News from the world of OpenStreetMap № 464 (04.06.2019-10.06.2019)

Mapping North Korea - new project by Maarten van den Hoven ¹ | Map data OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL

Mapping

• Jean-Louis Zimmerman in his tweet collected several unusual objects that challenge the OSM tagging system.
• Joseph Eisenberg posted on the Tagging mailing list his proposal to introduce a new tag - waterway=tidal_channel , which is invited to mark the natural waterways. He also points out that this issue has already been raised in September 2018.
• Osmer Simon Lehner announced ( translated ) on the Talk-at mailing list that he added new layers of the Austrian government open data portal (OGD) to the OSM Editor Layer Index. You can read more about this on his GitHub page.
• [1] Mapping North Korea - a new project by Maarten van den Hoven , which offers to remotely draw this country. For convenience, he divided North Korea into "squares." You can select any in the task manager web interface.
• Often, the quality and speed of helping people during emergencies depend on the availability of high-precision maps. For many areas, these maps must first be prepared. Therefore, the non-profit organization Doctors Without Borders uses modern technologies and the help of thousands of volunteers. On June 25, 2019, from 19:00 to 22:00 in Berlin, a cartaton organized by Missing Maps will be held in the Wikimedia office, during which territories at risk will be drawn.

Community

• Nicholas Chavent posted on his Twitter photo of a free two-week educational course on geomatics that took place in Brazzaville (Congo). They were intended for the local OSM community, local government, researchers and developers. The courses were organized with the assistance of the Congolese communities, the organization “Tongolese cartographer”, as well as with the support of the international organization “Francophony”.
• The OSM-talk mailing list asked if someone would like to organize a discussion on the iD online editor at the upcoming SotM conference. However, it was suggested that holding a “tribunal” over iD is not the best idea, but it would be nice to collect ideas on this matter by September 1, and then discuss them.
• Osmer Joseph Eisenberg asked on the OSM-talk mailing list whether short descriptions of tags in WikiOSM should really be stored in a “ data item ” for a tag. Before that, he found that some tags, like natural=peninsula or natural=isthmus , have too short descriptions. Trying to edit them, he did not find the fields to describe. Other users suggested that you look for it in the metadata for the tag. Eisenberg complains that the description of "data fragments" and Wikibase in our WikiOSM is confusing and therefore useless for regular editors like it.
• Following the discussion ( translation ) in the German forum on how to mark stores that sell goods in bulk_purchase (previously they were celebrated with bulk_purchase ), exactly the same started ( translation ) in French. These two discussions are not related at all. Now the discussion of this issue began in English in a topic called “Tagging stores that allow customers to bring their containers” (“Tag [ging] shops accepting that customers bring their own containers”).

Imports

• HOT created a “Task Manager” to import computer (machine) vision.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The minutes of the meeting of the working group on OSMF data dated May 22, 2019 are published.

Humanitarian OSM

• An article on the non-profit organization “Missing Maps” has been published on the geospatialworld website. It tells about the project and its goals.
• In the office of Intel Folsom non-profit organization "Missing Maps" held a cartaton. It was attended by 56 cartographers, two volunteers from the Red Cross and one from Intel to answer the questions. More information about this event can be found here .

Cards

• Said Tursever told in his Twitter about the Turkish project ICT4Society, which uses OSM and Mapillary to help people with disabilities navigate the city. Link to the map .

Licenses

• After a long dialogue with Facebook and its map providers (Mapbox), Nuno Caldeira asked the OSMF board to prohibit Facebook from using OSM data in accordance with the provisions of the ODbL license. As validity of such actions, he refers to Article 9.4 c) of the ODbL license. Recall that this was preceded by a long discussion ( in February and March ) on the explicit indication of the use of OSM, which took place on the main Talk mailing list.

Software

• User K_sakanoshita published ( Twitter , Facebook ) a new version of the online service “Machi-aruki Map maker“ , which can be used to create printed maps during natural disasters and not only. There are new features: the addition of cafes and restaurants, fire hydrants and tags.

Programming

• Quincy Morgan proposes to make iD from version 3.0 in his Ticket on GitHub to become a general editor of the GeoJSON format.

Releases

• The new version of OsmAnd 2.80 for iOS began to display images from Mapillary, as it is already implemented on Android. In addition to improving performance, fixed enough bugs. More information about all the changes can be found in the blog OsmAnd.

Did you know ...

• ... that just a few lines of code using 3D-tool "3D OSM Buildings" allow you to make a rotating panoramic view.

Other "geo" events

• Not so long ago, a glass bridge was opened in East China, which is currently the longest in the world. A new attraction is located in the Huaxi Adventure Park, which is located near the Great Wall of China. Its length is 518 meters. The length of the previous similar record holder is 488 meters. You can find this object on OSM.
• Margaret Lee on the Mapbox blog talks about the “route from blank card to live map”.
• Malvika Mahesh, intern researcher at the Observer Research Foundation , ponders in his article “Drawing Lines on the Internet: Conflicts with Borders and Politics Outside Digital Maps” on how the concept of borders on digital maps is interpreted. She praises the OpenStreetMap rule - “as it is on the ground ”(“ Rules for mapping disputed territories in OSM ”(PDF), which are not always respected in OSM) and criticizes Google’s current approach. This material has an interesting link to the map , which marks all the disputed territories of the world.
• June 5th was World Environment Day . In the post of the news blog Giscience University of Heidelberg University, dedicated to this date, there is a link to the global climate protection map, which is based on OSM. Also, the authors of this material urge everyone to contribute to climate protection, namely, to begin in their lives to be guided by eco-principles (energy saving, reuse, etc.)
• As Berlin, from the city convenient for cars, turns into a city for cyclists - can be seen on the website FixMyBerlin . It also displays the current level of friendliness of the city to cyclists.
• BMW has published ( translated ) "road safety data" collected by BMW vehicles. This information was posted under the license CC-BY-NC-SA, which excludes commercial use, but despite this, in a press release, BMW mistakenly calls it "free."

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