process found PRs/issues (as some actions required consultations or can be taken only by maintainers)
  • authors of pull requests, for preparing code - I also want to thank all people who made good faith contributions but where PR were either sadly closed without merge for some reason (or are not yet processed at all - sadly many are still waiting)
  • authors of various useful issues
  • people who provided feedback by reviewing - github, on forums
  • special thanks for language advise to Brian Sperlongano (ZeLonewolf) and Minh Nguyễn (1ec5) and others
  • everyone else who helped

Here is list of pull requests and issues that were processed during that time, with very limited commentary. I will post also report on forums with more commentary and without detailed listing of issues and PRs.

I want to mention also that substantial design and review work was spend on schema builder to unblock its release. Work on including relation structure knowledge into tagging schema[1][2] took hours, but is not listed below as this PRs are not yet merged. Though it is getting closer now that blocker was resolved.

Disclaimer: I took these notes while working and looked over for mistakes before publishing (fixing some), but I have not tripple checked everything. If you see a mistake, please let me know.

See full entry

Часто у энтузиастов проблема - каждый по своему добавляет обьекты. Могу привести примеры с профилями: Toli99 - лююююто парится над добавлением, но иногда косячит тем, что подсматривает на гугл карты где не всегда дома отмечены, а точки в разброс. excfs - тоже красавчик, но добавляет менее детально, обчыно делает всё по спутниковым снимакам бинг, всё, только устаревшие спутниковые снимки, иначе я не могу обьяснить что на более новом полотне спутниковых снимков на картах допустим видно новый обьект, но в местегде он работал это по неизвестной причине не добавлено. Хотя он всё равно такой же энтузиаст.

Они друг с другом не контактируют и друг другу не мешают, но это идеальная битва энтузиастов - кто прав?

В многих добавлениях 2-х летней давности часто в паке добавлений пишут оскорбления другим энтузиастам из-за того что что-то не поделили. В этом и проблема. Сейчас из новых я такого не видел среди энтузиастов котоыре промышляют в Харькове. А что на счёт тех же полтавских или киевских? Там ужас! Слияние двух языков выделяют сильный эффект торнадо. Обычно все сходятся на просто отметке “как будет название на разных языках” (что не всегда решает проблему), но вы прикиньте упёртых.

Так вот, что я хочу сказать энтузиастам и просто людям которым стало интересно - не конфликтуйте. С помощью вас! Да-да! Именно вас! Карта настолько детальная, споры часто делают не тот эфект, да, кто-то добавляет по своему. Главное что он добавляет настоящее!!!

Location: Немышлянский район, Харьков, Харківська міська громада, Харьковский район, Харьковская область, Украина

Salom! Xarita hamjamiyatida yangi nuqtalar va binolarni qo‘shish bilan shug‘ullanayotgan foydalanuvchilar uchun o‘z tajribamdan kelib chiqqan holda bir nechta amaliy tavsiyalarni bo‘lishmoqchiman.

Xaritaga biror joyni (do‘kon, bekat yoki tashkilot) kiritishda quyidagilarga e’tibor berishni maslahat beraman:

Joylashuvni qayta tekshiring: Nuqtani qo‘yishdan oldin koinotdan olingan suratlarni (yo‘ldosh tasviri) haqiqiy holat bilan solishtiring. Ba’zida suratlar biroz siljigan bo‘lishi mumkin, shuning uchun ko‘cha chiziqlari bilan mosligiga qarang.

Ma’lumotlarni to‘g‘ri tanlang: Joy nomini yozish bilan cheklanmasdan, uning vazifasini ham aniq belgilang (masalan: dorixona, savdo do‘koni yoki o‘quv markazi). Bu qidiruv tizimlari xaritadagi joyni oson topishiga yordam beradi.

Ishonchli manbalarga tayaning: Nomlarni yozishda o‘sha joydagi rasmiy belgilarga va ishonchli manbalarga tayaning. Masalan, biz ham o‘zimizning ob-havo-uz.com portalimizda hududlar bo‘yicha ma’lumotlarni shakllantirishda aynan aniq manbalar va ma’lumotlarga asoslanamiz.

To‘g‘ri to‘ldirilgan xarita — hamma uchun foydali! Agar sizda ham xaritani mukammallashtirish bo‘yicha savollar bo‘lsa, izohlarda qoldiring, birgalikda o‘rganamiz.

Posted by rja mapping on 22 April 2026 in English.

I’m currently in England and have been focusing much of my mapping on improving coverage and detail across the UK. This includes refining road classifications, updating POIs, checking alignments, and making sure tagging stays consistent with current conventions. I try to ground edits in available imagery, local knowledge where possible, and existing community practices.

Alongside that, I’ve been contributing to mapping efforts in parts of Africa. In many of these areas, even small additions like connecting road networks, adding missing settlements, or improving basic infrastructure data can make a meaningful difference for map usability. I’ve been working through tasks such as validating road geometry, adding surface and access tags where appropriate, and helping expand coverage in places that are still relatively under-mapped.

