Originally posted on https://blog.georeactor.com

I had the idea to go bike touring on the western tip of Lake Superior. There’s a lot to say, but I wanted to have an OpenStreetMap mapper + bike travelogue perspective first.

The Route

I started in Duluth, Minnesota and crossed the bridge into Wisconsin. The next day I started biking along the Tri-County Trail, through a forested area, toward Ashland, Wisconsin.

The Twin Ports

Duluth, MN and Superior, WI (combined population: 113k) are a center for rail and Great Lakes shipping. They were built up during lumber and copper booms around 1900. I arrived on the weekend of their biggest summer event (Grandma’s Marathon).

The Duluth Airport is served by a regional transit bus. On weekdays it’s Route 1 to a transit center, but on the weekend it was Route 5 to a more southwestern neighborhood. I updated the bus stop and surrounding waiting area on OSM.

Duluth has a couple of bike shops - major props to Ski Hut for their help :)

A good stretch of Superior Street has a protected bi-directional bike lane:

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Hello everybody

OSM Tagging model is a unique piece of knowledge and its usage could be discussed more widely, even outside of OSM.
Recent announcement of Overture Maps Foundation data schema will challenge us shortly. I’ve been involved in tagging improvement for more than 10 years and I now believe a lot in its more general usefulness, even outside of OSM.
It’s time to find how making it obvious.

First of all, tagging is a core component of OSM project and will remain as this in the future, the point isn’t to split mapping and tagging apart.
However, our tagging model could inspire (or already inspires actually) many data managers operating data bases outside of OSM.
A lack of consistency, versatility and even relevancy are sometimes noted about many data sets we can be using in general. They are at least missing some uniformity while some of them describe the exact same objects despite coming from different producers.

The more we have data, the more we need to standardize their structures.
OSM actually have the advantage to be built over a single namespace and force contributors to maintain consistency between very different concepts. It’s not an usual practice, there isn’t so much databases that gather buildings, roads, trees and utility networks in the same place.
Time spent to document tagging is now a significant force to make our semantics usable even outside of OSM.
It’s not necessary to import private databases in OSM nor use OSM tools to get benefit from usage of provided tagging, if applicable.
Developing tagging is not necessarily a call to mapping or an attempt to make a given contribution mandatory. It’s also an exercise which demonstrates every day the versatility of OSM semantics and creativity of involved contributors.

In France, we already began to build strategic bridges between OSM tagging and business standards or government standards in order to make things interoperable.

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For some months now, Champs-Libres is working for NMBS/SNCB, the national railway company of Belgium, for reusing OSM data from Belgian stations. NMBS/SNCB has an interest in OSM data for improving some services to travelers regarding accessibility data, and especially for bicycles. Have a look at the wiki page for more insights!

The first diary entry was about the basic data about the Belgian stations and platforms and the second diary entry was about mapping access (steps, elevators, bicycle ramps, etc.) to the railway platforms. Here, we’ll deep into more advanced mapping of railway and access objects by looking at the “level” tag.

Why the “level” tag is important

Stations are most of the time built on several levels. Even small rural stations often have an underground passage or a bridge above the tracks to cross the railways. Whenever you have levels in a railway station, the level=* tag should be added on most of the objects. This is needed for several reasons:

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Recently I purchased a Wacom One drawing tablet. It’s basically a digital pen that acts as a mouse. Using FastDraw in JOSM, this can boost mapping efficiency significantly, especially when drawing curves.

Demo

• Drawing highways: https://vimeo.com/838058803
• Drawing mountain woods: https://vimeo.com/838063094

TL;DR

Watch https://peertube.openstreetmap.fr/w/56SduK2wYnnUesnSroucbd

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I have one nice way of finding best routes for bike rides. It is a mix of BRouter and Strava heatmaps. Whenever I show this to someone, they think it is really cool, but I never shared it with a world. Finally I found time to record my process. You only need Strava account and web browser to create these routes. I still think it is the best way to explore routes on desktop, but let me know if you can beat this:)

15 min video with subtitles is here: https://peertube.openstreetmap.fr/w/56SduK2wYnnUesnSroucbd

Thanks for checking it out!

