OSM exists now since more than 20 years. During this time, a tagging scheme evolved. It has undergone several changes since, is partly approved by the community, but never anything was forced. The freedom to invent new tags is considered a strength of OSM.

The OSM tagging scheme is clearly a result of swarm intelligence, which is sometimes said to be superior. I wondered how well this worked and thus started to analyse it. I’ll probably blog about this in a loose series of blog posts, starting today with looking at the highway tag, which according to the wiki identifies “any kind of road, street or path.”

In most cases, OSM elements are categorised in a hierarchical manner, with every step narrowing the meaning of the former step: highway=service, service=driveway, driveway=garage for example. A top level type=highway is missing and has to be derived implicitly.¹

The values of a certain tag should ideally be choosen in a way, that there is a match for every object in the real world belonging to this category. And there should be only one match. So, a highway=service must not qualify for a highway=footway at the same time.

Restricting my study further, I choose to look only at values used for linear features, that is, way elements. There are about three dozen of common values in the database. They match the values listed at the wiki page.²

 

The Present: Criteria used for Highway Classification

When you are faced by a highway feature on the ground, which is not yet in the database, you have to decide about the value of the highway tag.

While it’s sometimes really easy to decide which value is correct, other situations lead to endless discussions in the forums. Such discussions are a hint that there is something wrong with these values. So I asked myself, by which criterion the values have been decided. As it turns out, there are severeal criteria in use, and they are mixed.

… See full entry

I once walked past a small building, spotted that it’s got an address, and added it to OSM. Then I walked past it again, the building had its facade updated–and the address was nowhere to be seen.

We map a lot of ‘virtual’ objects in OpenStreetMap, boundaries and routes, but even addresses, the holy grail of survey, often end up virtual.

Take osm.org/way/1173366729: there isn’t an address on the building’s facade, yet 2GIS and Yandex.Maps have one.

Is there a private data agreement between the government and map services? 2GIS had some kind of city district polygons (elections related?) that someone even gave a review to asking what they were, and the Ministry of Information and/or of Digital Development already love giving out personal data of citizens to random software companies and banks in the name of ‘digitization’ (my bank’s app has everyone’s status with the police inspectorate and the psychoneurological dispensary and boldly let you see your own!), so it’s very likely.

P.S. The first building is on the cadastre, but there’s no building number, and the latter isn’t even on there at all :/ And don’t even ask whether one may copy from there.

I have noticed that the Apple mapping team, in their work within Kazakhstan, consistently mismapped various highway=* ways, for example:

• Mistagging of courtyard highways from highway=service to highway=residential.[2]
• Retagging of a highway=footway to a highway=residential, seemingly without any on-the-ground knowledge.[3][4]
• Various other bizarre additions or edits to service highways (also often mistagged), that I sometimes corrected or rolled back.[5]

If the Apple team does not have familiarity with how the highway tags are applied in a country[6] (a country here with a small OpenStreetMap community at that), or the specifics of urban development that span half the continent, then they, simply, should not map, and definitely not make the state of the map ever so slightly worse.

• [1] Betteridge’s law of headlines applies…
• [2] osm.org/way/458088367
• [3] osm.org/way/458088370 (both from the changeset 161673895)
• [4] Truly it isn’t a footway, as seen on Google Streetview, but may have been impassable for cars in the past!
• [5] Here, based entirely on my subjective idea that if there isn’t a curve in the highway area, then the highway centerline shouldn’t curve: osm.org/way/1192930242
• [6] There aren’t Kazakhstan-specific guidelines, but the Russian guidelines are applicable, where внутридворовые проезды (courtyard passages) are highway=service: osm.wiki/RU:Highway_classification

P.S. If anyone wants to fix the scary copy-pasted magically north-aligned square houses that were mapped all across the country, which previously, in part, made me register an alternative account and instead map pointless foreign stuff you’re welcome :P

UMAP OF THE ATTENDEES CITIES - III WORKSHOP ON PARTICIPATORY MAPPING AND SOCIAL CARTOGRAPHY - MPCS 2025

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– Portuguese below

We would like to thank the 462 participants from 151 cities in eight countries for taking part of our event!

Tomorrow, August 27th, 2025, at 2 p.m. (UTC-3), the program of lectures, mapping workshop with OpenStreetMap, mapathon, and the release of the book Case studies in collaborative and participatory mapping (book in portuguese).

