OSM Birthday Party on August 11 at Badi Rheinau

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The plan for August 11 is becoming more concrete: We will meet at Aquarina 4 in Rheinau. In the Badi for cooling off. I hope for good weather.

My idea is to do some mapping on the way there, like a star hike: Each person or small groups will walk the last few kilometers, mapping as they go.

Arrival between 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM, birthday cake around 4:00 PM.

Here are two suggestions for hikes:

Hike A

Very beautiful!

Rüedlinge → Rheinau Time: 2-3 hours

Route:

  • Start at the Flaach/Rüdlingen bridge (newly built, needs to be updated in OSM), bus: Flaach, Ziegelhütte
  • Follow the west side upstream along the Rhine
  • At Ellikon am Rhein, take the ferry across the river
  • Possible stop at Rhygarte Node 356692523 (not Restaurant Schiff, same building at the front side)
  • Follow the east side upstream along the Rhine to the lower auxiliary weir Way 39763717

Hike B

Also beautiful, with the Rhine Falls.

Rheinfall → Rheinau Time: 2 hours

Route:

  • Start on the Zurich (south/east) side of the Rhine Falls, train: Schloss Laufen am Rheinfall
  • Follow the east side downstream along the Rhine to the main weir in Rheinau

Many thanks to Loremo for helping with the planning and the hike suggestions!

Please share your route on the wiki or forum so not everyone maps the same area.

The Swiss OSM Jubilee Tour 2024

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This tour is a series of events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of OpenStreetMap (OSM) and its impact on communities around the world and in Switzerland. Participants will learn about the versatility of OpenStreetMap and its central role in supporting sectors such as tourism and emergency services. Join us as we celebrate two decades of collaborative mapping, innovation and the transformative power of open data. Some events will take place online, others onsite – with a “grand” finale on the actual birthday around August 9, 2024!

Three onsite events at which Swiss OSM was a guest have already taken place, namely Wikipedia Day 2024 on April 27, 2024 in Bern, the workshop “OpenStreetMap for Research and Geospatial Analysis” on May 16, 2024 at the University of Zurich and the “Sozial- und Umweltforum Ostschweiz” (SUFO) on May 25, 2024 in St. Gallen.

The online webinar series on “OpenStreetMap for fire departments and other interested parties” (in German) on May 14 and 23, 2024 was also very successful. Next up is the webinar series on “OpenStreetMap for tourism – using POIs correctly” (also online and in German) on June 19 and June 25, 2024.

Share these events! Contact me (Stefan Keller) for any questions about this tour.

Website: https://wiki.osm.org/Switzerland/The_Swiss_OSM_Jubilee_Tour

“Mapper in Residence” bei der Stadt Winterthur im November 2023

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Stefan Keller von der OST Ostschweizer Fachhochschule und SOSM-Vorstandsmitglied wird “Mapper in Residence” bei der Stadt Winterthur für vier Freitage im November 2023 (*).

Als Mapper in Residence (MiR)…

  • dient er als Bindeglied zwischen einer Organisation – in diesem Fall der Abteilung Geoinformation der Stadt Winterthur – und der OpenStreetMap (OSM) Community.
  • fördert er das Verständnis für OpenStreetMap unter den Mitarbeitenden der Organisation, z.B. durch Veranstaltungen.
  • fördert er die Verbesserung von OpenStreetMap-Inhalten und -Prozessen durch die Community.

Ein:e Mapper in Residence initiiert bzw. stärkt letztlich die Partnerschaft zwischen der Organisation und der OpenStreetMap-Community. Das kleine Projekt ist inspiriert von “The Wikipedian in Residence”.

Stefan Keller wird unter anderem Daten und Prozesse identifizieren und Werkzeuge verbessern und spezifizieren. Dies um mehr offene Daten der Stadt Winterthur in OpenStreetMap zu integrieren und um diese in OpenStreetMap aktuell zu halten. Dies könnte auch zu einer Verbesserung und Erweiterung des “Leitfadens für Dateneigentümer” (**) von 2021 führen.

