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OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

gisdoctor.com

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Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#81

Post by fungi »

donquichotte wrote: post #3

When I was traveling overland in central Asia, everybody I met was using maps.me with OSM. The maps were of surprisingly good quality and maps.me is superb, allowing the maps for whole countries to be downloaded (ideal if you don't have a data plan) and the route calculation is quick as long as the road grid isn't too dense.

Used osmand from f-droid in Indonesia few weeks ago. Google maps was basically useless. OSM map in southern Lombok did send me down a crazy dirt path that was mapped as main road. That was fine for me, I was just exploring the country on a scooter not relying on it for anything important (uploaded fixes when I got back to the home stay).

Similarly experience in Philippines in January, Google maps had basically nothing in Palawan but OSM had great coverage.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#82

Post by ancymon »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #65
ancymon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flag OSM geocoder is Nominatim. It turns out it won't work if you provide only part of street name (if OSM contains full street name) or when you provide full name (if OSM contains only part of the name) [1]. So in my opinion searching for addresses is not reliable. That's one thing, another is that addresses are quite often duplicated. There's no automatic check for that and such duplicates exist for years. [1]…

There are several geocoders available for OSM. To say that "the database is inconsistent [and] contains many errors", and then back that up solely with a criticism of one piece of client software, makes no sense.

I've backed the statement that OSM contains errors by saying that there are duplicated addresses.

I've backed the statement that OSM is inconsistent by saying that sometimes streets in OSM contain full name and sometime only most important part (and that makes Nominatim unable to search for addresses).

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#83

Post by Litost »

amdavidson wrote: post #56
c0nsumer wrote: post #5

I do a lot of mountain bike trail mapping work using OpenStreetMap, and it's really bugged me that more public-service mapping projects (eg: MTB Project) don't build on OSM. They all tend to instead build their own mapping set which requires stuff to be re-entered... It's kind of a pain.

How are you finding is the easiest way to do this? I would love to be able to add more trail information.

I'm still slightly new to editing OSM as a MTBer, maxerickson and c0nsumer have covered the details of how to do this already very well, but i found after comparing a seemingly never ending number of competing apps in this space, i found Viewranger GPS really useful:

a) For planning routes in advance to then download to your smartphone and follow using the app (as mentioned elsewhere OSM was definitely the best mapping layer to use for this both as a resource and as a mechanism to feed your own updates back in).

b) For creating tracks from the routes you've actually cycled which can then be uploaded to the website for later examination.

c) In addition to b) you can annotate your uploaded track on the website with actual pictures from the journey round. These can be from a number of sources (i use flickr) and it will either time sync or gps sync them to the route so you get a nice one stop for looking at previous trips. This has the added benefit you can just take pictures as your going round to then refer back to when fixing OSM without having to worry about making notes as to where it was etc.

Has anyone else used this app or anything else to do this as i'd be interested if there's any alternative ways.

Example annotated track from Hay Bluff: http://my.viewranger.com/track/details/MTIzMzAxNg==

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#84

Post by voltagex_ »

Xylakant wrote: post #27
Brakenshire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, a lot of charitable organizations that could be releasing data to build on top of the OSM dataset and the tooling that exists, instead create their own data silos. For instance, Sustrans (the cycling charity in the UK), and the Ramblers (the walking/hiking charity in the UK). I get the impression that managers are coming up with ideas for their digital projects without any reference to the technical landsc…

http://wheelmap.org/ , a map for wheelchair accessible places builds on OSM.

Well there goes my spare time for the next little while - adding all the places I know of in my home town. It doesn't seem to switch to English properly, though.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#85

Post by c0nsumer »

Litost wrote: post #83
amdavidson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you finding is the easiest way to do this? I would love to be able to add more trail information.

I'm still slightly new to editing OSM as a MTBer, maxerickson and c0nsumer have covered the details of how to do this already very well, but i found after comparing a seemingly never ending number of competing apps in this space, i found Viewranger GPS really useful: a) For planning routes in advance to then download to your smartphone and follow using the app (as mentioned elsewhere OSM was definitely the best mappi…

In case you aren't aware, Strava has switched to OSM for its maps which is pretty darn handy.

(It's also knowing that all of the local MTB trails that I've surveyed / mapped are now properly on Strava.)

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#86

Post by staticelf »

jdmichal wrote: post #49
awqrre wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wi-Fi also does works in airplane mode, on Android at least...

Your phone is not in airplane mode if it's making any kind of signal. You're just using Wi-Fi with the cellular modem disabled. Since GPS is only reading the satellite signals, it works fine.

