News from the world of OpenStreetMap №438 (04.12.2018-10.12.2018)

Pierre Beland encourages experienced cartographers to help improve the quality of data in the Congo ¹

Cards

• OpenStreetBrowser updated to version 4.2. The new version allows users to export visible map elements as JSON, GeoJSON and XML. As reported in the project blog, users with their own repositories in OpenStreetBrowser Dev can now download categories from git branches. Instead, the Twitter feed in the news panel will now display news from the blog.
• Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy, has released the alpha version of its new Qwant Maps product, maps entirely based on OSM data and an open source ecosystem . He currently works mainly in France, but the good news is that you can contribute to make it work in your country.

Open data

• The city of Zurich publishes a 3D model of roof surfaces and structures licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 license.

Developments

• German conference FOSSGIS 2019 ,, dedicated to geospatial themes and the main local OSM meeting, is not far off. Already have an agenda for social events .

Mapping

• Jean-Louis Zimmerman tweets about the need to consider new approaches to editing OpenStreetMap data to help both third-party cartographers and to cope with the increased data density. He is particularly inspired by Deriviste , a concept created by Richard Fairhurst.
• The OSM community of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to map the Congo to help combat the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu. On Twitter, Pierre Béland calls on experienced cartographers to help improve data quality.
• Toutelatitudes wrote a tweet about three wonderful trees that they added to OpenStreetMap in the department of Loire, France.
• The dktue member offers an emergency=control_centre for places where emergency calls are answered. The tag is already used more than 200 times, but only in Germany .
• John Paris (John Paris) announced the fourth version of the proposal , how to map the controversial boundaries. The distinction between the disputed boundaries is an important but complex and sensitive issue for many reasons. After John received feedback on his proposal, he wrote that he would rework it again and add new proposals.
• Have you ever encountered the problem of mapping a walking route and the need to check whether it was previously mapped? Many communities use wiki pages to provide lists of routes and their relationship numbers. The participant Cascafico describes in his diary tools for automating data collection from OSM and converting to wiki format.

Software

• Martijn van Exel has written an illustrated guide on how to get involved and use OpenStreetCam, a free and open platform for street photography, created by Telenav.
• Jiri Vlasak introduced the LiveJOSM distribution. LiveJOSM is a Debian-based Linux system with JOSM and some pre-installed JOSM plug-ins that can be used at various events, such as mapping.

Programs

• The iD editor recently received two updates. Mega Update v2.12.0 includes a seemingly endless list of new features, enhancements and fixes, including two-finger trackpad gestures for Mac users, drawing paths indicating directions, such as rocks and coastlines, and the ability to resize the sidebar or hide it completely. Upgrading to 2.12.1, just one day later, includes some minor bug fixes .
• The update to the task manager (HOT Tasking manager) was released after almost 60 different commits were received. Improvements include new layers for the mapping and task history panel, support for the markdown format in the task description and task card, as well as the implementation of a new function called Expert Mode , which will cover more complex mapping and verification functions.
• Simon Poole released the first beta version of Vespucci version 12 of OSM for Android
  
  • It has a new simple mode of action , which adds a large green button to add new functions, instead of a long tapa .
  • Supports Maproulette.
  • Adds an intent , which means that any geo: URLs can be opened directly using the OSM application of your choice.
  
  

Do you know …

• ... about the BuildingsTools plugin for the JOSM editor created by the Upliner member, which improves the quality of OSM data? You can draw ordinary rectangular or round buildings by simply pressing b and 3 or even 2 mouse clicks! Accurate and fast!
  The Ctrl-Alt-B combination opens the settings panel with parameters for changing the shape, type of buildings, and more.
• ... about the OSM Streak website? OSM Streak is a game contest that motivates you to complete small OSM tasks every day and earn points for completing them. The goal is to motivate cartographers to edit OSM as often as possible.
• ... about a list of quality tools that you can use to improve data in OSM? ... how can you fill in the missing addresses in your area with MAPS.ME? Here is a description .
  
  

  OSM in the media

  
  
  • German is known for its very long difficult words, and, obviously, this also applies to road names. According to the news article , in a study based on OSM data, found the longest road name in Germany: Bischöflich-Geistlicher-Rat-Josef-Zinnbauer-Straße . The most common roads in Germany are those named after the writers Goethe and Schiller.
  
