Hello OSM community,

We (myself and the MapSwipe community!) want to hear from you!

My name is Nicole Siggins and I’m currently on the governance team at MapSwipe a humanitarian mobile phone app and web app where volunteers can contribute to geospatial data projects.

I presented a talk, “MapSwipe Today and its Future in OSM” along with Benjamin Herfort from HeiGIT at State of the Map Europe 2025 in Dundee, Scotland. (recording coming soon…)

The talk has two main purposes:

1. Let people know more about MapSwipe, its history, and what one can do with it today!

2. Begin a discussion within the OSM community about what it might mean for MapSwipe to become its own OSM editor, especially if AI or machine learning models are involved.

The MapSwipe community wants to ensure that if we are going to move forward with any ideas and planning around becoming an OSM editor, and maybe even one that has AI in the mix, that we also make sure the OSM community is present in our discussions.

Some concrete items we’d like to discuss with the OSM community are:

• Should MapSwipe become it’s own OSM editor to add attributes to existing OSM features, using it’s own built in validation process?
• If 3+ people validate an attribute, who shows as the OSM editor? (One of the users, or a MapSwipe bot?) Any experience or feedback would be helpful!
• If humans refine AI models when (if ever) AND HOW would it be ok to add AI generated data to OSM …
• AND how could we make sure to validate the quality of that data?

The talk at State of the Map Europe was an extension of the same talk I gave at State of the Map US 2025 in June in Boston, Massachusetts.

You can view that talk on YouTube.

Looking forward to the discussion!

Nicolelaine