I’m writing this entry mainly to say that I intend to put maxspeed tags on a lot more Champaign streets now that I have the information I need to be on pretty firm ground in doing so. That information is in the form of the default (read: non-posted) speed limits on roads in Illinois and Champaign.

First, the Illinois state laws on this. According to the Illinois Vehicle Code the speed limit in urban areas regardless of whether it’s residential, a business district, or an industrial area is 30 MPH unless otherwise posted. In alleys it’s 15 MPH. The one exception is near schools where the limit is 20 MPH, but signs must be posted in those areas.

The Champaign Code of Ordinances is the same with one exception: the university district. Here the unposted speed limit goes down to 25 MPH. If you’re wondering what the definition of that district is, it’s in the definition section but I’ll quote it here since it’s short enough:

University District means that area within the following boundary: Start at University and First, proceed east along University south row line to Wright, proceed south on Wright (extended) along City limit line (located at the back of east curb) to Windsor, proceed west on Windsor along north row line to Neil, proceed north on Neil along east row line to Springfield, proceed east on Springfield along south row line to First, proceed north on First along east row line to beginning.

Keep in mind it does not include the section of the University of Illinois that’s in Urbana. I’m focusing on Champaign so I’ll leave it to you to look up Urbana’s code on this.

The point of all this is that unless a speed limit is otherwise posted or a street or road goes through the University District it’s safe to set maxspeed=30 mph on streets and roads and maxspeed=15 mph on alleys, even without a sign.

… See full entry

Since 06 February when the first earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, more than 6,500 mappers have mobilised to contribute to the response through the creation and improvement of OpenStreetMap data.

On 09 Feb, I wrote a diary post about whether the OSM data being contributed by mappers and validators in Turkey and Syria was helping anybody. This one builds on that theme…

Below is a selection of maps and map products being used by responders that incorporate OpenStreetMap data (gathered through searching data sources on maps and data products on ReliefWeb, the MSF Geo Centre and through what people are reporting on the HOT disaster-mapping slack channel). Click through the links to explore the maps yourself…

☝️Map from REACH: Northwest Syria — Earthquake Exposed Communities

… See full entry

I am Austrian and have been working with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in Vienna until I retired to Ireland in 2020.

I always liked maps and I got interested in OpenStreetMap at some point, recognizing the great potential of it. I also got interested in Irish placenames after moving to a Gaeltacht area on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. During the Covid lockdowns I started some mapping of Irish placenames, but at some point I gave up, as I did not really see an audience for it and found it rather time consuming.

Recently I learned that some people in our the community want to record the Irish names of farmers fields, which until now have been passed on by word only from one generation to the other. But this does not work anymore, and there is fear in the older generation that the names will be lost forever.

When I heard this I suggested to map the fields and their names and did some testing with OpenStreetMap, which worked very well and was much appreciated by members of the community and of CFLT ([Comharchumann Forbartha an Leith Triúigh] (https://www.cflt.ie/)).

I am not only mapping disconnected field areas, but instead I first add field boundaries as barriers with proper tagging (wall, hedge,…) and then build a relation documenting the land use and adding the field name to it. This way it is not only about displaying field names on the map but also adds useful details for navigation and avoiding unnatural and bad looking gaps between landuse areas.

To be able to extract all this data for producing specialized maps for the community using QGIS and also as backup, the features are tagged with a new tag key cflt:category

Authors: Heather Leson, Said Türksever

(Map data: OpenStreetMap contributors) Click here for the animated version.

OSM communities continue to respond to the Türkiye and Syrian earthquakes. We seek your help this weekend and have some guidance. OSM communities and individuals have been great in helping complete mapping tasks.

Your impact

You’ve had a great impact. See the OSM wiki for examples of how emergency responders are using your edits and how OpenStreetMap communities contributed

… See full entry

I tend to wonder a bit about this community we supposedly have. In about 6 years of edits, but only about 200 edits, I had one single interaction with community and it’s still bugging me 2 years later.

