I have been developing Street Spirit, a new style using OpenStreetMap data. It uses Maplibre GL for client side rendering of MVTs generated by Tilekiln, which supports minutely updates using the standard osm2pgsql toolchain.

To focus style development, I have set its aims as being suitable for

• use as a locator map,
• to show off what can be done with OpenStreetMap data,
• to be up-to-date with the latest OpenStreetMap data, and
• using to orient a viewer to a location they are at.

Although not complete - if a style can ever said to be complete - it is at the point where there’s enough features to give the overall feel of the map, at least for zooms 12 and higher. Lower zooms are missing many features still, particularly roads and rail and some landcover and other fills.

Because the style has a more clearly defined purpose, I’ve been able to use more of the colour pallet than many other styles, particularly compared to styles designed for overlaying other data on top of.

I’ve set up a dev instance on one of my servers, using OSM data from 2023-02-27. Have an explore around.

Some of the bigger areas that need work are

• Missing mid- and low-zoom features
• Missing fills
• A consistent set of POI icons
• More POIs

If you’re interested in contributing to the work, let me know. Contributing will require some technical knowledge in the following areas

• MapLibre GL style specification, focusing on layers and expressions, including data-driven expressions;
• YAML, in particular appropriate indentation for arrays. MapLibre GL styles tend to feature deeply nested arrays; and
• SQL for writing read-only PostGIS queries if modifying vector tiles.

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Google alerts

In the fall of 2021, there was a notice issued renaming many (~600) natural features in the United States. There was very likely to initiate a cascade of renames for various map features. For example, the name for the road up the mountain peak will likely change to match the new name.

At the tail end of our renaming work, I set up a few Google Alerts related to the theme of the order and promptly forgot about them.

Map updates!

Starting a few months ago the alerts began firing! Each week I would get an email or two about town councils or other agencies planning to rename some feature or another.

Another one came into my inbox this morning announcing that a resort near a renamed waterway was updating it’s name. A bit of checking the resort website to confirm the new name, a few clicks in iD, et voila!

It will certainly be interesting to see whether the roadway, golf course etc get similar updates and I’ve made a note to myself the check back in a few months.

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Waymo

I used the driverless ride-share from Waymo to go from the Phoenix airport to downtown. The airport pickup location was a bit out of the way, so I added a taxi stand point on OSM.

Many neighborhoods had building footprints added in Phoenix in just the past 2 years. I was able to add some details to trails or new construction.

Wisconsin and the U.P.

I’m planning a summer bicycle trip from Duluth, east through Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There are gravel trails along highways (likely old rail lines) which are commonly used by ATVs and snowmobiles. OSM coverage of these is good. What surprised me on Google Maps is that huge swathes of this area have one low-res StreetView from 2008-09? This might be an entry point for Mapillary and others. I’d like to use this and/or tagging to find bike racks.

Durbin Feeling Language Center

I recently listened to a talk by Chris Skillern (New Leaves: The Cherokee Syllabary in the 21st Century). The Cherokee Nation opened this new language center building in Nov. ‘22, but none of the stories gave its address, and it wasn’t a point on Google Maps. Looking up older news articles from when the building was selected, I found it nearby. Then I saw that the Bing imagery included new construction which was not present on Maxar. Typically I had thought Bing was older? But maybe that’s getting a refresh.

This is part two which highlights the results of the OSM user survey. Read part 1 about demographics and identity and part 2 about the favourite maps

How well-known is MapComplete?

Not that well-known, it seems. In the previous question, 11 people out of 59 who took the time to fill out this question, mistook MapComplete for StreetComplete. This is a clear sign that there is still some work to do.

How did people get to know MapComplete?

How did people get to know MapComplete in the first place?

Via Reddit (13 mentions), Twitter and Mastodon (13 mentions) and the Weekly OSM (9 mentions).

There are honorouble mentions for online chatrooms (6 mentions), word of mouth (6 mentions), the OSM-forum (3 mentions) or ‘arriving via a specific map’ (3 mentions).

From these results, it’s clear that the online spaces where I regularly pitch MapComplete (namely Reddit and Mastodon) also resulted in some people discovering MapComplete.

However, this makes me wonder how applications such as StreetComplete and EveryDoor got to such a big userbase quickly. It seems that creating a mobile phone app with offline capabilities helps with this.

Good questions to ask next year?

I’m planning on doing a similar survey next year (or in one year and a half) to see how things evolve. To be able to compare results, it is interesting to have the same questions, even though some improvements can probably be made (e.g. in wording and more nuanced options).

It is also hard to gauge if people are part of a marginalized group. As such, it is hard to know if we reach those people as well.

But there might be room for other good questions. If you have suggestions, feel free to let them know

Anything else you’d like to say?

This was the question with the most uplifting answers, as many, many people wrote in a compliment about how much they like MapComplete and the work I did! (Well, some of them were probably thinking about StreetComplete)

Thank you everyone involved!