Information and registration on the portal:

https://eventyay.com/e/b4950013

Follow the entire program 100% ONLINE and LIVE on the Virtual Institute for Sustainable Development channel - IVIDES.org on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@IVIDES

Event’s Chairwoman: Dr. Raquel Dezidério Souto (IVIDES and UFRJ, Brazil)

 

See the full map - Veja o mapa em tela cheia

Map Data (Dados do mapa) 2025 © OpenStreetMap Contributors. License.

 

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… See full entry

A few bike lanes were added in the part of town I live in (yay!) and I’d like to add them.

However, I’ve mostly been using these apps to map things: * everydoor * map complete website * go map !! (rarely)

I cant find any way in map compete to add bike lanes – they added on the street, so effectively making the space for the cars narrower. Is there any simple way of going about and adding these types of lanes?

Thanks!

I’d like to share a simple method I’ve devised to map unfamiliar areas outdoors. Suppose you’d like create a GPX track of a park under the following constraints:

• GPS data is inherently inaccurate, so you’d like to walk each path exactly twice to improve accuracy.
• You’d like to finish an the exact point you started.
• You’re in the field, so you want to keep things simple and not use something too complicated.

Since the diary does not allow posting GIFs, the full post is in the community forum.

🎉 GSoC 2025 Final: Temporary Road Closures Database and API

Google Summer of Code 2025 • OpenStreetMap Foundation • Archit Rathod

After 15 weeks of intensive development, I’m thrilled to announce the successful completion of my Google Summer of Code 2025 project: Temporary Road Closures Database and API for the OpenStreetMap Foundation! 🎯

🚀 Live Demo - Try It Now!

Frontend: https://closures.osm.ch/
Backend API: https://api.closures.osm.ch/
GitHub: https://github.com/Archit1706/temporary-road-closures
GSoC Project: summerofcode.withgoogle.com

🎯 Problem Solved

OSM provides excellent static map data, but temporary road closures (construction, accidents, events) aren’t captured quickly enough for navigation apps. This project creates an open platform where communities can report closures in real-time and navigation apps can calculate closure-aware routes.

✨ What We Built

Complete Backend System

• FastAPI + PostgreSQL + PostGIS - Production-ready API with 25+ endpoints
• OpenLR integration - Universal location referencing for cross-platform compatibility
• OAuth2 + JWT authentication - Secure user management with Google/GitHub login
• Advanced spatial queries - Bounding box searches, proximity filtering, route analysis

Modern Frontend Application

• Next.js 15 + TypeScript - Interactive web interface with mobile optimization
• Leaflet maps - Real-time closure visualization with OpenStreetMap tiles
• Multi-step reporting - Guided forms for accurate closure submission
• Demo mode - Full functionality without registration for immediate testing

Closure-Aware Routing Innovation

• Valhalla API integration - Calculate routes that avoid relevant closures
• Transportation filtering - Car, bicycle, and pedestrian-specific closure relevance
• Route comparison - Direct vs. closure-aware route analysis
• Real-time optimization - Live route calculation considering current conditions

🌟 Key Innovations

OpenLR Integration

… See full entry

Latitude and Longitude: The Foundation of Map Reading

… See full entry

tl;dr: slightly less than an hour.

This was prompted initially by a forum comment (I can’t actually remember exactly where or by whom) that creating maps based on OSM was for “developers” and not “normal people” (not in those exact words), and by the thread here. The “slightly less than an hour” actually includes setting up a development environment from scratch on a new PC.

On that new PC I’ve already installed a text editor and a web server (“apache2”).

cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/SomeoneElse-vector-web-display
git clone https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker

In the first of those repositories there are a selection of map styles, including one that uses the OSMF demo vector tiles. Let’s first test that that works:

… See full entry

(english translation by OpenAI/chatgpt)

RETEX: Tagging Choices for My Urban Recycling Trekking

Hesitations, discussions, collisions with other contributors, changes, hesitations… but convergence.

to be continued maybe:

• journal entry (upcoming): Existential questions about my encounter with Panoramax

At first, tagging the operator since it’s the target of the trekking.

The operator is known here as GPSEO, or GPS\&O, or Grand Paris Seine and/& Oise… Which name to choose? Likewise, I encountered clothing containers from Le Relais or Emmaüs, and again, which names should be used?

my encounter with Wikidata

Thanks to the forum, I was guided towards Wikidata, which allows assigning a unique code to a large number of resources (companies, operators, municipalities, associations, widely known people, …).