You see, this character wandered over to my changeset and commented that they had removed a trail because it “might be misleading” and they couldn’t find it on their USGS map.

Which is cute considering the USGS for the area doesn’t date back to 1995 like much of them. It dates back to 1960. You can’t find the Redwood National Park on most of it, much less any of the trails the park has made. You find the logging roads the park has actively and successfully decommissioned. The one thing you can be sure about USGS for this area is that it is wrong. Heck, I hiked on a combination of Forest Service and USGS maps all over the west for a couple years and I’ve gotten to a point that if I see these two sources agreeing, I am certain I’ll run into something very different on the ground. It’s better than a coin flip. So it’s not even uncommon that USGS is wrong. It’s just particularly wrong in this area. And it should be obvious.

But it wasn’t to this new then mapper. So they submitted this changeset to “exclude a non-existing trail”.

It’s an official trail! It literally has signs at both ends pointing it out! When you get a permit to backpack here, they send you a map that includes this trail! Yes, with all those fords that have been left swimming there in the creek. I painstakingly got it onto that map using my GPS track from actually hiking this actual trail and imagery. That track bounced around a lot there under the big trees making it quite an effort. I want this trail back.

So that bit of community didn’t leave a good taste.

… See full entry

I received the following reply from Bill Beaver, Senior GIS Analyst for Santa Cruz County, Arizona in regards to copyright and importing data. All county GIS data (hosted at https://sccaz-gis.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html) except parcel data is in the public domain and not copyrighted.

I have created the user SantaCruzCountyAZImport for this import.

From: Bill J. Beaver <bbeaver@santacruzcountyaz.gov>
Date: Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:02 AM
Subject: RE: OpenStreetMap and SCC GIS Copyright
To: Galen Asphaug <...>


Hi Galen,

Anything on that site is open data except parcels. To download the data in various formats try our public data share at: https://v953w.app.goo.gl/CtgX

Bill

Bill Beaver | Senior GIS Analyst
Santa Cruz County IT Department
275 Rio Rico Dr. #1
Rio Rico AZ 85648
(520) 375-7786

-----Original Message-----
From: Galen Asphaug <...>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2023 11:51 PM
To: Bill J. Beaver <bbeaver@santacruzcountyaz.gov>
Subject: OpenStreetMap and SCC GIS Copyright

Hello, I hope this message finds you well.

Thank you for making Santa Cruz County GIS data available to the public. My name is Galen Asphaug. I am a contributor to the OpenStreetMap project, a collaborative open project to create a global geodata set freely usable by anyone.

We respect the intellectual property rights of others, and I write to ask if we may use your data. We are interested in reproducing some of the data hosted at https://sccaz-gis.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html
(specifically: building footprints, addresses, road names and paths, and 'Patagonia Addresses with Businesses' data). This is a fantastic dataset and we appreciate the field work.

Can you please clarify what license (if any) this data is being shared with?

Thank you again for helping to ensure that this data is being used as widely as possible, and to support the general public and local commerce.

Galen Asphaug.

10 days ago, I wrote an essay about Bing Map Builder and how it could be used to fork the OSM community.

I made a prediction there:

Assume that Bing Map Builder becomes a really decent and good editor and that about a third of the edits happen through Map Builder. Microsoft could then -at some time in the future- decide to let updates from Map Builder flow to Bing Maps first, and only let them flow towards OpenStreetMap at a later time, “to review them for quality”.

It seems that this prediction has become true already (1). In the discussion under my previous entry, people noticed that “no bing accounts appeared anymore” in the new to OSM-listing. Time to re-investigate!

So, what is the behaviour now? I drew a new building, clicked saved and… the building disappeared from my screen. When opening the network console, this network call proved my suspicions. The created data is now sent towards https://bing.com/mapbuilder/changeset/submit and contains the changeset data (and bit of extra information)

… See full entry

As hinted at in my last diary post, I had taken up mapping National Monuments in Ireland using the key ref:IE:nm (as documented in the wiki). I can’t quite remember when I started and how and why, but I think I noticed the numbers in the National Monuments calendar which was kindly sent to me by Jean Farrelly from the National Monuments Service (I presume in recognition of my engagement with them in the shape of reporting possible unknown monuments).