How does that work on for example Norwegian planes that offer wifi sometimes?

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#87

Post by jpatokal »

skimpycompiler wrote: post #55
lnanek2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android developer here as well. Have found the same. It has saved the day before where the only other option would have been licensing commercial options like skobbler. I don't think Google actually dog foods their Android Google Maps API, so it tends to be pretty limited.

Google Maps is just too expensive and its pricing model isn't exponential at all, it's not even quadratic. Very common operation is looking for pairwise distance matrix. Pricing and limits are totally irrational. 100,000 daily limit is totally impossible for an app with 10 users. 100x100 = 10,000 :D Given that Google probably has all of the distances cached somewhere on their servers, I see no technical reason why th…

You seem to be talking about the HTTP web service Distance Matrix API, but why would you call that from an app? The JavaScript Distance Matrix API scales to essentially unlimited users for free:

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...

I'm also not aware of OSM offering anything comparable out of the box, although there are some commercial providers who offers similar paid services based on OSM data.

Also, if you think "all of the distances" are cached, I invite you to estimate how many places there are in the world and how big a matrix of every distance from every point to every other point would be.

(Disclaimer: Used to work on Geo at Google. Opinions mine only, etc.)

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#88

Post by jandrewrogers »

Brakenshire wrote: post #21
c0nsumer wrote: post #5

I do a lot of mountain bike trail mapping work using OpenStreetMap, and it's really bugged me that more public-service mapping projects (eg: MTB Project) don't build on OSM. They all tend to instead build their own mapping set which requires stuff to be re-entered... It's kind of a pain.

Similarly, a lot of charitable organizations that could be releasing data to build on top of the OSM dataset and the tooling that exists, instead create their own data silos. For instance, Sustrans (the cycling charity in the UK), and the Ramblers (the walking/hiking charity in the UK). I get the impression that managers are coming up with ideas for their digital projects without any reference to the technical landsc…

I can explain at least why OSM data is not used because I have been through the process many times. OSM is frequently rejected for reasons having nothing to do with awareness or quality. The licensing makes it unusable for many analytics applications.

There is a de facto prohibition on the blending and derivation using many geo data sets due to licensing restrictions and regulatory requirements, including many government data sets. Even OSM does not have the equivalent of a BSD-like license. In many cases, blending two sets of geo data and doing derivative analytics creates an unresolvable conflict between the individual licensing terms and the requirements of a specific application. Specific to OSM, many popular geo data sets have regulatory restrictions that make them fundamentally incompatible with OSM for many applications where OSM would otherwise be a great data set.

With commercial data set providers, the license is customizable to be appropriate for the regulatory and other requirements of the application. With OSM, you are stuck with an OSM license, which would violate all kinds legal and practical constraints for many use cases. I can say that for many geo applications I've supported, compliance with the OSM licensing would literally be violating the law. Fortunately, commercial data sets are much cheaper than they used to be.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#89

Post by babuskov »

fungi wrote: post #81
donquichotte wrote: post #3

When I was traveling overland in central Asia, everybody I met was using maps.me with OSM. The maps were of surprisingly good quality and maps.me is superb, allowing the maps for whole countries to be downloaded (ideal if you don't have a data plan) and the route calculation is quick as long as the road grid isn't too dense.

Used osmand from f-droid in Indonesia few weeks ago. Google maps was basically useless. OSM map in southern Lombok did send me down a crazy dirt path that was mapped as main road. That was fine for me, I was just exploring the country on a scooter not relying on it for anything important (uploaded fixes when I got back to the home stay). Similarly experience in Philippines in January, Google maps had basically nothin…

I used OSMand in Greece last Summer and it was fine as long as you applied common sense on some turns :)

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#90

Post by sp8962 »

jpatokal wrote: post #87
skimpycompiler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is just too expensive and its pricing model isn't exponential at all, it's not even quadratic. Very common operation is looking for pairwise distance matrix. Pricing and limits are totally irrational. 100,000 daily limit is totally impossible for an app with 10 users. 100x100 = 10,000 :D Given that Google probably has all of the distances cached somewhere on their servers, I see no technical reason why th…

You seem to be talking about the HTTP web service Distance Matrix API, but why would you call that from an app? The JavaScript Distance Matrix API scales to essentially unlimited users for free: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... I'm also not aware of OSM offering anything comparable out of the box, although there are some commercial providers who offers similar paid services based on OSM…

OSRM provides a distance matrix API https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki/Server-api ("table"). All open source, if you don't want to run it yourself, you can turn to a commercial service provider, see switch2osm.org
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