After I came across some business descriptions in OSM that were of dubious quality, I decided to hunt them down systematically. OSM is, after all, not a place for advertisements. Now, about half a year and hundreds of POI tag fixes later, it is time to reflect on this project and to share my observations.

Introduction

People who map their business on OSM usually have a single changeset in which they put their business on their map. They often foul up the opening hours sysntax and international formatting for phone numbers, and there is usually a lot of info still missing. This is fine, since OSM data in general follows the trend where basic map data receives details, corrections and improvements by different mappers over time.

An issue arises when companies try to sneak in their brochure texts and other SEO spam. We want OSM to stay objective and neutral and we want data that relates to the real world, so this information is unwelcome. We can’t stop people from mapping their company details, but moderation is clearly needed if we are to uphold these principles.

I started looking for a way to detect the unwanted spam. The result is this Overpass query for buzzwords in the description tag. Think about words like “award winning”, “reliable service” and “conveniently located”. This is a dynamic process, because I regularly add new buzzwords that I encounter alongside the ones that I find through the query and I remove words that result in false positives.

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Today, at 43 years old, I decided to start a blog to note down memorable experiences while mapping.

So this is about a spring day two months ago when I mapped this set of bicycle lockers: osm.org/way/82447313

They are located right next to the station in the Czech town of Melnik. They caught my attention when we were waiting for the train that was to take us into Prague. They work like this: You push your bicycle in, drop a small returnable deposit into the slot and that’s your bicycle safely stored for the day.

I could not help comparing them to the bicycle lockers next to the station of Wolfsburg, Germany, where I live. These work like this: You walk up to the operator’s office during their opening hours, sign a contract, pay a fee of 60€ (that’s for a year, but there are no shorter periods available).

I didn’t map anything else that day but there was also a nice public transport experience. At the end of our day trip to Prague we took the bus back from Ladvi to Melnik. It was during afternoon rush hour, so traffic moved slowly between the tower blocks. The bus was quite full, and after a day of sightseeing it already felt a little strange to sit as a tourist between locals going home from work. But when the long-haired bus driver turned up his radio as Queen played “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it felt as if we had been caught in an indie road movie by accident.

Another thing I like about Ladvi is that the green areas between the tower blocks are mapped as appropriate (garden/park/grass).

While everyone struggles , I chose to embrace the struggle.

Hello everyone, I am here again with the 2nd Blog of my journey as an Outreachy intern. For those who don’t know me , I am Neelima Mohanty , selected as an Outreachy intern at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOTOSM) for the May to August Cohort. If you are new to my blog then make sure you read my Blog 1 before going through this blog post.

How many of you have come across new terms while contributing to open source communities? I guess everyone has . And do you remember how did you cope with it? As you think of all this , I will narrate you one such experience of mine during the contribution phase of Outreachy during March 2023 .

While raising a PR to add comments to the code of the osm-fieldwork repo as part of technical documentation , my mentor Rob Savoye reviewed it and said me that he liked the thought of adding comments to the code but it was not the right way. I would like to quote his words “Thanks for adding comments. We usually don’t need to comment write() and open(), as it’s obvious. If you want to get really deep into commenting source code, we want to add support for sphinx.This adds a comment block for each class and method. This would require you read and gain some understanding of the code itself, which is not a bad thing. We use sphinx for other python projects.”

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This weekend, I attended the 2023 OHNI Conference, OHNI standing for Oral History Network Ireland. The overall topic was “Power & Resistance”. I had heard about them at a training seminar for Heritage Week where I went in preparation for my events about milk churn stands. I had 4 days before the deadline to hand in an abstract, but I went for it! I was granted a slot in the “moments” section where people get 10 mins to present their project.

My reasoning for participating was to spread the word about OpenStreetMap which seems to be very little known in academia and maybe especially the humanities, as well as local authorities. I did not know how well attended this conference would be, but every little helps.

