I have been building an interactive 3D map of Yas Island, Abu Dhabi: uaemaps.com. It is a free, non-commercial side project.

Every road, building footprint, park and shoreline comes from OpenStreetMap, with building outlines from Overture and Microsoft’s open footprints and greenery from Copernicus Sentinel and ESA WorldCover. On top of that the landmarks are modelled by hand from photos: Ferrari World, Yas Waterworld, the Etihad Arena, the F1 circuit and its tunnels.

The map follows the real sun over Yas, lights up at night by OSM’s lit and use tags, and runs traffic on the real road graph, including bridges and tunnels from OSM’s bridge, tunnel and layer tags. Each place has its own page with opening hours and links.

Working with Yas in OSM showed me a few gaps: some new venues and gates were missing or a few hundred metres off. Where I could check them on the ground, I want to fix them in OSM too.

Feedback from mappers in the UAE is very welcome.

Map: uaemaps.com · Sources: uaemaps.com/story/sources

I just updated, as at the beginning of every quarter the statistics on the wiki here osm.wiki/Stats#Contributor_statistics_reports

(Semi-)Noteworthy is that we passed 2.5 million contributors to the map data in August and that Q3 was an all time high for a quarter. January 2017 was on a monthly base slightly better, but potentially similar to now it was due to one time effects adding up, the initial maps.me inrush and natural disaster mapping in the USA.

But what everybody really wanted to know is how things continued with DeFlock (see this discussion back in July https://en.osm.town/deck/@simon/116931222215984341) and new mapper influx:

	iD		OM/CM		DeFlock		SC		Total
2026-01	9982	70,31 %	1568	11,04 %	1205	8,49 %	613	4,32 %	14198
2026-02	10631	72,59 %	1645	11,23 %	1033	7,05 %	513	3,50 %	14645
2026-03	11863	70,22 %	2365	14,00 %	1038	6,14 %	656	3,88 %	16895
2026-04	11313	69,78 %	2089	12,89 %	1306	8,06 %	534	3,29 %	16212
2026-05	10979	67,05 %	2221	13,56 %	1532	9,36 %	577	3,52 %	16375
2026-06	12236	64,83 %	2384	12,63 %	2584	13,69 %	580	3,07 %	18874
2026-07	12335	52,90 %	3165	13,57 %	4858	20,83 %	1811	7,77 %	23317
2026-08	13487	53,01 %	3410	13,40 %	5364	21,08 %	1908	7,50 %	25441
2026-09	15427	63,65 %	3669	15,14 %	2014	8,31 %	1781	7,35 %	24239

… See full entry

お久しぶりです。setowalkerです。

最近忙しく、あまり日記を書けていませんでした。

さて、今回書きたいことは2件です。

・尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線のマッピングを進めています。 ・交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？

尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線のマッピングを進めています

尾張旭市・長久手市のバス停・バス路線（名鉄バス・あさぴー号・N-バス）のマッピングをかなり進めました。 まだ把握しきれていない部分（あさぴー号の経路の一部、名鉄バスのトヨタ博物館前～長久手古戦場駅間の経路など）があるので、順次対応していきたいです。

交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？

交通マップ（Transport Map）が不調？なのか、10日前に追加したバスルートが反映されていません。早く解決してほしいです。

OpenStreetMap is a beautiful map, but its biggest problem is its user base. If we compare OpenStreetMap with Google Maps, we’ll notice a significant difference in the places, shops, and restaurants that appear on Google Maps but are missing from OpenStreetMap. This isn’t a flaw in OpenStreetMap, but rather a lack of users to add these places. Nevertheless, I try to contribute to the map as much as I can because it’s owned by a free community, not a monopolistic company—and that’s what these communities deserve.

I was looking at my Google Maps and the amount of view I have to date, 47 million! But there is no contact with people , so looked to the Ferdiverse and found this. No not if they have photo uploads, but I can put my Section Eight and Bisset Collection on a map now. Me and Google have issues.

All the buildings in Epworth are mapped and addressed. There are still farms within the bounds of Epworth that can use some attention.