Once the resource in question is given a Wikidata code, its Wikidata entry contains important data (name, website, Wikipedia reference, revenue, …) and thus allows all Wikipedia collaborative applications to access these elements in a common way. So it is enough to reference the operator’s Wikidata code in OSM tags to identify it uniquely and stably. From this code, it’s easy to retrieve the operator’s website, its Wikipedia reference, and other useful information without having to explicitly add them as OSM tags (which would require updating OSM every time the data changes).

A single concession seems necessary: I retrieved the operator’s official name from its Wikidata entry and added it as an OSM tag for readability.

And therefore:

operator=GRAND PARIS SEINE ET OISE operator:wikidata=Q19945071

Tags deliberately omitted because the information is evolving and can be found in the operator’s Wikidata article:

operator:wikipedia, operator:website, operator:short

And similarly:

operator=Emmaüs operator:wikidata=Q989437

operator=Le Relais operator:wikidata=Q16654240

ref or operator:ref

… See full entry

Night bed

Q4205816 and Q131521518 might seem two pretty obscure numbers formatted in an odd way. Plug them into a Wikidata Timeline, and you can see what has and has not been recorded

Greetings whoever is reading this, including my future self who may be the only audience.

I was invited earlier this year to take part in an exhibit called [“Compass Roses”] (https://www.compassroses.art/), which will be on view at Opalka Gallery in Albany, NY this Fall.

“Compass Roses: Maps by Artists is a national artwork co-curated by Nadine Wasserman and Renee Piechocki. The project offers a selection of maps created by visual, literary, and performing artists. “

I chose to make a map of Gun Violence Memorials in Albany. I was inspired by a memorial called Chyna’s World, a mural in memory of an 18-year old high school senior named Chyna Forney. Chyna was killed in crossfire in an incident when her boyfriend fired over 30 rounds at another man. The mural is painted at the location where the incident took place. After seeing this mural, I wondered if there were others like it.

I have been aware of the problem of gun violence for this entire century. I have perceived it from three aspects that touch but are distinct: school shootings, the eclipse of streetfighting, and police murder. I might say more about those three in this diary over the next few months, but for now I will just say that these have been buried the past five years by the sheer numbers of tragic gun deaths in this country, in my city, in my neighborhood, on my street. There were 10 shootings on my street when the world broke down during New York Pause, from April 27 2020 a few weeks into the pandemic through December 19, 2021. The nadir was the late night murder of 15-year old Destiny Greene, on a magical little street called Wilbur. I remembered the temporary monument that Destiny’s family had set up on Wilbur Street, and the attempts by some neighbors to set up a permanent memorial for shooting victims.

… See full entry

Vector Tile styles require icons are served in a sprite sheet. This contains all of the icons in one file. Years ago there were a few options for these, none of them great. These days, there are three common options: spreet, @basemaps/sprites, and sprite-one. The first is written in Rust while the other two are written in Javascript.

All have the same basic functionality of turning a folder of SVGs into a json+png spritesheet, and doing so at multiple resolutions. Spreet has the additional option of de-duplicating icons. If two icons are identical it will only put one copy in the PNG and reference the same image twice.

I benchmarked all three options with two sets of sprites: all the SVGs from OpenStreetMap Carto, and the OpenStreetMap Americana icons. The former is 973 icons and the latter is 248 icons. These are larger than a typical set of icons but are a good test.

	Test	spreet	sprite-one	@basemaps/sprites
osm-carto SVGs	@1x pixels	4194304	4078074	8339456
osm-carto SVGs	@1x bytes	513159	763531	837792
osm-carto SVGs	@1x bytes after oxipng	474750	649894	706845
osm-carto SVGs	@2x bytes	1442588	2176457	2411489
osm-carto SVGs	@2x bytes after oxipng	1325707	1896784	2088729
osm-americana	@1x pixels	128265	122400	151760
osm-americana	@1x bytes	75749	91870	92066
osm-americana	@1x bytes after oxipng	75497	84986	85828
osm-americana	@2x bytes	136177	213876	210650
osm-americana	@2x bytes after oxipng	132462	197687	194950

… See full entry

I’m importing boundaries in Croatia, and I’m almost done. So I wanted to describe my process so that someone else maybe doesn’t have to rediscover this process. Maybe there is a better one, but I didn’t find it.

Croatia in OpenStreetMap had admin_level=7 borders imported, but the borders were not precise. So my job was to import admin_level=8 into these. I had the data in .osm format, and a license that is compatible. I wanted to keep the history of the old boundaries, so deleting everything and just copying inside wasn’t a choice.