Conclusions

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(Shot a man)

Comecei a desenhar o uso do solo ao norte do Rio Imbau desde a rodovia do cafe ate a rodovia que segue para Tibagi. Ao norte meu extremo sera o Rio Imbauzinho. Lavoura, floresta manejada, mata nativa, patio de fazenda, casas e edificios na zona rural!

Hello, I am Brazil Singh, a computer science undergraduate from Eastern University Bangladesh. I’m a an Wordpress webdeveloper. I am also an Editior of Youthmappers at Eastern University. Today I edited the osm. Location was Eastern University building’s Tea Stall. Seriously I enjoyed a lot by contribuiting here.

OSMCha is almost eight years old now. A project that I started in my spare time to try to solve some data quality issues of the Brazilian OpenStreetMap community, grew up, became my job for some years, and is now an essential component of the OSM software ecosystem.

Since the beginning, Mapbox has been a crucial partner for OSMCha. They believed in the idea right after I presented it at a State of the Map LatAm conference. In 2015, they had around 10 people doing quality assurance in OSM data and there wasn’t a clear workflow on how to keep track of the changes in OSM. The main idea behind OSMCha was to register all changesets in a database, run some automatic checks to flag possible quality issues, and make the changesets searchable. That solution seemed interesting to the Mapbox team, so they started using it right away, improved the tool, and kept it running during all those years.

However, since June 2021, OSMCha is running without constant maintenance, and only one new feature was added, with the sponsorship of Wikimedia Italia. The lack of a team responsible for monitoring and maintaining the infrastructure caused a few days of downtime.

Now it’s time for a new phase in the OSMCha history! OpenStreetMap US has just accepted it as a charter project. This partnership will provide the structure to raise funds for development and hosting, and will also open the possibility for the entire OSM community to influence the future of OSMCha.

In collaboration with the OSM community, I believe we will be able to keep OSMCha running and provide yet more value for the users.

Soon, we will announce how you can engage in the OSMCha community meetings. Right now you can join the #osmcha channel in the OSM US Slack and continue reporting issues in the GitHub repository.

We also welcome companies and non-profit organizations that are interested in supporting OSMCha. Write to wille AT developmentseed.org if you want to have a chat about how you can collaborate with us.

قرية ضريبة العرش. هي إحدى قرى الجمهورية اليمنية، وتتبع جغرافيا محافظة البيضاء وادريا مديرية العرش منطقة رداع. ويبلغ عدد سكانها 2363 نسمة حسب التعداد السكاني عام 2004، وتقع في الجنوب الغربي لمديرية العرش وتبعد عن مدينة رداع 9كم ومساحتها الجغرافية 21كم مربع. تقع شمال مدينة رداع، وتجاورها قرى [[قرن الأسد ]] و[[ماور]]، مما يمنحها موقعًا متوسطًا بين المعالم الجغرافية والتاريخية للمنطقة.

== المقدمة == بين الجبال الصامتة التي تروي الحكايات، وعلى سفوح الزمن المتجذر، تقف قرية ‘'’ضريبة العرش’’’ شامخةً بهويتها وتراثها في مديرية العرش بمحافظة البيضاء. ليست مجرد تجمع سكني، بل ذاكرة حيّة تختزل أهازيج الماضي وهمسات الجغرافيا. هنا، في وديان خصبة وأعالي الجبال، تنسج ضريبة العرش حكاياتها الخاصة؛ حيث يروي [[جبل مرغم علي]] و[[قلعة حمة جريد]] و[[غيل القطارة]] قصة قريةٍ تتنفس الأصالة، وتزهر بالذاكرة.

== الجغرافيا والطبيعة == تمتاز ضريبة العرش بتضاريس جبلية ووديان زراعية، وتحتضن مجموعة من المعالم البارزة، من بينها: * ‘'’جبل مرغم علي’’’: معلم طبيعي بارز يُعد نقطة مراقبة وموقع حماية لقلعة الملك الحميري شمر يهرعش . * ‘'’غيل القطارة’’’: مورد مائي ارتبط بعادات اجتماعية وموسمية مثل الحصاد والاستبشار الزراعي. * ‘'’قلعة حمة جريد الأثرية’’’: أطلال تاريخية على قمة جبلية، تشير إلى وجود مدينة قديمة عمرها آلاف السنين.

== السكان والأنشطة == يعيش في القرية سكان ينتمون لأسر قَبَلية مترابطة. يعتمد سكانها على الزراعة، وتربية المواشي. تنتشر المجالس الشعبية التي تُستخدم لتبادل الروايات وحل النزاعات.

’'’إلى قلب قرية ضريبة العرش’’’ هو مسار توثيقي داخل القرية، يهدف إلى تسليط الضوء على أبرز معالمها من خلال سرد مرتب يتتبع العلاقة بين الإنسان والمكان. تُمارس في قرية ضريبة مجموعة من العادات والتقاليد الاجتماعية التي تُعبر عن الهوية الثقافية المحلية، من أبرزها:

• ’'’البراع التراثية’’’: رقصة جماعية تؤدى في الأعراس ومواسم الحصاد، وتتخللها أبيات شعبية تمجد الأرض والانتماء.
• ’'’مراسم الزواج التقليدي’’’: تبدأ بمسير جماعي من المجلس الشعبي إلى بيت العروس، وتُرافقها الزوامل الشعبية .

