14 ms·

What OpenStreetMap can be

192 points by Doctor_Fegg 8y ago

akavel 8y ago
As to humanitarian use for OSM and how anyone can contribute by small tasks (I've tried it myself, was surprisingly exciting), enabling faster and more accurate response and travel to people in need, see: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Tasking_Manager https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Tasking_Manager As to work in progress on detection of features and automatic conversion to maps, I've recently found the below website: https://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/07/15/mapillary-osm.html https://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/07/15/mapillary-osm.h...
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Facebook and Microsoft have both undertaken large scale ML projects contributing data to OSM. Facebook has a pilot in Thailand: https://forum.osm.org/viewtopic.php?id=61826 https://forum.osm.org/viewtopic.php?id=61826 and Microsoft released 124 million buildings for contribution to OSM: https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-million-building-footprints-in-the-us-as-open-data https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-m... There's also been some work by individuals: https://github.com/jremillard/images-to-osm https://github.com/jremillard/images-to-osm A key to the satellite imagery projects is that the imagery be suitably licensed.
  - linsomniac 8y ago
    We recently overlaid the Microsoft buildings over Boulder Colorado aerial maps and in some places they were pretty good. In others, where there was just the right amount of tree cover, it was pretty bad. Houses cut up into 2 or 3 or 4 chunks, for example. It's a great data set, but it'll probably need some curation.
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      For sure, it will need curation. But even if it were just information about where buildings probably existed it would be hugely useful. An example use case is improving building coverage in a rural area.
      - linsomniac 8y ago
        Sure! I wonder if the ML system could make use of information such as lot size and shape (from the county), building sqft, number of levels, information about outbuildings (from the MLS or property tax), and could get smarter. And if it can tell a tree from grass. "This small lot has 3 200sqft buildings separated by a tree on it, but is supposed to have a 1200sqft ranch house... Maybe those 3 buildings define the bounding box of the house?"
    - jimmyrocks 8y ago
      There is also a good buildings dataset from DRCOG that we're (OSM Colorado) importing into OSM. Reach out to us, or come to our next meetup if you're interested.
    - rmc 8y ago
      > It's a great data set, but it'll probably need some curation. Some sort of crowd sourced, geo database... ;)
lakechfoma 8y ago
I'm excited about this direction! I do minor contributions and poking around my area I'm surprised by how much of it is done by very few people. How useful it is yet how lacking it is. There's a neighboring town that is absurdly well documented, it seems a group of people got together over a month and mapped the place out meticulously, including drawing all buildings etc. This town would work very well for these vector maps, my town probably not so much. I wonder how to get more people involved, and excited, about OSM? How do we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? And does Strava/Mapbox give back? When Strava identifies common bike routes, or perhaps trails, and when Mapbox determines that roads have changed is that given back to OSM in some capacity?
- avar 8y ago
  > I'm surprised by how much of it is > done by very few people [...] How do > we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? The exact same contribution curve applies to Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Something like 5% of the users to 90% of the work.
  - mistrial9 8y ago
    hmm care to be more specific ?
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Before their privacy apocalypse, Strava made their traces available for use in OSM. Mapbox actually had a project where they added information that Strava reported as missing: https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/113 https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/113 Mapbox also uses other data to find things to improve.
- mmt 8y ago
  > I wonder how to get more people involved, and excited, about OSM? How do we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? This seems to be the general sentiment of the OSM community, without evidence that merely adding more people will yield better results. I personally was turned off from contributing due to the emphasis on "community", even at the expense of map quality. I blogged about this 7 years ago. As with Wikipedia, and perhaps much more so, the community can be very fragmented (both online and, obviously, geographically), and the portion holding the real power is usually very insular. This essay https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm recently popped up on HN in reference to Valve and "flat" or non-hierarchical companies like Valve, often with a caveat to ignore its focus on the feminist movement. However, in the case of another all-volunteer project, it may apply better without that caveat.
TuringTest 8y ago
>Most OSM commentary focuses on unimportant minutiae (layers, for goodness’ sake, as if it’s still 2004) What's wrong with having layers on a digital map? I can see the problem of not having them.
- doombolt 8y ago
  It's not hard to render OpenStreetMap in such fashion that there are layers. I don't understand what kind of explicit support is needed here.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  The cited context is about segmenting data for editing, where right now everything shares one context. For display and most others uses, the data is processed to create convenient layers.
doombolt 8y ago
What makes OpenStreetMap shine really is their desire to map every man-made and natural object. I'm talking about things like trees, garbage bins and industrial buildings. Commercial maps has areas where they care deeply, and areas where there's zero care. OpenSteetMap cares about everything. If you are a hobbyst (of practically anything), sooner or later you'll find better representation of your narrow interests on OSM than on Google or Apple maps. Google has awesome maps of shopping centers. OSM has awesome maps of tracks in woods and parks. You've got to choose your life style here.
- mulmen 8y ago
  Does this include items indoors? Such as pinball machines?
  - seren 8y ago