I decided to talk about the possibility of mapping place names like field names, because that could be considered oral history and because I expected most attendees to be Irish and to know about field names. I was trying to make OSM as relatable as possible.

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Greetings OpenStreetMap community,

Following the release of osm-revert, I’m here to share details about my new project, OSM Relatify. This tool is designed to simplify the process of editing public transport relations within OpenStreetMap (OSM).

OSM Relatify is built with the goal of making public transport mapping more accessible and efficient. While it currently focuses on bus relations, the vision for OSM Relatify is to encompass a broader range of public transport mapping tasks.

One of the key features of OSM Relatify is its smart routing logic. It automatically constructs bus routes from given bus stops and ways, taking into account factors like one-way streets and roundabouts. This significantly reduces the time and complexity involved in managing bus relations, making the tool a valuable asset for both new mappers and seasoned contributors.

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[broken link]

Along Pennsylvania’s freeways, there are emergency detour routes that allows travelers to bypass traffic accidents, inclement weather, and other road closures. Colors commonly used are black, blue, green, orange, and red. The detours are perhaps one of the least mapped features across Pennsylvania.

The best sources to consult are street-level photos from Mapillary and Bing Maps to establish which highways the particular route follows. I also recommend having a map nearby and to use colored pencils to mark the detour on the map.

Tagging the colored detours is quite easy using iD. Simply create a new Relation -> Route Features -> Detour Route.

Under Name, type in the name to be used, for example Orange Detour (I 79 Exits 121-130). Colors are used multiple times, so it is necessary to differentiate between them by including the ref for the highway being detoured and also the exit numbers that are being bypassed.

The Route Number in this case is Orange.

Because these detours are bidirectional, the from and to tags aren’t necessary.

The Colour tag would be orange.

Since I-79 is being detoured in this example, the Detour tag would be I 79.

Don’t forget to tag the directional role of the relation if the road being tagged is one way.

To make tagging easier, consult the OSM Wiki under the Detour page.

I have also published a YouTube video showing the best way of how to tag the relation.

I hope y’all find the resources helpful for adding the emergency detour routes across Pennsylvania.

Cross-posting from HOTOSM blog.

As we dive into the second half of 2023, we are thrilled to share the progress made by HOT and the Community Team in leveraging OSM data for informed decision making.

Hello! I’m Rubén Martín, HOT’s Community Strategist and Research Lead, and in this post, I aim to highlight our recent achievements and extend an invitation to OSM communities, contributors, organizations, and individuals interested in OSM data to collaborate with us on analysis and research endeavors.

Focusing on Actionable Insights: A Data-Driven Approach

At HOT, our data approach goes beyond satisfying curiosity; we strive to generate actionable insights that enable us to better support the communities utilizing Open Mapping to address local needs. Over the past months we have, together with our dedicated Data and Analysis Intern, Caleb Fagunloye (along with support from Benni Herfort at HeiGIT) made significant progress in two key areas outlined below:

• Better understand OSM Contributor Data and validate assumptions around contributors decline.

• Explore and experiment how to make OSM Data more accessible to non-technical people.

OSM Contributions Decline

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Making plans, so checking on the many sources for good hikes in an area. First, because it’s Six Rivers National Forest (mainly), I glance over the Forest Service topographic maps. There’s not a lot of trails showing on there in the area, but there’s three heading up to a selection of lookouts. There’s also a bunch of quarter mile spurs. Why? What sense do these make?

I check the USGS, but these are generally older and the information was supplied by the Forest Service anyway.

For the basic well known things, check AllTrails. It says you can cross country up Black Lassic. (I knew that already.) A community content tab appeared a few years back and you can find some good things here sometimes, but it’s always buried in a load of strange. There’s a bunch of strange in this area. Strange strange. Usually there’s a lot of long bike rides, but not here. Someone has apparently hiked the river underneath the reservoir. That’s fancy.