It seems that in fact mkgmap still requires boundary files, even though they are no longer available on the mkgmap website. After puzzling over the problem of the Caspian Sea not rendering correctly for a while I broke down and consulted Copilot, which informed me that they are still needed and to look for them on Thorsten Kukuk’s website. I downloaded sea.zip and bounds.zip, and added the following switches to the mkgmap scripts:

–precomp-sea=sea.zip –bounds=bounds.zip –generate-sea

That seems to have solved the problem.

I have written batch files for the Windows CLI to generate IMG files for Russia and the five Central Asian countries to make updating easier. Other tweaks include setting the maximum nodes per tile in splitter at

–max-nodes=600000

which avoids overloading the Garmin nuvi processor. Maps load faster and navigation no longer involves waiting a long time for the processor to calculate a route.

In the coming days when I have finished debugging and troubleshooting the batch files I will refresh the copies on Github.

1: map marinas ☐

2: finish splitting terraced houses ☐

3: finish mobile home park ☐

☐ not done

✗ done

I am wanting to buy a good handheld GPS that will provide more accurate GPS tracks than my phone. When I look at GPS tracks people have left on trails for example there will be 3-4 completely offset tracks where the trail is totally obscured by canopy so it’s impossible to plot an accurate trail.

I really prefer good open source technology without licensing and all that junk but it seems like GPS inherently requires subscription if you’re looking for accuracy. :’(

So I’m looking into Garmin’s GPSMAPS as a considerable improvement over my phones GPS accuracy. It would also be super interesting to do mapping by hand but I don’t know anything about that!

Also in the future I may be using LIDAR mounted on a drone to get high resolution scans to upload to OSM but I have done no research yet to learn how to. My LIDAR plan is to scan and more accurately map shore lines of lakes and ponds and rivers. We’ll see if that actually happens, yea right right?

OH! And I think it would be helpful to provide up to date street level imagery, I wonder if OSM or one of their partners loan something like that.. Again, yea right.

Algeria Name Language Loophole

Loophole! Because it eats constructive time and efforts.

I know Arabic, English and French. I don’t know Berber. So for sure I will have some bias.

Background

Pushing separation ideas on multiple dimensions, now resurfaces as political, religion, linguistic and many other ideologies skirmishes.

Initially, it was only edit-revert loops between Algerian mappers. Now, it noticeable for see some from outside. It is a free community project anyway.

There were multiple discussions over more than a decade: Help community topics

Studies language in Algeria shifted:

• Pure French.
• Bi-language French+Arabic.
• Arabic+French+English, with French university for science and engineering.
• Arabic+Tamazight(Limited in some regions)+French+English, with French university for science and engineering.
• Arabic+Tamazight(Limited in some regions)+(French+English on equal foot). University still French for science and engineering with couple new branches shifted to English.

Hmm hard moves between generations.

Last Discussion and Results

Last one was a Vote on a Proposal by DWG: [Voting] Official tagging consensus for the name tag in Algeria

Proposal documented here: Naming convention

Personal Point of View

When I joined, most of name are in French. Rest all empty. As long we get more contributors, DWG will deal with a new generation. One pushed for Arabic, a decade ago. Another pushed for Tamazight, these couple years. Expecting English to come next :D.

Well for the agreed proposal:

… See full entry

It seems mkgmap was updated and no longer uses sea-latest.zip or bounds-latest.zip. I had to tweak the splitter and mkgmap scripts to deal with that, and decided to create a separate script for each country in Central Asia. I am still puzzling over how to make the Caspian Sea render properly without using those zip files.

The style sheets for Central Asian countries can be found on Github at https://github.com/allanmustard/mkgmap, file tstan.zip.

Here is what I have now for splitter and mkgmap scripts:

***> In the splitter script, change the file name ending in .pbf to the file name you draw data from.

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Kazakhstan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12340001 Kazakhstan.pbf

java.exe -Xmx16384m -jar mkgmap\mkgmap.jar –copyright-message=”Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors” –output-dir=map –route –index –split-name-index –location-autofill=is_in,nearest –preserve-element-order –style-file=.\tstan –add-pois-to-areas –link-pois-to-ways –nearby-poi-rules-config=.\tstan\duppoi –unicode –housenumbers –road-name-pois –process-exits –process-destination –split-name-index –add-boundary-nodes-at-admin-boundaries=2 –housenumbers –poi-address –generate-sea=multipolygon –country-name=”Kazakhstan” –family-id=1234 –family-name=Kazakhstan –series-name=Central_Asia –area-name=Kazakhstan –gmapi –gmapsupp -c split\template.args

---

java.exe -Xmx4000m -jar splitter\splitter.jar –output-dir=split –description=Kyrgyzstan –overlap=4000 –keep-complete=true –mapid=12350001 Kyrgyzstan.pbf

… See full entry

Heute habe ich einen neuen Point of Interest in der Uhlandstraße 20-25 in Berlin-Charlottenburg (10623) eingetragen. Im Gebäude befinden sich mehrere Büros, und eines davon fehlte bisher auf der Karte.