    You can not necessarily create a point for a single pinball machine (yet), but the Key:Leisure allows you to have a rather fine level of details. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:leisure https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:leisure It mentions "amusement_park" to tag areas with "A venue with pay-to-play games, such as video games, driving simulators, pinball machines, merchandisers, etc."
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Sure. If you can go look at it and it is relatively static, that's good enough. So trees are much more accepted than say flowers. So far only 1 has been mapped using the obvious tag: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/ABP https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/ABP
  - rmc 8y ago
    There are ways to map things indoors, like corridors, stairs, and shops/facilities inside large buildings (eg. train stations) https://openlevelup.net/ https://openlevelup.net/
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  OSM has awesome maps of tracks in woods and parks and shopping centres.
macintux 8y ago
I often wonder what parts of the world are well-documented in OSM because my city is sorely lacking. I'm sitting reading this in a restaurant that has been here for decades. Not only is the restaurant not in the data, but the building itself isn't, which is something that I thought was pretty well covered. I've added a major post office in the past. Not a new one either. It's really hard to get enthusiastic about contributing to it when the data is just abysmal here. I hear about people adding hedges and just am baffled that their area is so well-covered that a hedge is a notable omission. I know, I know, do it myself. Be the change you want to see. But man, without some sophisticated AR tech I don't know how Indianapolis can catch up.
- jburgess777 8y ago
  What motivates you contribute to HN? There is an old proverb of "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". Almost all contributions make a positive step for improving the map for everybody. In the time it took to write the comment you probably could have used your local knowledge and aerial imagery to add some details to the map. I remember when I started adding data to the map in 2006 and it was almost all blank. I was happy to cycle around my local area with a GPS and spend time adding data locally to me. I did it partly because I was interested in the technology but I also had faith that when I needed to use the map someone else would have added the data that was local to them. As it turns out, this faith was justified and the OSM maps of the UK are great. For OSM to continue to make progress there is an assumptions that there is a subset of the general population that are willing to contribute for the greater good. I know that isn't always the case, the argument of: "why bother when we all use Google maps" is common. As it turns out, what Google displays on the map and what they allow you to do with it is fairly limited. As Doctor_Fegg argues, OSM is only just beginning on the journey to becoming an essential resource for worldwide geographic information. Right now things are still too focussed on providing a limited set of raster tiles which typically throw away half the data when choosing what can be displayed. Vectors tiles are an obvious next step for expanding the visualization of the existing data and provide the client with greater access to the underlying data which might not be shown on a raster tile. Another important point of open data is that it allows multiple sources to be combined together. OSM has never tried to collect everything. For example, SRTM is a better source of altitude information. There are other websites which provide open aerial imagery or street-view style videos. Openness of the raw data is the fundamental differentiator of OSM versus any alternative that I am aware of. Just like open source software is increasingly relied upon by businesses and the internet as a whole. I believe that open data will also be seen as being a fundamental building block which will never decrease in value or adoption.
gnusci 8y ago
Maybe, it is time to create an OpenGPS? Please, let me know if you know how to build one using RPi or something similar.
- jburgess777 8y ago
  Making an OpenSource GPS is technically challenging. For an idea of what is involved see: http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm Here are some other similar projects: http://sdrgps.blogspot.com/ http://sdrgps.blogspot.com/ https://github.com/hahnpv/gr-gps https://github.com/hahnpv/gr-gps https://github.com/hahnpv/SoftGNSS https://github.com/hahnpv/SoftGNSS Personally I would rather buy a $10 modules off eBay or a Chinese website which provides the GPS data in a standard NMEA serial stream.
  - gnusci 8y ago
    OMG, now I see why we are so dependent even for old technology, and I now understand the great success of Arduino.
eboyjr 8y ago
Keep watch for the live streaming[0] of the State of the Map 2018 event tomorrow (July 28-30). They already have interesting videos on their channel such as using OSM for traffic simulation. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqJsr_5PfdvDFbgv1qp2aQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqJsr_5PfdvDFbgv1qp2aQ
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zrav 8y ago
Of course there's also derivates of OSM that would be impossible to replace with Gmaps. For instance the topographics maps with detailed path characteristics for offline use for hiking and cycling provided by https://www.openandromaps.org/en https://www.openandromaps.org/en
- rocqua 8y ago
  I recently went hiking in the pyrenees, and I had IGN maps (french topographic service), randonnee edition maps (commercial, based on multiple sources) and the OSM hiking map available offline on my phone though OSMand. I found the app the most accurate source. Though the other maps were better about displaying where guarded and unguarded mountain huts were.
biocomputation 8y ago
I think, if it were feasible, OSM could use a really sharp CEO. I think it has incredible potential, but it needs strong leadership to determine strategy for differentiation, product positioning, and marketing. Microsoft or Facebook could make an investment in this direction and things could really take off. Just a thought.
based2 8y ago
A 3d usage of osm for Real property: https://www.bienici.com/annonce/location/orleans/appartement/4pieces/citya-immobilier-15238-GES50390023-80?q=%2Frecherche%2Flocation%2Ffrance%3Fcamera%3D11_1.8978779_47.8760204_0.9_0 https://www.bienici.com/annonce/location/orleans/appartement...
jimnotgym 8y ago
The bit that people seem to be turned off by is what I like to call the 'Stonehenge is not a henge' arguement. I started trying to contribute to openstreetMAP, to be told that where I was going wrong is that I was thinking about openstreetMAP as a MAP. I am such a fool. It has become a community mantra, and it just sounds silly.