According to ohsome.org, I started on January 20th which happens to be the same day I created the wiki page, makes perfect sense. I “finished” (see TODO below) with Co. Tipperary yesterday.

The first numbers, I added from above mentioned, beautiful calendar (and the 2022 one), but of course, that only gives you roughly 12 per year. (Some beautiful sites are repeatedly presented, apparently.)

… See full entry

been peeing a lot at chipotle recently!

Hoping to get some free time this weekend to map around my neighborhood

1. Pat Metheny, anything jazz/fusion related
2. Nathan Salsburg and related guitar rock
3. Krautrock compilations

I have just spent the last 2 months “intensely” making observations around lesser populated areas in WA’s southwest almost solely from the vehicle drivers seat. I then enter that data into OSM ID most afternoons/nights.

The tools;

• Forward looking 8.3MP/4K dashcam 2FPS
• Left facing (270 degrees) old Samsung 8MP phone 0.3FPS
• Left rear facing (225 degs) 1.3MP webcam 1FPS
• The dashcam records audio (my voice) in one minute chunks
• All photos and audio are geo-referenced to their current location
• The Garmin navigation GPS has a current OSM based map, a POI set of all WA stopping places from MRWA and any OSM FixMe’s.

The methods;

Most of the data is by voice prompts that are reviewed afterwards, but a small proportion come from only viewing (mainly) the 270 camera images of shop etc fronts and signs. It is surpising how useful the multiple camera views are.

Voiced items;

… See full entry

About a year ago, I started working as the maintainer of the iD editor for the OSMF. Here’s a short recap of the last year or so and a bit of outlook of what’s lying ahead according to me.

A look back

The year was characterized by the reactivation of processes which had been dormant for a little while before I started:

The tagging schema repository has received regular releases (about one major update every second month on average) after been mostly dormant in the year before. Many of the improvements to the tagging schema came in by various contributors from the community: Thanks to everyone who took part in this, including everyone actively translating on Transifex!

For iD itself, I soon learned that it is better to perform small iterative improvements, rather than tackling big reworks all at once. Therefore, my focus in the last year was primarily on stability, bug fixes and incremental improvements. There were still a few improvements to point out from last year:

• version 2.21 switches the development build system to a more modern system based on esbuild and droped support for Internet Explorer 11
• version 2.22 contains a first step towards making iD understand lifecycle prefixes of tags
• version 2.23 significantly improves startup times, improved input fields in various ways and introduced a few improvements under the hood to manage presets
• version 2.24 adds a remaining input length indicator for fields which are constrained to OSM tags’ maximum length of 255 characters and introduces a new field type for directional tags

A glimpse ahead

Another highlights of the year 2022 was the State of the Map conference in Firenze, where I spoke about the history of the iD editor (in summer 2023, it will celebrate 10 years of being the default editor on osm.org!), and tried to explain what the mid to long term high level goals are which I would like to tackle for iD. I identified five big topics to work on:

… See full entry

I’ve been closely involved with the journey Rapid is on. The first version of Rapid was released in 2019 as the first OSM editor that added machine learning-derived layers you could easily add to OSM in one click: roads from Meta and building footprints from Microsoft. This groundbreaking work enabled efficient, but human powered adding of vetted external data to OSM, and continues to be one of the most widely used methods for doing so. Since the original launch, a collaboration with Esri’s community data program added many additional layers of authoritive data available to add to OSM in the same way.

