April 3, 2017

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Community News

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2017 Mapathon Series

OSM US board announced dates for their annual Mapathon series.

Spring Mapathon Weekend:  April 15-16

Summer Mapathon Weekend:  July 15-16

Fall Mapathon Weekend:  November 11-12

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Latest Maproulette Newsletter

Latest update from the Maproulette team that includes new and notable challenges and highlights new features.

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  Mapping Data

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OSM Landuse Data

Highlight of the OSM landuse and landcover data by location.

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Tools

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Edit Map Objects with MapillaryJS

Mapillary released an update to their JavaScript tool which will help relate what you see in one of their images to a specific location on the map.

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The Twists and Turns of Curved Labels

Technical deep dive from Mapzen on what it takes to properly render a label along a curved road and smoothly animate it while zooming.

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Humanitarian News

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MapSwipe: 10M Contributions in 6 Months

A closer look at the MapSwipe contributions and tools to analyze the data.

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Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) in Guatemala

Faculty and students at the George Washington University teamed up with PADF to help bring digital mapping tools to communities in Guatemala.

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March 27, 2017

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Community News

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Facebook Requesting Community Feedback on Road Tracing Project

Join the community in discussing the recent Facebook AI-Assisted road tracing project.  Your support and recommendations on this revolutionary project are greatly appreciated by the broader OSM community.

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OSM Foundation Board Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes from last weeks board meeting are now published.  The next board meeting is scheduled for April 18th.

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  Mapping Data

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Microsoft Releases High Quality Data – 9.8M Buildings

Microsoft announced to the OSM community that it has released data representing 9.8 million buildings throughout the United States.  Details of this project including guidelines for importing into OSM are outlined at the link above.

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Mapillary’s Rhythm

Blog post from Mapillary that outlines the behind the scenes data activity taking place around the world.

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Tools

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Community Discussion on Tools to Prevent Incorrect Edits

Community is requesting your input on how to more quickly find and correct incorrect edits including recommendations regarding tool development.

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Mapzen Bike Map Feedback

Mapzen has publish a poll requesting feedback from community on bikes and overall bike safety in your community.

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Humanitarian News

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Youth Mappers in Uganda

Video from the Youth Mappers team in Uganda on their mapping initiatives and why they map with OpenStreetMap.

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Mapping Bootcamp in Tanzania

Details on a recent mapping bootcamp in Tanzania where students learned about the use of drones for map data collection and how that data can improve OpenStreetMap, prevent outbreak of Cholera.

March 20, 2017

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Community News

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OSM License Clarification – CC BY 4.0

OSM Foundation License Working Group published a clarification last week regarding the use of CC (Creative Commons) BY 4.0 licensed databases and data with OSM.  The OSM Foundation will continue to ask that explicit permission be provided for use of CC BY 4.0-licensed material in the OSM project.  A sample cover letter and waiver form is provided at the link above.

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OSM Foundation Board Meeting Tuesday

Reminder that the monthly OSMF board meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.  Meeting is open all members of the OSM community.  Agenda can be found at the link below.

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  Mapping Data

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Photo Mapping with Maptime Amsterdam

Recent Maptime Amsterdam event provided a great opportunity for the team to create 360° street-level photos of Amsterdam using LG 360 camera and Mapillary.  Mapillary now has 123,117,958 photos and 2,467,005,487 meters in coverage.

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Tools

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Managing Orphan Nodes

Improve OSM blog post on how to properly find and manage the presence of orphan nodes.

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Humanitarian News

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Digital Globe Releases Imagery for Cyclone Enawo Response

Digital Globe just released high-resolution imagery to support the humanitarian efforts taking place in Madagascar as a result of the significant flooding caused by Cyclone Enawo.

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Printed Maps Provided to Villages of Surabaya, Indonesia

HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team) recently provided printed maps to the leaders of Surabaya as a thank you for their recent support in disaster response efforts.

March 13, 2017

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Community News

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State of the Map US Dates Announced

Mark your calendars, October 19th-22nd in Boulder, Colorado.  Website to launch soon with additional information including registration and a call for abstracts.  We look forward to seeing everyone there!

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New MapRoulette Newsletter

The Maproulette team introduced a newsletter to keep us updated on the amazing editing work of the OSM community and communicate enhancements to the tool.  Below is a  report they published on the most popular challenges.  Keep up the great work everyone!

1. Self-Intersecting building outlines – all done!
2. Crossing Ways: Highway-Railway, US – 55% done, >17000 tasks available
3. CHN_BuildingRoadIntersectionCheck, 34% done, ~2800 tasks available
4. Self-Intersecting landuse outlines (World-wide), all done!
5. Open Rings, all done!

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  Mapping Data

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OpenAddresses celebrates 400 million addresses

OpenAddresses is a project to create a global open address point data set.  Mapzen published an update on the project including an announcement that OpenAddresses has surpassed 400 million addresses and expects the 2,000th data source this month.