192 points by Doctor_Fegg 8y ago

As to humanitarian use for OSM and how anyone can contribute by small tasks (I've tried it myself, was surprisingly exciting), enabling faster and more accurate response and travel to people in need, see: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Tasking_Manager https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Tasking_Manager As to work in progress on detection of features and automatic conversion to maps, I've recently found the below website: https://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/07/15/mapillary-osm.html https://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/07/15/mapillary-osm.h...

maxerickson 8y ago
Facebook and Microsoft have both undertaken large scale ML projects contributing data to OSM. Facebook has a pilot in Thailand: https://forum.osm.org/viewtopic.php?id=61826 https://forum.osm.org/viewtopic.php?id=61826 and Microsoft released 124 million buildings for contribution to OSM: https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-million-building-footprints-in-the-us-as-open-data https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-m... There's also been some work by individuals: https://github.com/jremillard/images-to-osm https://github.com/jremillard/images-to-osm A key to the satellite imagery projects is that the imagery be suitably licensed.
- linsomniac 8y ago
  We recently overlaid the Microsoft buildings over Boulder Colorado aerial maps and in some places they were pretty good. In others, where there was just the right amount of tree cover, it was pretty bad. Houses cut up into 2 or 3 or 4 chunks, for example. It's a great data set, but it'll probably need some curation.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    For sure, it will need curation. But even if it were just information about where buildings probably existed it would be hugely useful. An example use case is improving building coverage in a rural area.
    - linsomniac 8y ago
      Sure! I wonder if the ML system could make use of information such as lot size and shape (from the county), building sqft, number of levels, information about outbuildings (from the MLS or property tax), and could get smarter. And if it can tell a tree from grass. "This small lot has 3 200sqft buildings separated by a tree on it, but is supposed to have a 1200sqft ranch house... Maybe those 3 buildings define the bounding box of the house?"
  - jimmyrocks 8y ago
    There is also a good buildings dataset from DRCOG that we're (OSM Colorado) importing into OSM. Reach out to us, or come to our next meetup if you're interested.
  - rmc 8y ago
    > It's a great data set, but it'll probably need some curation. Some sort of crowd sourced, geo database... ;)

lakechfoma 8y ago

I'm excited about this direction! I do minor contributions and poking around my area I'm surprised by how much of it is done by very few people. How useful it is yet how lacking it is. There's a neighboring town that is absurdly well documented, it seems a group of people got together over a month and mapped the place out meticulously, including drawing all buildings etc. This town would work very well for these vector maps, my town probably not so much. I wonder how to get more people involved, and excited, about OSM? How do we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? And does Strava/Mapbox give back? When Strava identifies common bike routes, or perhaps trails, and when Mapbox determines that roads have changed is that given back to OSM in some capacity?

