OpenStreetMap
Hello everyone I’m starting a OSM themed podcast called Nodes and Ways. I’ve got episode one out and episodes 2 and 3 are in the works now. It’s on YouTube and LBRY and you can get the RSS feed at nodesandways.com . It will be in more podcasty places like Apple podcast and Spotify in the future.
Ill be doing interviews news around mostly OSM. If you have any ideas leave them in the comments.
The audio on episode 1 is kinda rough but future episodes should be better.
Today I would like to share what I have learned about using external data in OSM but not in the classic import fashion.
I have gone over what I have learned about data importing in OSM after being involved in a few of them. But today I want to talk about how we’re using data from our local government as a reference but not using the usual import method and why.
So what is the definition of an import in regards to OSM? The Wiki defines it as “the process of uploading external data to OSM.“.
But uploading is not always the most effective way to use external data to improve OSM. What we are doing is showing external data as a layer over OSM and using that to edit OSM by hand.
But Why?..Wouldn’t it be better to direct upload the data?
So as you know from my first two posts I have Microsoft building foot prints and county address data, two good sources of data. Both worth a import on there own. However we want to make the most efficient use of our mapping time so Mike came up with a way to conflate the data sources. And save a lot of time! Importing data into OSM has a good bit of overhead (still worth it). As I’ve talked about before you have to go get the data, figure out how to process the data with a procedure for Tracking, coordinating, and QA. Then once you figured out all of that you have to have local community buy in and go through the mailing list where your proposal will be vetted in a public way. So where it makes sense, it is worth thinking about using your available data sources in conjunction with each other to minimize going through that over and over. Now it does come with some additional risk, your proposal will face more scrutiny the more complex it is. And simpler single imports might lend them self’s to more mappers helping you with it. That’s a judgment call you will have to make. Im going to stay fairly high level in this post if you want to know the nuts and bolts of everything there is great documentation that Mike wrote on the GitHub https://github.com/OpenStreetMapSC/MergeAddressesAndBuildings and osm.wiki/Spartanburg_County_Address_And_Building_Import
This might be handy to anyone who gets a waynes camera as a mounting idea.
Here is a post I made about making a 360 rig for use with Mapillary
Ok! I’m on board, let’s use some data for OSM!! Wooo Yeah!!! Where’s the data?…
I spent a little over a year trying to get access to data, once I decided that was what I wanted to do. I now have permission from the local county where I live, some other county’s and some state data. And WoW! We now have more data to work with than we have time and mappers to processes it. It’s a good problem to have. So how did this happen?
This was my struggle and why it was worth it.
In this blog I will talk about what data we are using, how we are processing the data, then importing it into OSM. Some things are not considered imports at all since they’re more of a stare and compare, but I will cover them as well since we are using data others collected and have made available to us for use in OSM. Even analyzing data that is already in OSM to improve data quality. All that and more! :-)
First off, I understand many people do not like using others’ data for OSM for a couple of different reasons.
The data could be low quality. I once talked to a mapper when I saw that they removed an imported move theater from the middle of a corn field, due to someone blind importing. …Ouch!
Imports require a lot of technical knowledge of OSM and that excludes a lot of mappers.
Making sure the data is not copyrighted in a way that prevents it from being used in OSM. (I’ll touch on that in another post) There might be more, but these are the ones that I have heard so far.
In this blog I hope to address these concerns by demonstrating how we can set things up in a community-oriented way that streamlines the process and also keeps quality high. We have so many tools to at our disposal that I keep stumbling across them and finding new ways to use them for different projects! I hope to gain working knowledge and demonstrate how they can all work.
Also, I will be talking about how I got access to data for our local area and tips on how you might be able to do the same. That can be half the battle!