Author Archives: Stefan Keller

“Fina and the Maps” – a new children’s book with a difference

Posted on by

“Fina and the Maps” is a children’s book that aims to get children excited about collaborative cartography. The authors and translators hope that some of them will take part in the community project OpenStreetMap, which maps the world and makes the data available to everyone – similar to Wikipedia. The book is intended to promote open education and the development of collective knowledge and can be downloaded for free as an eBook (PDF). The recommended age range is 8 to 12 years.

The colorfully illustrated children’s book (“Fina e os mapas”) about cartography and collaborative maps was originally written by Pablo Sanxiao in Galician and Spanish. It has already been translated into English, French, Italian, Catalan and (Brazilian) Portuguese and is now also available in (Swiss) High German. It can be translated into other languages in the spirit of open education and is therefore also available in raw text (Markdown).

Here is a summary: Fina is a girl who loves technology and often visits her grandmother by bike to enjoy her exciting stories and delicious cookies. When the power goes out one day, her grandmother shows Fina old atlases and tells her how maps used to be drawn by hand, sparking Fina’s interest in cartography. Inspired, Fina discovers the OpenStreetMap project, starts entering places digitally with her grandmother and becomes a digital cartographer herself.

Share this! Website and download: https://finaeosmapas.ghandalf.org/

The Swiss OSM Jubilee Tour 2024

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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!

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Project of the Month Switzerland (PotM CH) July 2021 Campsites and RV Parks

Posted on by

Now the time has come: The “Project of the Month Switzerland”, short PotM CH, has started! The idea is to work together on a specific OpenStreetMap (OSM) topic. This way, mappers can be made aware of a topic and newcomers to a topic can be introduced to OSM. It is also used for targeted data improvement (“Directed Data Collection”). The idea for this comes from the French “Projet du mois” and the German “Schwerpunkt der Woche”, among others.

Wiki page for PotM CH and PotM CH Dashboard

A wiki page for PotM CH [1] has now been set up and a PotM CH webapp [2] implemented. The wiki page explains again what it is about and the PotM CH webapp shows in a dashboard with charts the active mappers and the progress.

PotM CH July 2021 Campsites and RV parks

PotM CH July 2021 is about campgrounds and RV sites. Use the tag “tourism=camp_site” for campgrounds and the tag “tourism=caravan_site” for RV sites. More tips can be found on the wiki page for PotM CH [1] (in german and french). Important: Always tag changesets with #potmch!

Next actions and StreetComplete and MapComplete

The next actions are already planned and you can participate and suggest further actions or topics! Just edit the mentioned wiki page [1]. If you want to do pioneer work, you can also configure StreetComplete or MapComplete! On the wiki page for PotM CH you can find the corresponding help.

Join the PotM CH July 2021 campsites! Who will make it to the podium in July?

Links:
[1] Wiki page for PotM https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_month_Switzerland
[2] PotM CH Dashboard Webapp https://potm.osm.ch/superset/dashboard/13/

JOSM Plugin receives DINAcon 2020 Award!

Posted on by
Die Pokale der DINAcon 2020 Awards
(Source: DINAcon.ch 2020)

Last Friday, October 23, 2020, DINacon 2020 took place – unfortunately only virtually like all conferences during this time. DINAcon stands for “Digital Sustainability Conference” and is under the patronage of the CH Open association. At this event future-oriented projects and approaches from the Open Source and Open Data Communities, from public administration and the economy are presented, discussed and awarded.

The program also included a session on the “Public OSM Partnership” (POP Study) by Stefan Keller.

And again the DINAcon Awards were presented. The shortlist included the “Defikarte der Schweiz” (www.defikarte.ch) in the category “Community Award” and a JOSM Plugin in the category “Best Newcomer Award”.

DINAcon 2020 Best Newcomer
Trailer – DINAcon 2020 Best Newcomer Project – Shortlist. (Quelle: DINAcon.ch 2020)

And the winner is…

Finally the JOSM Plugin won in the category “Best Newcomer”! This category honors “Open Source projects that are not older than three years and offer exciting new approaches”.

The JOSM Plugin NeTEx Converter

The JOSM plugin “NeTEx Converter”, is a project for the JOSM editor, which collects and exports information about public transport – i.e. the infrastructure of stations – from OSM into this standardized XML structure. The NeTEx/XML file can then be further processed in various applications. Main developer is the student Labian Gashi who studies Computer Science in the masters program at HSR Rapperswil (now OST Campus Rapperswil). The work was supervised by Prof. Stefan Keller and specialists from the SBB.

It’s nice that another OpenStreetMap technology was awarded by this Open Source/Open Data conference. Already in 2019 the project OpenSchoolMaps won the trophy in the category “Best Open Education Project” (we reported here on SOSM.ch).

Weblinks

Swiss Castles and Fortresses Day, Sunday, October 4, 2020

Posted on by

On Sunday, October 4, 2020, 25 Swiss castles invite you to the 5th National Castles Day. Their gates and drawbridges will then be open from 10 am to 5 pm for a varied program. So – come on in!

The association Wikimedia CH and the Swiss OpenStreetMap association (SOSM) will complement the event with a Swiss Fortresses Day 2020 (Burgentag 2020). Young and old medieval enthusiasts alike are invited to discover a castle ruin on their own. You decide the program yourself. Every castle has a history and many have something mystical about them. And there is often a fireplace nearby. Find out more with the following tips:

  • Map with selected castle ruins sites (see picture below),
  • A photo challenge to upload missing photos of castles.

Illustration: Interactive online map of selected castle ruins (realized with uMap and with OpenStreetMap data). [Large map]

The photo challenge is simple: Work through this list of castle objects without pictures and upload the photos to Wikimedia Commons! For each uploaded photo there is a tweet (from @trending_places) with the hashtag #CastleProject. The photo is then usually immediately visible on the Castles project map.

The interactive online map of selected castle ruins shows a hand-picked selection of castles in Switzerland that are freely accessible and easy to reach. Depending on the castle, it can be up to one kilometer (i.e. approx. 20 min.) or more away from the nearest public transport stop or parking lot. Please follow the signs and treat nature with respect (e.g. make sure that there is no danger of forest fires in the area, watch out for ticks, don’t leave litter).

The map contains only a small part of the castles and palaces as they are managed in the Castles Project Switzerland. The Castles project links open data directly from the four open data projects OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons (photos).

The Swiss Burgentag 2020 was initiated by the SOSM association and Wikimedia CH. The event is also kindly supported by the Swiss Castle Association. We thank the association ‘Die Schweizer Schlösser’ for agreeing to link the two action days Swiss Castles Day and Burgentag 2020.

Inquiries and contacts:
Verein SOSM, Stefan Keller
Wikimedia CH, Kerstin Sonnekalb

«Bleibtoffen» («It stays open») now showing hotels

Posted on by

One of the differences between Switzerland and other countries during the pandemic is that hotels have been permitted to stay open. Not all have done so, but there are around 400 that have kept their doors open.

“Bleibtoffen” now has support for displaying both open and closed hotels, and if your establishment is open, or you know of one that is open, please update this information on bleibtoffen.ch.