avar 8y ago
> I'm surprised by how much of it is > done by very few people [...] How do > we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? The exact same contribution curve applies to Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Something like 5% of the users to 90% of the work.
- mistrial9 8y ago
  hmm care to be more specific ?
maxerickson 8y ago
Before their privacy apocalypse, Strava made their traces available for use in OSM. Mapbox actually had a project where they added information that Strava reported as missing: https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/113 https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/113 Mapbox also uses other data to find things to improve.
mmt 8y ago
> I wonder how to get more people involved, and excited, about OSM? How do we make it the Wikipedia of digital maps? This seems to be the general sentiment of the OSM community, without evidence that merely adding more people will yield better results. I personally was turned off from contributing due to the emphasis on "community", even at the expense of map quality. I blogged about this 7 years ago. As with Wikipedia, and perhaps much more so, the community can be very fragmented (both online and, obviously, geographically), and the portion holding the real power is usually very insular. This essay https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm recently popped up on HN in reference to Valve and "flat" or non-hierarchical companies like Valve, often with a caveat to ignore its focus on the feminist movement. However, in the case of another all-volunteer project, it may apply better without that caveat.

TuringTest 8y ago

>Most OSM commentary focuses on unimportant minutiae (layers, for goodness’ sake, as if it’s still 2004) What's wrong with having layers on a digital map? I can see the problem of not having them.

doombolt 8y ago
It's not hard to render OpenStreetMap in such fashion that there are layers. I don't understand what kind of explicit support is needed here.
maxerickson 8y ago
The cited context is about segmenting data for editing, where right now everything shares one context. For display and most others uses, the data is processed to create convenient layers.

doombolt 8y ago

What makes OpenStreetMap shine really is their desire to map every man-made and natural object. I'm talking about things like trees, garbage bins and industrial buildings. Commercial maps has areas where they care deeply, and areas where there's zero care. OpenSteetMap cares about everything. If you are a hobbyst (of practically anything), sooner or later you'll find better representation of your narrow interests on OSM than on Google or Apple maps. Google has awesome maps of shopping centers. OSM has awesome maps of tracks in woods and parks. You've got to choose your life style here.

mulmen 8y ago
Does this include items indoors? Such as pinball machines?
- seren 8y ago
  You can not necessarily create a point for a single pinball machine (yet), but the Key:Leisure allows you to have a rather fine level of details. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:leisure https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:leisure It mentions "amusement_park" to tag areas with "A venue with pay-to-play games, such as video games, driving simulators, pinball machines, merchandisers, etc."
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Sure. If you can go look at it and it is relatively static, that's good enough. So trees are much more accepted than say flowers. So far only 1 has been mapped using the obvious tag: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/ABP https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/ABP
- rmc 8y ago
  There are ways to map things indoors, like corridors, stairs, and shops/facilities inside large buildings (eg. train stations) https://openlevelup.net/ https://openlevelup.net/
cup-of-tea 8y ago
OSM has awesome maps of tracks in woods and parks and shopping centres.

macintux 8y ago

I often wonder what parts of the world are well-documented in OSM because my city is sorely lacking. I'm sitting reading this in a restaurant that has been here for decades. Not only is the restaurant not in the data, but the building itself isn't, which is something that I thought was pretty well covered. I've added a major post office in the past. Not a new one either. It's really hard to get enthusiastic about contributing to it when the data is just abysmal here. I hear about people adding hedges and just am baffled that their area is so well-covered that a hedge is a notable omission. I know, I know, do it myself. Be the change you want to see. But man, without some sophisticated AR tech I don't know how Indianapolis can catch up.