As government agencies continue to make more data available to OSM through Rapid (around 145 as of now, with hundreds of millions of features), work on version 2 started in early 2022. Developers Ben Clark and Bryan Housel presented the early stages at State of the Map US in Tucson last March, and followed up with a more technical talk about the underlying technology changes at FOSS4G in Firenze. Alpha versions of version 2 have been circulating since then. I have been using these extensively, especially in the past two months. I’ve been barraging Ben and Bryan with bugs and feature requests, as have many others who have participated in the alpha testing phase. A ton of issues have been resolved since the first alpha release, and we’re very happy with where we are with Rapid 2.0. Happy enough to launch version 2 beta today! 🎉

What’s new in Rapid 2.0

If you haven’t used Rapid at all yet, this is a great opportunity to try it for the first time. Many things will feel familiar if you’ve used the built-in editor on openstreetmap.org, but you will also notice small conveniences you won’t find there—or anywhere—like a shortcut to quickly cycle through highway types when you have a way selected, “virtual nodes” that are displayed for polygons with POI tags and improved polygon labeling:

… See full entry

I’ve created a small josm preset for the 2023 Turkey earthquake for use with HOT mapping.

If something is missing go and edit the preset ;)

I’d used the OSM editor for work some time ago, and decided to practice a bit- using my own stomping grounds as the subject material.

I don’t know if any Locals are trying to keep up with the Town’s alterations, but I still haven’t fixed ‘Costumes, Balloons, and Stuff;’ It’s still on the map despite having closed Six and a Half Years Ago. I’ll get it next time. ((Not that I want to. I really miss that place.))

I fixed a few of the nagging sidewalk issues, and some of the more popular buildings and businesses. Remove the demolished bridge, that sort of thing.

That’s it. I just wanted OSM to reflect the local reality.

Rooftop area in Kathmandu Valley. I am interested in estimating the total rooftop area of Kathmandu valley residential homes. It will be helpful in order to estimate the solar PV potential of the valley.

Separating features

• To split a line, select the node, then click on Tools >Split Way (P shortcut). Unglue the node using the shortcut G.

• Buildings tool or Mapathoner plugin: To merge overlapping buildings, join them using shortcut Shift+J (same shortcut for joining node to way).

• To create a circular building, create a line (A), then while it is selected, use Shift+O.

First, I want to thank God, the almighty for His blessings and grace always. It’s indeed an honor to represent my beloved country, Sierra Leone and my unique university, Central University SL at the 2023 YouthMappers Leadership Fellowship Summit in Jamaica(Jan 5-12,2023)

Being certified as 2023 YouthMappers Leadership Fellow is something that has inspired me more. The 2023 YouthMappers summit helped me explore in different important areas. I was opportuned to learn about leadership, equity and inclusion and climate change and resilience and geospatial mapping tools and softwares.

Special thanks to YouthMappers,the organizers and our sponsors USAID, Texas Tech University, Arizona University, George Washington University and West Virginia University. We are grateful for the support and knowledge impacted.

Special thanks also to the Openstreet Map Team,Sierra Leone and the YouthMappers Regional Ambassador Sierra Leone for the guidance and mentoring.

A big thank you to Central University Management and my hardworking team, Central University YouthMappers. I am proud to be a Centralist. Thanks to my family and friends for the support. I am blessed to have you all. I am always grateful to you all.

YouthMappers

#ymsummit2023 #Openstreetmap #EverywhereSheMap #centraluniversityyouthmappers

It’s that time again: we are ready to announce the third Baltics-located conference on OpenStreetMap and everything around it! Just like three years ago, we are joining the BalticGIT org team to have an opportunity to gather everyone interested in open data and open tools to present their work, meet other mappers and developers, and spend two days in a beautiful city on a super wide river.

Mark the date: 18-19 May (that’s Thursday and Friday!) in Riga, Latvia.

See the website for details.

The RIX airport is a home base to AirBaltic which has flights from like a hundred locations around the world. It’s really easy and affordable to come. So, we would be delighted to meet you there!

We are opening the call for papers. Please submit your topics, and we (me, that is) will contact you. We understand it’s just three months, but again, this is an OSM event, where there are new things every month :)

Registration will open a bit later, which we will also announce.