This text is a continuation of my previous diary and do what the title says. The draft already existed 6 months ago, but just today I’m publishing this diary. Anyway, there’s comment I head about this on the @Wikimaps telegram

“You seem to be doing what we were doing 10+ years ago before Wikidata existed” – Maarten Dammers opinion on what this approach doing

Well, he’s right… but there’s a reason for that. This diary have 4 parts, the examples are on 3.

1. Preface

This extension could be perceived as one approach to make general proposed data extraction from OpenStreetMap Wiki, which , in a ABox vs TBox dicotomy, is the closest of a TBox for OpenStreetMap (*).

*: if we ignore id-tagging-schema and, obviously, other custom strategies to explain the meaning of OpenStreetMap data, which could include cartocss used to explain how to render as image. I do have a rudimentary draft of try to make sense of all of her encodings here, but not ready for today.

1.1 Wikibase is not consensus even between what would be ontologists on OpenStreetMap

Tip: for those wanting to view/review some past discussions, check https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Minh_Nguyen/Wikidata_discussions#Wikidata_link_in_wiki_infoboxes. The same page from Minh Nguyen has other links, such as discussions to remove the entire Wikibase extension from OSM.wiki at https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/764.

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🗺️🦀 Hello to the OpenStreetMap community,

I am happy to announce my latest project, osm-budynki-orto-import — a fully autonomous building import tool currently in operation in Poland. This is my next step towards making OpenStreetMap (OSM) a more dynamic and efficient platform.

This tool is designed with the objective of making building import process simpler and more accurate. The system utilizes official building data in conjunction with ortophoto imagery to validate the accuracy of the data before importing it.

At the heart of this tool lies an advanced computer vision model, with a precision as high as 99.7%. This accuracy is, in my opinion, superior to the capabilities of most average mappers, providing a faster and more reliable way of mapping structures.

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Last fall I posted about “Living Streets of OpenStreetMap US”. In Las Vegas, I encountered two pedestrian streets (tagged with highway=pedestrian), and they’re in an outdoor mall.

The next aisle over, by the Panera, is a walkable area tagged with benches but doesn’t have highway=pedestrian. I mapped a bike rack.
There’s also a splash pad on the map, which isn’t in any of the standard OSM renderers.

While visiting Moab, I corrected the new Utah Raptor state park to “Utahraptor”, and added two sculptures downtown (“Get Your Mind Rolling” was memorable).

I added some local businesses, parking access roads, residential access roads in a new development, etc. There are a good number of bike racks in national parks which ought to be mapped.

Shortly after I posted about bikes in northern Wisconsin / Lake Superior area, I found BicycleBenefits.org through the local co-op. Get discounts!

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We have organized mapathons in Prague. We planned them, met on site, trained new mappers, mapped something and went to the pub. There we discussed and planned and exchanged our ideas. We called ourselves the core team. (I am only writing in the past tense because I am not there anymore; there is actually still a core team organizing mapathons in Prague.)

I was involved in Missing Maps CZ & SK from 2016 to 2020. I was involved in organizing mapathons. During that time I wrote and still maintain the mapathoner plugin. I like free software and I know that it is different from open source. I lobbed for openness. In 2020, I published Divide and map. Now. – the damn project and still maintain it. In 2022 I wrote simple hot intersecting areas and have not updated it since.

I am not sure if it’s time for this diary, but I want to write down my opinion about the core team and the community, because we have been talking about the community and the core team all along. And in my opinion, these two terms are often misunderstood.

DISCLAIMER: These are my own views. Please read this diary accordingly. I am in no way affiliated with OSMF, Missing Maps, HOT, MSF or the Red Cross.

Have you heard of WHAT, WHY, HOW and WHO questions? This is one of my favorite ways to discuss things.

Missing Maps’ WHAT and WHY are clear from their website. Let me put it another way: map the (vulnerable people of the) world because it’s a good thing. WHO is the community, the mappers. HOW is decided by the core team.

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I had added the odd sewer pipe using man_made=sewage_vent, because I had spotted some and was curious what they were. But someone in the Irish community had pointed out the under-documentation of man_made tags, so I did a bit of work, looked it up on wikidata and decided to go for man_made=sewer_vent instead. (I thought that man_made=sewer_ventilation_pipe was a bit long.) I retagged the existing ones which weren’t many anyway and added a few more from Wikimedia, especially in England, where many were covered by geograph.co.uk and one particular user (Rodhullandemu) especially. By Phil Nash from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Some in Ireland and in England are listed monuments, believe it or not.

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Sometimes you want to say thank you to corporate mappers. Most other times though…

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I want to improve/update the lane information on the US highways where I traveled (maybe I’ll come back there one day and use OSM for navigation). The first one is US 6 in Utah, a part of the route between Salt Lake City and Moab, where great Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are. Bing aerial imagery is pretty good and recent in the US, so it’s pleasant to use. It’ll be an ongoing project in between other mapping.

What I’m mapping:

• number of lanes, turn lanes, change lanes (near intersections), placement;
• removing note:lanes where it’s now redundant;
• turn restrictions including implicit ones;
• connectivity relations inferred from road markings;
• occasionally aligning the road to the Bing aerial photos.

I discovered an unrecorded shipwreck recently on Bing imagery, but because I don’t have the energy to put it all into words again, I’ll just copy and paste the press release I sent out today. It’ll be another chance to get the word out about OpenStreetMap.