jburgess777 8y ago
What motivates you contribute to HN? There is an old proverb of "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". Almost all contributions make a positive step for improving the map for everybody. In the time it took to write the comment you probably could have used your local knowledge and aerial imagery to add some details to the map. I remember when I started adding data to the map in 2006 and it was almost all blank. I was happy to cycle around my local area with a GPS and spend time adding data locally to me. I did it partly because I was interested in the technology but I also had faith that when I needed to use the map someone else would have added the data that was local to them. As it turns out, this faith was justified and the OSM maps of the UK are great. For OSM to continue to make progress there is an assumptions that there is a subset of the general population that are willing to contribute for the greater good. I know that isn't always the case, the argument of: "why bother when we all use Google maps" is common. As it turns out, what Google displays on the map and what they allow you to do with it is fairly limited. As Doctor_Fegg argues, OSM is only just beginning on the journey to becoming an essential resource for worldwide geographic information. Right now things are still too focussed on providing a limited set of raster tiles which typically throw away half the data when choosing what can be displayed. Vectors tiles are an obvious next step for expanding the visualization of the existing data and provide the client with greater access to the underlying data which might not be shown on a raster tile. Another important point of open data is that it allows multiple sources to be combined together. OSM has never tried to collect everything. For example, SRTM is a better source of altitude information. There are other websites which provide open aerial imagery or street-view style videos. Openness of the raw data is the fundamental differentiator of OSM versus any alternative that I am aware of. Just like open source software is increasingly relied upon by businesses and the internet as a whole. I believe that open data will also be seen as being a fundamental building block which will never decrease in value or adoption.

gnusci 8y ago

Maybe, it is time to create an OpenGPS? Please, let me know if you know how to build one using RPi or something similar.

jburgess777 8y ago
Making an OpenSource GPS is technically challenging. For an idea of what is involved see: http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm Here are some other similar projects: http://sdrgps.blogspot.com/ http://sdrgps.blogspot.com/ https://github.com/hahnpv/gr-gps https://github.com/hahnpv/gr-gps https://github.com/hahnpv/SoftGNSS https://github.com/hahnpv/SoftGNSS Personally I would rather buy a $10 modules off eBay or a Chinese website which provides the GPS data in a standard NMEA serial stream.
- gnusci 8y ago
  OMG, now I see why we are so dependent even for old technology, and I now understand the great success of Arduino.

eboyjr 8y ago

Keep watch for the live streaming[0] of the State of the Map 2018 event tomorrow (July 28-30). They already have interesting videos on their channel such as using OSM for traffic simulation. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqJsr_5PfdvDFbgv1qp2aQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqJsr_5PfdvDFbgv1qp2aQ

dionna767675 8y ago

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zrav 8y ago

Of course there's also derivates of OSM that would be impossible to replace with Gmaps. For instance the topographics maps with detailed path characteristics for offline use for hiking and cycling provided by https://www.openandromaps.org/en https://www.openandromaps.org/en

rocqua 8y ago
I recently went hiking in the pyrenees, and I had IGN maps (french topographic service), randonnee edition maps (commercial, based on multiple sources) and the OSM hiking map available offline on my phone though OSMand. I found the app the most accurate source. Though the other maps were better about displaying where guarded and unguarded mountain huts were.

biocomputation 8y ago

I think, if it were feasible, OSM could use a really sharp CEO. I think it has incredible potential, but it needs strong leadership to determine strategy for differentiation, product positioning, and marketing. Microsoft or Facebook could make an investment in this direction and things could really take off. Just a thought.

based2 8y ago

A 3d usage of osm for Real property: https://www.bienici.com/annonce/location/orleans/appartement/4pieces/citya-immobilier-15238-GES50390023-80?q=%2Frecherche%2Flocation%2Ffrance%3Fcamera%3D11_1.8978779_47.8760204_0.9_0 https://www.bienici.com/annonce/location/orleans/appartement...

jimnotgym 8y ago

The bit that people seem to be turned off by is what I like to call the 'Stonehenge is not a henge' arguement. I started trying to contribute to openstreetMAP, to be told that where I was going wrong is that I was thinking about openstreetMAP as a MAP. I am such a fool. It has become a community mantra, and it just sounds silly.