Was ich hinzugefügt habe

• Name: WirSchreiben
• Tag: office=company
• Adresse: Uhlandstraße 20-25, 10623 Berlin
• Öffnungszeiten: Mo-So 09:00-18:00
• Website und Telefonnummer

WirSchreiben ist eine Agentur für akademische Unterstützung, die unter anderem Lektorat und Korrektorat für Kundinnen und Kunden in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz anbietet.

Hinweise

Adresse und Öffnungszeiten stammen von der offiziellen Website des Unternehmens. Wer vor Ort Ortskenntnis hat und Fehler bei Lage oder Angaben bemerkt, kann sich gerne melden.

Nach langen Jahren der Abwesenheit bin ich wieder als aktiver Unterstützer bei OSM eingestiegen.

Neben der Bearbeitung über den iD-Browser nutze ich jetzt für unterwegs die App “StreetComplete” aus dem F-Droid-Store.

Ich hoffe noch viele weitere Änderungen zur besseren Qualität der OSM-Karte beitragen zu können.

Liebe Grüße

jaltux

On 13 and 14 March 2026, in celebration of Women’s Month and International Women’s Day, I had the honour of leading the “Map Your Campus” Mapillary Campaign at Far Western University (FWU) in Mahendranagar, Kanchanpur, on behalf of WOM-AsiaNavigators (Women in Open Mapping), where I serve as Nepal Lead. I led the campaign with Er. Niruta Neupane and it was the first initiative of its kind in Nepal’s Far Western region.

Why Far Western Nepal

Sudurpashchim Province is one of Nepal’s most remote and data-sparse regions, and its streets, pathways, institutions and community landmarks are still poorly documented in open map data. Our aim was to start closing this gap by capturing ground-level imagery and contributing it to open platforms.

What We Did

Dates	13 and 14 March 2026
Venue	Far Western University and surrounding streets
Participants	30
Method	Handheld smartphones with the Mapillary app
Result	20,000+ street-level images in two days

• Day 1: Training and orientation. Introduction to Mapillary and its contribution workflow, app installation and phone setup, division into field teams, route assignment and the first field session.
• Day 2: Field mapping and consolidation. Extended coverage of streets, pathways and institutional areas, quality checks on the Mapillary platform, re-mapping of under-covered areas, a group debrief, and a closing ceremony with certificates and prizes for top contributors.

Challenges and Lessons

Limited internet during uploads, battery drain during capture, consistent image quality, and changing weather and light were the main challenges. They gave us useful lessons for planning future campaigns in remote, resource-constrained regions.

Reflection

… See full entry

I have successfully completed the Autumn Mapping Sprint 2025, a one-month remote mapping initiative organized by the Youth Innovation Lab (YI-Lab) under the RAIN (Resilience, Adaptation and Inclusion in Nepal) Programme, funded by UK International Development. The sprint ran from 5 November to 5 December 2025.

I was assigned to map two rural municipalities on my own:

• Yashodhara Rural Municipality (Kapilvastu District, Lumbini Province)
• Kaudena Rural Municipality (Sarlahi District, Madhesh Province)

About the Sprint

The sprint engaged skilled Advanced OSM mappers to improve geospatial data in 18 priority municipalities across Madhesh and Lumbini provinces. Mappers contributed to the mapping and validation of land use and land cover, buildings, roads, waterways and points of interest, following the standardized OSM guidelines for Nepal. Mapping was done using Esri World Imagery.