I also made a video about it, but it’s a but all over the place, because I recorded, as the story developed, so it might be jumping around a bit. Sorry.

https://youtu.be/0gKV-SA1iNE

wikidata entry

Press release

Craft mapper discovers shipwreck after almost 100 years

Volunteer OpenStreetMap contributor Anne-Karoline Distel discovered a shipwreck on July 9th 2023 in the River Barrow. It was identified as the Tresness, a three-mast schooner which sank on August 21st 1929 on its way from New Ross to St. Mullins.

Anne had been mapping along the River Barrow using newly released Bing satellite imagery, when she discovered the wreck which is about 25m long and clearly visible on the imagery, possibly because the photographs were taken at low tide. After consulting with underwater archaeologist Jimmy Lenehan, she reported the discovery to Karl Brady at the Underwater Archaeology Department of the National Monument Service. Karl was able to identify the ship; it had made the news in the Irish Independent, the Northern Whig and Belfast Post and many other newspapers at the time.

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THE BEGINNING: Let’s do a reunion in Kosovo! That was my first reaction when I was first introduced to the idea of FOSS4G conference last year (when I was still in New Zealand) by our host Gresa Neziri, one of the main persons at the event, and a dear friend. Luka and Slavica, my two other Balkan friends were also joining. Exciting! Although, I have moved away from spatial data analysis for my research, the opportunity to reconnect with old friends from ITC, Netherlands and potentially connect my research on disasters and ethics with spatial planning was an opportunity I did not want to miss.

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Recording 100tracks by 10eps b4 August 15,,by da illest#nijatrapwahala #ika #1tahdaillest #kastleshit #ceekindatinx

A virtual discussion on the subject “The Sustainability of OpenStreetMap Communities” held on July 4th, 2023 was the sixth 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. What follows are some key takeaways from that discussion.

The session got underway with an icebreaker of sorts where participants were asked to give one word that could be used to describe a sustainable OpenStreetMap community. The question garnered 19 responses, including: inclusive, resilient, accessible, accountable, self-sustained, and active.

What are the potential challenges or barriers to sustaining an OSM community?

The question received about 21 responses. Lack of resources was a commonly repeated theme, with the key resource being financial.

Other challenges highlighted include a lack of motivation and the inability to replace leaving members. It was noted that language differences can also be a factor.

Additionally, there were personal testimonies of challenges, for example, Covid 19 stopped in-person meetings for OSM Kenya forcing online meetings, which hindered some of the members.

What funding models or strategies can be implemented to ensure the long-term sustainability of an OSM Community?

This question was particularly relevant coming off of identifying the lack of financial resources as a prevalent challenge to the sustainability of an OSM community. Again 21 responses were generated.

Membership fees were raised as an avenue for fundraising, but some felt that it might be counterintuitive as it may scare away would-be members.

A key source of possible funding is grants from the OSM foundation, although it was more typical for newly forming communities.

The groups’ earning potential was also discussed, for instance maybe the community should be allowed to take up a funded project or use the varied skill sets within the group for earning finances.

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I’ve added a new page to the switch2osm guide: “Manually building a tile server (Debian 12)”.

Mostly it’s minor changes only from Debian 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 - new versions of software, that sort of thing. Where new manual steps have to be carried out, the guide describes them. Debian 12 itself does have some differences - “syslog” is no longer created by default, so debugging changes slightly.

I’ve also updated a couple of other pages such as the replication ones to reflect that Debian 12 is now a supported operating system.

Separately to that, I’ve moved map.atownsend.org.uk (which uses a related may style) from an Ubuntu 22.04 server to a Debian 12 one. There was nothing wrong with the old one, but the hosting provider I use was offering higher spec ARM servers for essentially the same price as the old AMD one I was using, so it made sense to move.

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I recently had to drop off some bottles and every store I went to had no bottle return machine (no pant automats anywhere!) so I might try and add some info on this on grocery stores I went to. If there’s no tag, I may just add a recycling point inside the store.

Finding that adding sidewalks take a lot of time.

There’s this absolutely marvelous tool that offers Overpass tutorial with a storytelling approach. You get hints at how queries should be modified, and can try them out against real data, progressing as you find new bits of information from OSM data.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit out of date compared to the current live data in the OSM database, and breaks somewhere around step 6.

Still, even if you haven’t used Overpass before, the first five steps can be useful - and maybe the project gets revived :)

On the 6th - 7th of July, I and my team members were at Ayete and its environs in Ibarakpa North of Oyo state Nigeria to collect data on safe places for female genital mutilation.

For some reason, I have decided to re-engulf myself within OSM. I have found almost an entire city in south Colorado, devoid of houses mapped, and have thusly made it my mission to map them. After 3 days of mapping, I would deduce that I am about 10% done with all of these houses. Progress is certainly being made.

Hi everyone!

This is a blog post providing an update on the progress of my project, which aims to improve the search experience in Japan. My project is 12 weeks long, and we are currently in the 7th week.

How did we approach it?

Based on our research, we identified two key areas for enhancing the search experience. These two aspects are interconnected, and we are working on resolving them simultaneously.

Searching for addresses: Currently, Nominatim focuses on the addr:street and addr:place tags when searching for addresses. However, in Japan, addresses are primarily based on block addresses, and the street component is less significant. Therefore, we need to ensure that Nominatim can appropriately assign the correct parent when conducting searches.

Importing data: Nominatim generates a database from an OSM planet file. To accommodate the block address system in Japan, we are adding a new sanitization function to adjust Japanese addresses. This will ensure that the data generated from the OSM planet file aligns with the block address structure, similar to the changes made on the searching side.

Progress Update

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