(*) Siehe auch diese Mitteilung auf LinkedIn der Stadt Winterthur vom 30. Oktober 2023.
(**) Hitz-Gamper, B. S., & Stürmer, M. E. (2021). Daten in OpenStreetMap integrieren – ein Leitfaden für Dateninhaber. DOI: 10.48350/159438. Download (PDF).

Benches are a social institution – like OpenStreetMap!

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The project of the month Switzerland (PotM CH, see below) from August 2022 is about the registration of benches in OpenStreetMap. Benches are a social facility for young and old – just like OpenStreetMap! A change simply counts as adding or changing from the tag amenity=bench and optionally other tags like color. The data is updated hourly.

A dashboard (no. 23) shows the changes of this PotM CH since the beginning of August. The time period can be adjusted in the filter at the bottom right. To display the benches, one can use standard map style on OSM.org, zooming in all the way. A useful webapp is also the OpenPOIMap.

More information about this PotM CH can be found on this Wiki page, where by the way also own projects (“Challenges”) can be proposed.

Benches in OpenPOIMap around Bellevue, Zürich (Switzerland).

P.S. The “Project of the Month Switzerland” (PotM CH) is about working together on a specific OpenStreetMap topic. This way, mappers can be made aware of a topic and/or newcomers to a topic can be introduced to OpenStreetMap. It is also used for targeted data improvement.

XKCD #636 (Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.5).

Project of the Month Switzerland (PotM CH) April 2022 Sustainable offers

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The “Project of the Month Switzerland” (PotM CH) of April 2022 is about the collection of sustainable offers, i.e. stores and vending machines that are organic, regional, unpackaged, fair trade or second hand, and vegetarian and vegan restaurants as well as food sharing including water refill. Note the relevant tags and keys in the PotM documentation [1]. The “Sustainable” web map [2] by user ToastHawaii nicely depicts most of the items.

Figure 1: Dashboard of the PotM CH April 2022 Sustainable offers.
Figure 1: Dashboard of the PotM CH April 2022 Sustainable offers.

Dashboard and Ranking

The April 2022 PotM-CH dashboard was given the number 19 [3]. As before, it shows a ranked list of the mapper names that have edited the most. By the way, users geo_max and Geonick, currently ranked second and third, are out of contention. So currently imagoiq, sampeto and Necessary_Function are on the first three places.

Prizes and Mapathon/Hackathon 29 April 2022

The April 2022 PotM CH is a very special promotion with prizes to be won: The three most diligent mappers will receive small gift boxes from the farm! The prizes will be awarded at the Mapathon/Hackathon Rapperswil 2022, which will take place next Friday afternoon, April 29 [4]. There are still places available at this Mapathon/Hackathon (“Ask us Anything”).

Sustainability Week Rapperswil 2022

The PotM CH prizes and pizza and drinks from the Mapathon were sponsored by Sustainability Week Rapperswil 2022 (NHWR22). Here is the whole program of the #NHWR22 [5].

What does “sustainable” mean?

The term “sustainable” has been defined rather restrictively in this PotM. It actually means much more, such as free repair offers, car and bike sharing, or environmentally sound waste disposal. Much of this has already been proposed in the PotM documentation [2] and could be done in the next months.

Have an idea for a “Project of the Month”?

If you have an idea for a PotM CH, just post it in the documentation/wiki [1] or get in touch on one of the channels mentioned in the help here [6].

Links:

[1] Documentation/Wiki for PotM CH: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Project_of_the_month_Switzerland
[2] Sustainable web map: https://sustainable.zottelig.ch/de/
[3] Dashboard 19 “Sustainable offerings”: https://potm.osm.ch/superset/dashboard/19/
[4] Mapathon/Hackathon Rapperswil 2022, April 29, 2022: https://giswiki.hsr.ch/4._Mapathon_Rapperswil_2022
[5] Sustainability Week Rapperswil 2022: https://www.sustainabilityweek.ch/event/4-mapathon-rapperswil/
[6] OSM.ch Help: https://osm.ch/hilfe.html