Interesting things have been happening for OpenStreetMap in Iceland recently. The city of Reykjavík just approved that they'll be commissioning an interactive cycle and pedestrian map base on "open data" (aka. OpenStreetMap data). And there are upcoming talks between OpenStreetMap contributors on Iceland and the city's own GIS team, perhaps we'll get a data donation as well.

The background is that the minority Independence Party with Gísli Marteinn Baldursson (a member of Reykjavík city council and cycle enthusiast) made the news in Iceland recently with Gísli's suggestion that they city commission an interactive cycle map for the city. Gísli pointed out that Seattle already had such a map, linking to Ride The City, a cycle map based on OpenStreetMap data.

I, Björgvin Ragnarsson and others in the Icelandic OpenStreetMap community promptly responded (in Icelandic) that numerous such websites for Iceland already existed based on OpenStreetMap data. And that the city's resources would be best spent not by commissioning their own proprietary system (as they've done for their bus network routing), but instead that they should contribute to such open data efforts.

To reinforce the point we bought hjolavefsja.is (literally: cyclemap.is) and worked with the fantastic guys at Ride The City to make a cycle map for Reykjavík with an Icelandic interface in a hurry. They did all the work, we just contributed the translation.

Gísli and others in government liked the idea, and approved it formally at a recent meeting.

The relevant part is article 8 which states that the city will commission an online cyclemap and pedestrian routing application, and that its implementation shall use open source software and open geodata.

As if that wasn't good enough Björgvin and others will be having a meeting with the city's GIS department.

… See full entry

hjólavefsjá.is er komin hálfa leiðina í loftið. Ëg fjallaði áður um þörfina á þessu verkefni í fyrri bloggpósti.

Hér er líka önnur grein um verkefnið, Gísli Marteinn tekur vel í þetta, vonandi kemur eitthvað haldbært út úr þessu.

Í dag lögðu fulltrúar D-listans í Reykjavík fram tillögu þess efnis að gerð verði hjólavefsjá fyrir Reykjavík. Gísli Marteinn Baldursson - sem áður hefur beitt sér fyrir málefnum hjólreiðafólks - greinir frá þessu á blogginu sínu, og umfjöllun má einnig nálgast á mbl.is og visir.is.

Grunnhugmyndin er góð, Gísli Marteinn bendir á máli sínu til stuðnings viðlíka hjólavefsjá fyrir Seattle, og virðist leggja til (ég hef ekki lesið sjálfa greinagerðina) að Reykjavík búi til álíka vefviðmót fyrir sína sýn, og nefnir þar strætó.is máli sínu til stuðnings.

Slíkir vefir eru nothæfir, en það er hægt að gera mun betur með meiri áherslu á frjáls gögn en einstaka vefi.

Vefurinn fyrir Seattle er ekkert nema þunn sýn á OpenStreetMap kortagögnin, og er varla meira en dagsverk að búa svona sýn til. Seattle kortasýnin notar CloudMade forritunarviðmótið fyrir sína vegvísun, og er hægt að nálgast álíka sýn fyrir Reykjavík bæði á vef CloudMade, og á fjölmörgum öðrum vefum eins og OpenRouteService, YOURS og fleiri. Sjálfur viðheld ég t.d. hjólakorti af Íslandi fyrir Garmin tæki byggt á OpenStreetMap gögnunum.

Það eina sem borgin þarf að gera til að bæta þessar og aðrar hjólavefsjár er gefa út gögn sem eins og Gísli bendir á "[eru] til í tölvukerfum borgarinnar" undir frjálsu notkunarleyfi.

Sjálfboðaliðar eins og ég munu þá flytja gögnin inn á OpenStreetMap þar sem þau munu blandast saman við viðlíka gögn sem eru til fyrir allan heiminn. Þá munu gögnin ekki aðeins vera nothæf á einni kortasjá sem borgin heldur við, heldur á þúsundum kortasjám af ýmsum gerðum, bæði í prenti, á vefnum og farsímum o.s.f.

Reykjavík ætti ekki að vera gera aðra strætó.is, heldur gefa út grunngögnin sem þarf til að byggja slíka vefi. Ríkisstjórnir og bæjarfélög annars staðar í heiminum eru óðum að uppgötva verðmæti þess að deila gögnum á þennan hátt.

… See full entry

I've posted a message on the mailing list as a follow up to my diary entry about a non-legalese version of the new contributor terms.

You can check out the proposed summary on the wiki. Please improve it.

You can no longer sign up for a new account without agreeing to the new contributor terms. They're long and legalese, here's an attempt at shortening them to something human readable.

Suggestions welcome. I think we should offer something like this (but obviously better worded) to explain what the terms mean to people who don't feel like reading a wall of defensive legalise.

• You promise only to submit content that you have permission to submit, e.g. stuff you made.


• You grant the OpenStreetMap foundation an irrevocable license to do anything with your content, forever.


• "Anything" is only licensing it under the ODbL 1.0, DbCL 1.0, CC-BY-SA 2.0 or another free license. Which free license is up to the OSMF members (those paying to be part of the foundation), and at least 2/3 of active contributors.


• An active contributor is someone who's edited in at least 3 out of the last 12 months. And doesn't take longer than 3 weeks to reply to E-Mail.

A feature I wrote (ticket, commit) to link from /browse/* pages to the wiki just got deployed (thanks Tom). Here's an example of it working in the wild.

If you add new wiki pages to describe tags they won't appear right away. We'll periodically update our index for the website.

This also works for people that don't speak English. If you're using e.g. a German locale you'll get links to natural=volcano instead of natural=volcano. Note that the volcano link stays the same, that's because there's no German page for the natural=volcano tag yet.

The ourFootPrints.de import into OpenStreetMap which I ran on January 14-15 has been almost completely integrated into OpenStreetMap.

8,337 ways were imported and all but 239 have now been either deleted because they were redundant or given proper OpenStreetMap tags and been connected to the rest of our data.

Now only the capital area has ourFootPrints ways which haven't been integrated yet. This is the area around Reykjavík that still needs to be worked on:

Integrating ways in built-up areas takes a bit longer since there are a lot of merge operations that have to be done compared to just adding a rural highway.

… See full entry

I added NearMap to the list of imagery presets in Potlatch 1.2f which'll hopefully be live soon. This makes mapping Australia slightly easier:

Unfortunately due to a Potlatch bug the full detail of NearMap isn't available in it. It's a bit harder to set up JOSM for NearMap but the resulting detail is insane, here are some people on the beach on Rottnest Island at zoom 23 in JOSM:

… See full entry