OpenStreetMap
Mapping Andhra University College of Engineering (Andhra Pradesh, India) using Field Papers:
Posted by nammala on 28 January 2016 in English. Last updated on 30 January 2016.Hello OSM mappers,
I ‘m new to OSM community and this is my first diary post in which I want to explain my mapping experience in using field papers
As a part of mapping using Field Papers for which I selected an area in my neighborhood (Visakhapatnam), I have chosen Andhra University college of engineering. The main reason for selecting this region as area of interest (AOI) is, I had done my bachelors from this University and also it is not yet mapped in OSM.
The general idea was to micro-map this area using field papers by identifying the number of missing buildings,roads,hostel blocks,canteens,shops,paths,tracks,statues,gallery stands,layout maps etc. For this, I printed the field paper copy (which consists of already mapped OpenStreetMap data) of the selected area and went to the field for collecting the missing data. It was very interesting to go to the field carrying the field papers, pencils, erasers etc. Basically, it was my first experience to survey in this manner because previously I had carried out survey using instruments like Total station to collect the data, go to laboratory for analysis and finally make edits to prepare a map. So, it’s a different kind of exposure for me to survey using field papers. Then I started going through the area and I have drawn sketches on the paper of particular buildings and gave numbering to that so it will be easy for me to identify while mapping, and I carried out the same procedure for rest of the area. It approximately took 2 hours for mapping the entire University.
After completing the survey mapping I scanned the mapped field paper and integrated it into the digital environment i.e., JOSM using the field papers plugin. I used scanned field paper as one of the base map above Bing imagery for reference while editing, which made my work much easier in identifying the AOI’s.
In this way I completed mapping Andhra university college of Engineering (AUCE) using field paper procedure. Thanks to Mapbox for assigning me such a skillful task and giving me the exposure to this kind of open mapping. I would really appreciate the OpenStreetMap community members if they can review my work and give their valuable comments or suggestions in which I can improve further.
Discussion
Comment from Omnific on 29 January 2016 at 00:45
Hey, thanks for the work. A few thoughts:
-Capitalize building names -Use “q” in JOSM to make buildings square, definitely something they want to see at MapBox -Don’t do a changeset for each individual building.
Otherwise, good work using walking papers as a tool.
Comment from MarkusHD on 29 January 2016 at 13:21
Regarding your changes around osm.org/#map=17/17.72916/83.32262
The geometry of the buildings often is wrong (e.g. way/388816430) and inaccurate and never aligned nicely (out of square). For properly mapping buildings with holes have a look at osm.wiki/Relation:multipolygon
Also I guess the entered names should not be names for most cases, see osm.wiki/Names#Name_is_the_name_only Use the description-key or try to find an ordinary tag, maybe at office=*
If the buildings containing “hostel” in the name are indeed a hostel, then why don’t you tag it as such?
This does not seem like good promotion for job selection.
Comment from nammala on 29 January 2016 at 14:24
Thank you for your valuable suggestions I will definitely try to overcome them as I am still a beginner the comments will help me grow in my mapping skills.
Comment from MarkusHD on 29 January 2016 at 15:20
And as Omnific wrote, drawing several instead of single buildings per changeset is nice for logical connection and easier for review.
Comment from Sanderd17 on 29 January 2016 at 15:54
Something not yet mentioned: you have some ways with only a name tag. F.e. way/393931858
This won’t show up in any renderer or other data user, instead you should try to describe the feature with tags (f.e. leisure=playground in this case).
And as mentioned by MarkusHD, names are for named features, so the name should be removed from that way.
Then, there are of course the buildings that should have straight corners (as mentioned before), but you also seem to follow building roofs. When imagery is taken at a non-straight angle (which depends on where the plane actually flew), then the imagery is georeferenced against the ground height. So only the ground floor of the building will be more or less correct, and the roof won’t.
That said, I’m glad you started working on a local piece of map. That’s the ideal way to learn mapping. When you have perfected this piece of ground, you will know a lot more to start doing typical mapbox work.
As you can’t see the complete ground level, the best method is to draw around the roof, and then drag the building so it matches the ground floor.