First we need JOSM, and some experience with it. We turn on the Expert Mode in View. We need to install the plugin “utilsplugin2”. Then we go to Map Paint Styles in Preferences, and turn on the “Admin Boundaries” style.

So the process goes like this. In JOSM I open the .osm file with all the admin_level=8 boundaries. Then I download the area where I intend to work, but I use “Download from Overpass API” feature. In it I add the next Overpass query:

[out:xml][timeout:90][bbox:{{bbox}}];
(
relation["boundary"="administrative"];
)-> .adminrelations;
(  .adminrelations;
  way(r);
) -> .ways;
(
  node(w.ways);
)-> .nodes;

way(bn.nodes);
(._;<;); (._;>;);
out meta;

What this query does is it downloads all the boundary relations, and all the ways that are connected to them.

1. Disconnecting

Next step I did was to disconnect all the roads, forests, rivers and anything that is not a boundary from the existing boundaries. I upload that, and later download a cleaner situation.

2. Splitting

… See full entry

When using OSM’s iD editor in New South Wales, Australia, there are multiple background layers you can enable that show aerial/satellite imagery. Different imagery sources can vary greatly in terms of how recent and/or blurry they are. Here I’ll discuss my experience using them.

DCS NSW Imagery

This is my preferred imagery source, primarily because it’s very clear even at high zoom levels. You can see lots of detail which makes it great for mapping.

Unfortunately it’s also the oldest of the imagery sources for NSW. In Armidale it’s dated 2018, but other towns can be as old as 2009! You can enable the “DCS NSW Imagery Dates” overlay to see what date the imagery for a given area was taken.

Esri World Imagery

… See full entry

Hello, I would like to ask if in your country there are officially designated areas designated by local authorities (such as municipalities, civil protection agencies, emergency services, etc.) for:

Short-term population management (assembly points, waiting areas, temporary gathering places after an event). Long-term population management (tent camps, temporary housing sites, large shelters). Management of external rescue operations in response to the call (logistics bases, areas dedicated to external rescuers arriving from elsewhere, equipment sorting areas). These areas would be part of civil protection / emergency management planning, mapped and designated in advance, not improvised during the event.

Do such areas exist in your country? And if so, are they publicly available (e.g., through official maps, open data, local plans)?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/existence-of-designed-civil-protection-areas-in-your-country/134249

I had the privilege of presenting about weeklyOSM at COSCUP 2025, Taiwan’s largest open source conference, held on August 9–10, 2025, at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) in Taipei. This year also marked COSCUP’s 20th anniversary, making it an especially meaningful event to join in celebrating open source.

About My Presentation

My talk, titled “Behind the Scenes of weeklyOSM: How We Share OSM News Every Week,” focused on the inner workings of our community-driven newsletter.

For those unfamiliar, weeklyOSM is an independent, multilingual publication that has summarized developments in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world every week for more than a decade—now surpassing 780 editions.

Key Topics

During the session, I highlighted:

• weeklyOSM’s Mission – Connecting mappers worldwide by bringing local stories to a global audience. We aim to be the heartbeat of the OSM community, delivering the pulse of mapping activities around the globe.
• Independence – weeklyOSM operates as an independent media platform, unaffiliated with any organization (including OSMF), and delivers news in over 15 languages to ensure accessibility for everyone.
• Our Toolchain – A closer look at OSMBC (OpenStreetMap Blog Collector), the open-source platform we use for collecting, authoring, translating, reviewing, and publishing news.
• How We Collect News – From OSM diaries, community channels, and social media, to direct submissions, ensuring comprehensive and balanced coverage.
• Taiwan’s Role – Taiwan’s active mapping scene and unique events, such as night market mapping parties, which exemplify how local stories can inspire and educate a global audience.

Why COSCUP Was the Right Place

… See full entry

… See full entry

Background

I’ve mapped in OSM for many years now, but more of my work and been Bike-Pedestrian related, and I’ve only just come back around to mapping streets their widths and their number of lanes as a means to start evaluating crossings in our area. This means, despite my many years of mapping, I’m pretty terrible at getting the number of lanes forward/backward/both_ways and the corresponding turns associated with them correct. It’s just not that intuitive, although I can’t think of a better option.

My solution

A while back I discovered the JOSM ‘map paint styles’ specifically the lanes and enhances lane styles and combined with some tagging presets I’ve gotten acceptable at mapping major roads and the ability to visualize if I’m doing things right is a huge benefit.

The 12m (39’) of road that once visualized, haunts me.

… See full entry