Hiking Project will often have a different set of trails. Actually, I find this a much more useable app for finding trails. Some of that is because even the free version will let you easily have the whole state downloaded. (It’s funding by outdoor venders and if they encourage you to wear out your gear, you’ll buy more gear.) Unfortunately it only has the nearby National Recreation Trail I already know about.

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A virtual discussion on the subject “Structure and Governance of a Local OSM Community” held on March 23, 2023 was the third of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Community Working Group Peer-to-Peer Learning Series aimed at supporting the new OSM chapters in Saint Lucia and Dominica. This session was attended by 18 members of the OSM Community from across the globe. The session was guided by some key questions on the subject; below are the major take-aways from this discussion.

What are the different roles that people can play in a local OpenStreetMap community?

The roles and responsibilities were discussed as a precursor to the discussion on the structure. It is important to identify what the community should consist of ahead of assessing how it is organized. The most common roles highlighted were mapper and trainer. However, roles such as sponsor, social media marketer, community coordinator, communications and project manager. Communications include posting on social media, blogs and even responding to questions on the forum.

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Though I am not a sophisticated mapper, I really enjoy updating the local POIs in my area. Here’s the story of one of adventures that I wrote for my town’s weekly newsletter, “Enthusiasms:

In Praise of OpenStreetMap

Last week, the climate officer from my local county council reached out to me to see whether “we” (i.e. OSM) had locations for drinking_water:refill mapped. (She used to be the heritage officer, so she knows well what I do).

After some confusion about what she meant (I thought holy wells…), I found that there was one mapped as amenity=drinking_water, but without the drinking_water:refill tag.

I presume the reason she is asking is that the council wants to install more, but doesn’t know where there are already some.

Some more research revealed that there are at least two providers in Ireland, both use GoogleMaps, one not very successfully: EcoFil. In agreement with the OpenStreetMap Ireland board, I sent emails to both companies to ask whether they could make their datasets open giving the county council analysis as one example for the usefulness of #OpenData in this case, pointing out that they could also benefit from a complete dataset.

(overpass-turbo for Republic of Ireland)

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😍

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to explore the possibilities of the Segment Anything Model (SAM) Segment Anything developed by Meta in OpenStreetMap mapping. SAM is a promising model in the field of image segmentation, and its potential application to fAIr could enable the tracing of various features on maps. This document provides an overview of SAM’s working mechanism, test cases conducted with SAM, and two potential integration ideas for utilizing SAM

SAM Working Mechanism

SAM operates directly on images and generates individual masks based on the training datasets used during model training. Unlike object detection models, SAM focuses on segmenting all elements present in an image, regardless of their nature, based on texture, color, and points of difference from the background and several others can be found on their research doc

Advantages of SAM for fAIr and OSM Mapping

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Thanks to planetiler, it is possible to run your own OpenMapTiles vector tile server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for less than $20 per month. This guide describes the process that I used to stand up tile.ourmap.us for the OSM Americana project, and it does require some knowledge of AWS. However, I taught myself how to use AWS, and I’ve tried to include enough details here to assist someone trying to stand up their own tileserver.

There are many different ways to do this, including different storage, hosting, and tileserver setups. This is just one option that worked for me for what I was trying to do.

The architecture

This setup in this guide assumes that infrequent planet updates is acceptable for your use case. So, we will spin up a powerful server to update the map only when needed, and use a low-powered server to run the HTTPS tile server on an ongoing basis. If you require more frequent map updates, this is probably not a good solution and you should consider dedicated hardware. The main advantage of AWS in this use case is the ability to rent a high-performance computer for a short period of time.

Additionally, this setup assumes that you already own a domain name that you can use to point to the tile server. If you don’t have one, you can purchase one on Google Domains for $12 per year.

In our setup, we will render a planet to a large file in .mbtiles format, and use tileserver-gl to serve that .mbtiles as an HTTPS server.

Another advantage of using AWS is that they host a locally-mirrored copy of the planet file. Therefore, it is posible to download the planet in a few minutes, which reduces the amount of time that we have to rent that high-powered server to render the planet.

When we say “render the planet,” it means the following operation:

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