The objectives were to:

• Map essential features such as land use and land cover, buildings, roads and waterways
• Engage youth mappers and OpenStreetMap enthusiasts in remote mapping
• Enhance data accuracy, consistency and completeness in municipalities
• Strengthen open-source geospatial data for local resilience

My Contributions

Feature	Contribution
Total map edits	3,710
Buildings	946
Highways	131.48 km
Land use / land cover	6.93 km
Waterways	11.90 km

Collectively, the sprint produced 160,870 map edits, 70,666 buildings, 727.04 km of land use and land cover, 245.53 km of waterways and 1,567.59 km of highways. This significantly improved open geospatial coverage in the targeted areas, supporting disaster preparedness, local governance and community resilience.

Location of Mapped Areas

… See full entry

Обозначение обособленной велосипедной дорожки:

• highway=cycleway - основной тег линии, который указывает, что путь предназначен для движения на велосипедах.
• foot=no - явно запрещает движение пешеходов (если пешеходам запрещено находиться на этой дорожке). Если пешеходы разрешены, но дорожка разделена на зоны, используют foot=yes и segregated=yes/no.

Велосипедная дорожка + тротуар:

Комбинация тэгов для обозначения пешеходного тротуара, совмещённого с выделенной велосипедной дорожкой, которая конструктивно или визуально отделена от пешеходной зоны:

• highway=footway- обозначает, что данный объект является обустроенной дорожкой, предназначенной в первую очередь для пешеходов.
• footway=sidewalk - уточняет тип пешеходной дорожки. Этот тег указывает, что дорожка является тротуаром, то есть идет параллельно автомобильной дороге (обычно повторяя её геометрию).
• bicycle=designated - указывает на официальный юридический статус для велосипедистов. Это значит, что дорожка специально выделена/предназначена для движения на велосипеде (например, установлен соответствующий знак или нанесена разметка), а не просто «разрешена для транзита».
• segregated=yes - означает, что потоки пешеходов и велосипедистов разделены. Это может быть реализовано с помощью сплошной конструктивной разделительной полосы, разметки на асфальте или использования разных типов покрытия (например, плитка для пешеходов и асфальт для велосипедов).

“Hello World”

I have begun the OpenStreetMap October map challenge. I have started this for mainly two reasons, 1) preparation for grad school and 2) satiate my endless appetite for learning new things. I love climate science, data visualization, and anime.

• FreePalestine

Overpass-Turbo

Pour les panneaux d’information pédestre nommés

[out:json][timeout:25];
nwr["tourism"="information"]["information"="guidepost"]["hiking"="yes"]["name"]({{bbox}});
out geom;

Pour les relations pédestres

[out:json][timeout:25];
nwr["type"="route"]["route"="hiking"]({{bbox}});
out geom;

Modélisation

Relation

• type=route
• route=hiking
• network=lwn
• operator=ValRando
• osmc:symbol=yellow::yellow_diamond
• name=Les Marécottes Village -> Planajeur
• from=Les Marécottes Village
• to=Planajeur

note=Naam ‘Sprenkelberg’ is gebaseerd op de nabijgelegen naam ‘Klein Sprenkelveld’. Nader onderzoek moet uitwijzen of Sprenkelberg als naam voor deze top daadwerkelijk wordt gebruikt.

Earlier this year we introduced a sandbox feature within Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Tasking Manager, providing a safe space to practice and experiment with the OpenStreetMap data model. This is built on the foundational work from OpenStreetMap US!

Beyond practice and data privacy, Sandbox setup is already proving to be a data annotation tool for machine learning workflows. Using sandbox, you can capture custom, non-standard schemas and training labels (like marine habitats or specialized features) without conflicting with live OSM data.

Looking ahead, we plan to extend this sandbox environment to handle data conflation, allowing users to bring in external datasets at the task level to compare, validate, and reconcile geometries and attributes against OSM.

A huge thanks to OpenStreetMap US, as well as Sam Woodcock, Kshitij Raj Sharma, Prabin Pathak, Sumit Dahal, Anil Raj Rimal, DK Benjamin, and everyone across the community who contributed to designing, testing, and reviewing this feature.

You can read the full overview on the HOT website here: https://www.hotosm.org/en/news/tasking-manager-sandbox-a-safe-space-to-train-test-and-experiment/

If you run workshops, train mappers, or work with experimental datasets, please test out the Sandbox on the Tasking Manager and let us know your thoughts or feedback!