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OpenAerialMap now out of beta

OpenAerialMap provides access to openly licensed aerial imagery.  Check out to link to access their open imagery and learn more about how to contribute.

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Tools

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3D Scene reconstruction

Project update from Telenav on where they are at with generating 3D data from multiple 2D images.

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Transitland Update

Mapzen update on their Transitland tool which now includes data representing 1,511 transit operators.

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GeoVisual Search

Interesting tool from Descartes Labs that essentially uses machine learning and satellite imagery to provide a search engine for similar-looking objects around the world.

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Humanitarian News

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Volunteer Mapmakers Saving Lives

“A report on the technology and people helping medical charities reach the remote parts of the world that Google Maps doesn’t.” – Financial Times.  Fascinating article highlighting the amazing work of Missing Maps and the OSM community.

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Scaling open maps for Jakarta flooding

Mapbox blog on how community officials in Indonesia streamline disaster response using OpenStreetMap data and community tools.

March 6, 2017

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Community News

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OSMNewsletter.org Now Live

Our weekly newsletter can now be found  online at osmnewsletter.org.  Here you can access additional information about the OSM community including news, events, daily metrics, and product tutorials.  Take a look and let us know what you think.  Suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

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  Mapping Data

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Mapillary: Three Trends in Traffic Sign Inventory

Mapillary shared some insight into the trends they are seeing regarding traffic sign inventories and asset inventories.

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Updated Data Added to ImproveOSM

Telenav has been very busy and has updated Improve OSM with a significant amount of data. They processed recent GPS data from a number of data partners and added a total of 30,000 new missing road tiles, over 17,000 in Indonesia alone, and 67,000 potential missing one-way roads.

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Astro Digital Raises $16M in Series A Funding

More satellite news this week.  Astro Digital raises solid A round to provide on demand imagery.  Through their software platform users can select an area of the Earth and retrieve satellite images processed to show any of 4 attributes: true color, vegetation density, urban growth, and land/water borders.

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Tools

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Mapbox Unity SDK

Mapbox launched their  Unity SDK at the Game Developers Conference last week in San Francisco.  This new SDK provides global real world map layers, search, and directions to location-based games and AR/VR applications in a simple package.

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Street Address Interpolation

Mapzen announced a new address interpolation system which can be used as a stand-alone application or included with other geographic software or search engines.  This tool helps fill the gaps found in the OSM data set.

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Converting Exit_to to Destination Tags

Daniel-j-h @Mapbox published a great post comparing the use of exit_to tags to  destination tags in providing proper motorway junction guidance.  In his blog there is also a link to a tool that converts exit_to tags to the recommended destination approach.

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Humanitarian News

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#ValidationFriday

Quality is the most important thing in everything we do. 90% percent of Missing Maps tasks are marked as done but task validation is under 50%.  Missing Maps team is asking that we set aside time on Friday to help validate the work everyone has put in and provide positive feedback to our community members.

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Eliminate Malaria

Several news tasks added to Missing Maps to help eliminate malaria.  Your help is needed, please start mapping today.

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Event-Centric Crowdsourcing in Humanitarian Mapping

Martin Dittus gave a great presentation on mass participation during emergency response.

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February 27, 2017

Community News

Facebook AI-Based Road Import

Facebook published details regarding their road import project in Thailand and Egypt.

OSM Board Meeting Last Week

OSM Foundation board meeting was held on 2/21.  Draft meeting minutes are now posted at the link below.

Global Mapathon – March 25th

National Missing Maps Global Mapathon scheduled for 3/25.  Click below to register or find a location near you.

Mapping Data

Digital Globe Bought by MDA

Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) to buy U.S.-based satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe for about $2.40 billion.

New Version of OpenStreetCam, Close to 500,000 km of Imagery

Telenav released a new version of OpenStreetCam (OSC) which introduces new leaderboard features.  OSC now has close to 500,000 km of crowd-sourced imagery available around the world.

Photographing Earth Every Day

Great article outlining the new Planet satellite constellation and how it plans to map the planet every day.

Tools

Open Traffic Platform – Linear Referencing

OSM community has been working together to create an Open Traffic platform.  In support, Mapzen published a technical preview of the OSM Linear Referencing system (OSMLR) which provides a method for specifying a section of road in an environment of constant OSM data updates.

Create Your Own POSM (Portable OSM) Setup

POSM is a solution which enables field mapping efforts in areas with no network connectivity.  Dale Kunce published the first of several posts on how to create your own instance.

Need for Better Addressing Tools

Great article published in the MIT Technology Review that highlights the growing logistical challenges with delivering goods in places such as Accra, Ghana.

Humanitarian News

Mapping in Uganda to End Malaria

@youthmappers team in Ugana made 142,141 OSM edits in 6 weeks which includes over 25,000 km of roads.

Fighting FGM in Tanzania

Missing Maps article on how mapping is helping the team eliminate FGM in Tanzania.