  

  Other “geo” events

  
  
  • Daniel Huffman writes about old-fashioned mapping: on a typewriter.
  • Gilles van Lottum (Jelle van Lottum) visualized cruises on ships of several East Indian companies from Europe to India and the East Indies until 1800. Data taken from CLIWOC and digitized logbook records.
  • CityLab presents an overview of the new book by Christof Spieler on high-speed transport systems in 47 US metropolises. Needless to say, it contains many transport schemes.
  • Martijn van Exel has announced the OpenStreetCam competition for Australia. The Telenav card team awards Amazon cards to the best photo authors for the rest of the year. Telenav OpenStreetCam is a street imaging solution similar to Mapillary that allows you to upload your own photos and photo sequences. It helps to detect errors and gaps in the data and helps you while editing the map.
  • Version 3.4 of the multi-model database ArangoDB is released , under the Apache license. The new version now supports GeoJSON and includes the new search engine ArangoSearch.
  • Cultural Gems web application was submitted
    The European Commission during the final conference of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018. The application is designed to provide crowdsourcing information about the cultural and creative space in Europe and is preloaded with the initial set of points of interest from OpenStreetMap data.
  • Katharina Przybill has published an article "Conceptual analysis of compliance with the OpenStreetMap database ( OSHDB )."
  • Matt Daniels developed 3D world visualization on an OSM map.
  • NASA space agency published what Puerto Rico looks like after hurricane Maria.
  • Google maps in Australia contain unusual errors .
  
  

  Community

  
  
  • OpenStreetMap Community Nigeria has organized a training camp on the Numérique Francophone campus in Niamey for 15 participants. The following subjects were studied for 3 days: OSM, QGIS and open data.
  • Jennings Anderson (Jennings Anderson) wrote in his blog about the seminar on data analysis, which he and Seth Fitzsimmons (Seth Fitzsimmons) held at the conference SotM US 2018 . Jupyter Notebook used for quick, interactive analysis and visualization of OSM data. In the article, he explains the preparation of datasets using osm-wayback and osmesa , creating CSV files, and loading data into Jupyter.
  • After Mapbox hired the Valhalla command from Mapzen, most, if not all, OSRM kernel developers seem to have quit their jobs. However, there are no official statements from Mapbox about whether they plan to support both projects in the future.
  • Tim Couwelier blogged about the road categorization - OpenStreetMap versus Flemish planning documents , where he explains the differences between the categories in OSM and the categorization of public roads. He points to generally accepted categories based on the originally intended road designation and differences in OSM, with its underlying principle based on actual use.
  
  

  OpenStreetMap Foundation

  
  
  • Nicolas Chavent believes that HOT US Inc. wants to gradually dominate the OSMF board of directors. Severin Menard (Severin Menard) continues to remark that the two directors of OSMF had previously served on the HOT council, another current director of OSMF was the executive director of HOT, and another candidate for the current election is working for HOT and also a candidate for the current election of the OSMF is a voting member of HOT US. Inc.
  • The OSMF Council revised the decision of the Working Group on the data on the change of the borders of Crimea on OSM and canceled the DWG resolution. Accordingly, Crimea is included in the borders of both Russia and Ukraine: thus, returning to the mapping that has existed since 2014. As was to be expected, there is a certain amount of comments on this decision: Ilya Zverev writes about this in his blog SHTOSM. Others believe that the way the decision was made did not meet the stated objectives of transparency. Richard Fairhurst connects this with his perception that for many years the OSMF Council has often not supported the Data Working Group volunteers.
  
  

  Humanitarian OSM

  
  
  • The HOT humanitarian team wrote about how OSM data will help determine the susceptibility of a region to natural disasters. The model will be developed based on collected data and will improve the resilience of cities to disasters in more than 46 countries.
  • ^{1 The} Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffers from an Ebola outbreak, rebel attacks and refugee movements. According to the latest satellite images, the OSM DRC community is activated in North Kivu, and they also prepared the tasks of the HOT Task Manager. In a letter from the HOT mailing list, Pierre Béland summarizes the work in terms of quality and recommends steps to correct problems and improve the quality of future cartographic work.