I’m also interested in maintaining data quality over time, not just adding new features. That means reviewing older edits, resolving inconsistencies, and occasionally revisiting areas as better imagery or information becomes available. Consistency in tagging and structure is something I try to pay attention to, especially when working across different regions with varying mapping styles.

Going forward, I’ll continue contributing where I can, both locally in the UK and in regions that benefit from additional mapping support. (i only got into mapping cuz i was bored as i cant play video games… for some reason)

(Made by chatgpt which is why it sound awkward, i just told it my info and it made this) thank u to all who actually read these…

Posted by rja mapping on 22 April 2026 in English.

I am quite new and becuz i am unable to play any games i spend some free time doing this mapping ‘game’ as I first thought years ago and then I made account and learned about how to do OSM properly and efficiently and I think it’s good to learn some tech thing.

I map places in UK and also Africa where it is more important to navigate around, and there is large areas of undermapping. (anyway this is useless but whatever its just introduction..

İzmir’de belli bölgelerde karşılaştığım bir durum var. Özellikle caddelerde ve ana yollardaki yaya geçitlerinin ortasında hissedilebilir yüzey benzeri bir zemin uygulaması fark ettim. Örnek vermek gerekirse Ege Üniversitesi içindeki birçok yaya geçidi ve Bornova ile Bayraklı’daki caddelerdeki yaya geçitlerinde bu durum söz konusu. İzmir’in diğer yerlerine o kadar hakim olmadığım için onlarla ilgili söyleyebileceğim bir şey yok.

Şimdi bu uygulamaların erişilebilirlik açısından önemi büyük. Bunu inkâr edemem. Fakat işin bana ilginç gelen iki yönü var. Birincisi, bu yüzeyler plastikten veya sert bir malzemeden yapılmamış. Tam emin olmamakla birlikte sadece biraz kalın olacak şekilde sarıya boyanmış gibi bir hissiyatı var. Yani görüntü olarak orada var ama görme özürlü bir birey bunu göremeyeceği ve hissetmesi gerekeceği için işlevli olduğunu söyleyemem. Bastonu olan görme özürlü bir birey değilim ama en azından ayakkabılarımla hissedebildiğim kadarıyla hâl böyle.

Bahsetmek istediğim ikinci şey ise bu zeminler yalnızca yaya geçitleri üzerinde bulunuyor. Yani yaya geçidinin iki yanındaki kaldırımlarda hissedilebilir yüzey bulunmasa da yaya geçidi boyunca bu yüzeyler mevcut. Yani sanırım insanların yaya geçidine kadar kalp gözünü kullanarak yol bulduğunu ancak yaya geçidine gelince bu zeminin yol göstericiliğine muhtaç olduklarını düşündü bunu planlayan ve uygulayanlar. Böyle bir şeyin izahı olabilir mi? Şahsen benim aklım ermiyor.

Bilemiyorum Altan, bilemiyorum…

Location: Erzene Mahallesi, Bornova, İzmir, Ege Bölgesi, Türkiye
Posted by FajrAl on 22 April 2026 in English.

If you’ve been surveying the OpenStreetMap (OSM) map notes in Indonesia, you’ve likely encountered a wave of “spam” or irrelevant notes. These aren’t usually malicious; rather, they are often misplaced private memos from third-party mobile applications that use OSM tiles.

Users often mistake the “Add a Note” feature for a personal notepad or a private “Save Location” tool. Some of these notes are even remnants of data synced from apps nearly a decade ago.

Why is this happening? Many apps integrate OSM. Users see a “Notes” button and assume it’s a private diary for their travels.

This list of spam keywords is not exhaustive. I will continue to update this diary entry as new patterns emerge from the Indonesian mapping community.


Jika Anda melihat catatan peta OpenStreetMap (OSM) di Indonesia, kemungkinan besar Anda akan menemukan “spam” atau catatan yang tidak relevan. Memo tersebut sering kali merupakan memo pribadi yang salah tempat dari aplikasi seluler pihak ketiga yang menggunakan tile OSM.

Pengguna sering salah mengira fitur “Tambahkan Catatan” sebagai catatan pribadi atau fitur “Simpan Lokasi” pribadi. Beberapa catatan ini bahkan merupakan sisa data yang disinkronkan dari aplikasi hampir satu dekade lalu.

Mengapa ini terjadi? Banyak aplikasi mengintegrasikan OSM. Pengguna melihat tombol “Catatan” dan menganggapnya sebagai buku harian pribadi untuk perjalanan mereka.

Daftar kata kunci spam ini tidak lengkap. Saya akan terus memperbarui catatan harian ini seiring munculnya pola-pola baru dari komunitas pemetaan Indonesia.


Gojek hari ini
kediaman
tempat tinggal
rumah pak
rumah bu
pak rt
pak rw
pak lurah
"ok"