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imar yolları haritalarda gözükmüyor

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Unique Mappers Team, Nigeria organized a training session to commemorate the International Women’s Day. Attendees of the program were trained on Digital skills. I was privileged to deliver a lecture on Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing as tools of Digital Marketing. The program was enlightening and motivating, as women were reminded that their dreams are valid, and we could be anything we’ve set our hearts to be.

It was indeed a great privilege to be among the 28 selected interns from the 1008 applications received by HOT from 81 countries. I must say, spending October to December 2022 with the HOT trainers and other resource persons in and around the world of open mapping was an experience worth the time and effort. Post HOT Data Quality Internship program, I can confidently say I am a better mapper than I was before. But being a better mapper alone was not the aim of the DQI but rather how the information acquired will be shared and passed on from person to person so that together quality data will be created in the open mapping community. In view of this, I have taken it upon myself to visit other local mapping communities in Ghana starting from UCC Youthmappers to share this piece of knowledge with them. It has been a wonderful journey so far, and i hope to continue and make it much better!

We had a meeting with Mr. Victor Sunday. On the establishment of mapathon centres.

It was a privilege to be one of the Panelists of the IWD hosted by the HOT, North and West Africa Hub. Theme: “Safe Spaces for Women”. It was insightful. English and French were used as a mode of communication and I like that. Teg-Wende and Carter agreed that the submission is being taken note of and that women and girls will be given more attention.

Introduction

Hello, I am Aarya Ahjolia, a computer science undergraduate from Nirma University, Gujarat, India. I’m a passionate developer who loves solving problems.

GSoC’23 Project: Improving Valhalla’s Web App (ReactJS)

Since I’m proficient in ReactJS and have the knowledge of the code base of Valhalla Web app, I love this project to share my time with for Summer’23.

I’ll be updating my entire journey of GSoC’23 and give weekly updates in upcoming diaries.

Thanks for reading!

This is part two which highlights the results of the OSM user survey. Read part 1 about demographics and identity here

Which thematic maps do people use?

56 people gave insight in their favourite maps, yielding a total of 86 mentions of specific map themes or groups of themes.

The theme with the most mentions -namely 9- was the etymology theme. This is not a big surprise, as there has been a tremendous amount of changes made with Open Etymology-map. Some people mention curiosity for their local environment, others are interested in the link between OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia. It should be noted that nearly everyone who mentioned etymology indicates that they have hundreds of edits.

The second place goes to the waste theme with 8 mentions. I have to be honest, this came as a total surprise to me! At first sight, it is a bit of a boring topic - especially when contrasted with something like etymology. Yet, everyone needs to get rid of some waste every now and then. By the way, this theme was created by @Rlin and I have to admit that this is one of the most polished themes on MapComplete, using a lot of the available functionality. Thank you!

The third places goes to all cycling-related themes (7 mentions of ‘cycling’). Cyclofix had another 5 mentions, resulting in 12 total mentions. This was no surprise either, as cyclofix has been historic driver of many changes made with MapComplete. It is one of the oldest maps on MapComplete, yet it is still popular and is embedded on a few websites.

The third place goes to benches with 7 mentions - another very down-to-earth topic but with lots of value and lots of unmapped features.

Out of the other answers, it is clear that there are various reasons to use MapComplete:

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My Home

Ruben Martin and I discuss recent highlights and what’s coming up in the humanitarian open mapping community.

What’s covered this week in brief?

Syria / Turkey earthquake response // Community Working Group mentorship programme // OSM Ethiopia community-led activation // Community research on barriers to women’s participation in OSM // International Women’s Day // Month activites and events // Mappy quote of the week

What’s happened this week?

Syria / Turkey earthquake response: The response to the Turkey Syria earthquake has continued, with more than 8,500 mappers contributing to the data.

The validation of the data is still a heavy task, and the validation team is working so hard to keep up with the volume of mapping. Please be careful with your mapping and make sure the data that you create and they review is as good as it can be! This video from Becky Candy should help you if you are new to mapping.

Also want to congratulate Said for receiving UN Mapper of the Month for his role in coordinating the data response in the days following the earthquake.

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MapComplete user census

As you noticed, MapComplete ran a user survey during january. What did it tell us?

The use survey had a few goals, namely:

• discovering what demographies are using MapComplete (and which are missing)
• and discovering what needs and wants are still there

Basic demography

The first question is of course: who did fill out the survey? If we look to the numbers, a clear pattern emerges.

The age distribution looks pretty normal - there is a clear peak around the bucket 30-40, which falls down left and right.

The gender is not as balanced. Unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents is male:

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