Author Archives: sosmAdmin

DINAcon Awards – Open Source Hero

Posted on by

On Friday October 20th, a delegation of three members of the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association had the pleasure to receive the DINAcon Open Source Hero Award for OpenStreetMap long term contributors.

Picture of the DINAcon 2017 Open Source Hero Award für OpenStreetMap Langzeit-Mitwirkende. A glass block with the inscription DINAcon 2017 Awards 2017. OpenStreetMap Longterm Contributors

DINAcon 2017 Open Source Hero Award for OpenStreetMap Longterm Contributors.
Picture: Simon Poole

In its laudation, the jury acknowledged that the work on OSM is a continuous process and a lot of manual work, and that a lot of persistence was needed to get the project to the state it is today. This award was accepted in the name of the whole Swiss OSM community and the OSM community world wide.

Metanet donates hard disks to SOSM

Posted on by

Some of the SAS (this is a fast computer interface similar to SATA) disks we received together with the servers that we run osm.ch and related services on, have failed due to old age, and while we originally had an ample supply of spares now we’ve now run out.

Unfortunately, these disks are rather expensive to purchase new, if not to say uneconomic. Luckily Metanet has now helped us out by donating eight 2nd hand disks from their stock. This will allow us to defer a complete replacement for at least 1 to 2 years and make an unhurried decision on what to buy.

A big thank you to Metanet for supporting the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association.

SOSM Annual General Meeting April 8th 2017 Fribourg

Posted on by

As already indicated the 2017 AGM will take place in Fribourg on April the 8th, 11:00. The venue is at the

University Fribourg,
Geography Unit, Room 226,
Chemin du Musée 4

Many thanks to the Geography Department of the University for supporting us. The location can be found here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/138363300#map=18/46.79370/7.15680 and instructions on how to get there are here: http://www.unifr.ch/geoscience/geographie/en/general-information

The event will follow our proven formula with a roughly one hour formal part starting at 11:00, with lunch following and a fairly unstructured mapping party as the activity in the afternoon from 13:30 onwards.

Guests, including such that simply want to learn something about OpenStreetMap, are welcome to both parts. Could however both members and guests indicate to info@sosm.ch if they plan to attend, particularly for lunch, so that we can inform the restaurant how many guests they can expect.

Looking forward to seeing you in Fribourg

Simon Poole

Agenda for the 2017 Swiss OpenStreetMap Association Annual General Meeting
Agenda der Generalversammlung der Swiss OpenStreetMap Association 2017

Saturday, April 8th 2017, 11:00,
Samstag, den 8. April 2017, 11:00,
University Fribourg, Geography Unit, Room 226, Chemin du Musée 4, CH – 1700 Fribourg 

1. Opening and Welcome / Eröffnung und Begrüssung

2. Election of the minute taker and vote counters / Wahl des Protokollführers & der Stimmenzähler

3. Adoption of minutes of the 2016 AGM / Annahme des Protokolls der GV 2016

4. Activity report 2016 / Tätigkeitsbericht 2016

5. Financial results 2016 / Jahresrechnung 2016

  • Presentation by the treasurer / Bericht des Kassiers
  • Auditors report / Bericht der Kassenprüfer

6. Membership fees 2017 / Mitgliederbeiträge 2017

7. Budget 2017

8. Elections / Wahlen

  • Board / Vorstand
    Candidates for all positions are welcome. The board recommends to elect at least one assessor to the board (candidate Stefan Keller). .Kandidaten für alle Positionen sind willkommen. Der Vorstand empfiehlt mindestens einen Beisitzer in den Vorstand zu wählen (Kandidat Stefan Keller).
  • Auditors / Kassenprüfer

9. Any other business / Varia

Building addresses of canton Bern

Posted on by

Like Simon has already noted in a previous blog entry, we may use the Building Addresses of the Canton of Bern (GEBADR) for OSM.

In the last months the data was prepared to be suitable for OSM and a tasking manager was set up. Further information can be found in the documentation on the OSM wiki about this project.

Some are already mapping the addresses and are drawing the missing building outlines. But the task is rather large with a total of 400’000 addresses and it will take a long time. Further mappers supporting this project would therefore be really welcome. So please spread the word!

A special thank to Michael Spreng for his support and setting up the tasking manager. The tasking manager was set up on the servers of SOSM and is now available for other projects as well.

Pre-announcement: 2017 SOSM AGM, April the 8th in Fribourg

Posted on by

The 2017 SOSM annual general meeting will take place on April the 8th in Fribourg, venue to be determined.

We will likely keep the format from the previous events: formal meeting before lunch, lunch, mapping and back to the venue.

If you have suggestions for or contacts with a suitable venue please get back to me.

The formal announcement will be published towards the end of March.

Looking forward to seeing you in Fribourg.

Kartendruck am GEOSummit 2016 in Bern

Posted on by

Am 8. und 9. Juni findet in Bern wieder die Messe GEOSummit statt. OpenStreetMap ist zwar nicht mit einem eigenen Stand vertreten, aber wir machen dieses Jahr wieder die Aktion, dass wir am GEOSummit wieder Karten aus OSM Daten rendern. Diese werden freundlicherweise von Canon (Schweiz) vor Ort gedruckt. Hier der Bereich, den wir an der Messe anbieten können:

extent-small

Dieser Ausschnitt ist verfügbar zum Karten rendern am GEOSummit. Der hier gezeigte Stil ist OpenTopoMap.

Wir haben den OSM Standard, Swiss Style und auch OpenTopoMap Kartenstile im Angebot.

Wer nun eine schöne, A1 grosse, gedruckte OSM Karte haben möchte, soll doch am GEOSummit beim Stand A05 vorbeikommeOSM_flyer_CH2016rh-frontn. Da der GEOSummit Eintritt kostet, haben wir auch gratis Tickets abzugeben. Wer also eine gedruckte Karte möchte, und dafür ein Ticket benötigt, melde sich bitte bei uns. Der GEOSummit findet in der Bernexpo (Karte) statt.

Weiter werden am GEOSummit auch die druckfrischen A7 OSM-Flyer verteilt.

Aktive Mapper können gerne ein paar holen kommen.

Mapping Party St. Gallen April 2nd 2016

Posted on by

View of St. Gallen

After the SOSM AGM we will have our traditional post-AGM mapping party. This time we will concentrate on improving the mapping of St. Gallen the 8th largest city in Switzerland.

As always everybody is invited to come, including joining us for lunch at 12:00 at the Hotel Am Spisertor, Moosbruggstrasse 1, 9000 St. Gallen.

If you intend to join us for lunch please send us a short note at info@sosm.ch

SOSM 2016 Annual General Meeting

Posted on by

Agenda for the 2016 Swiss OpenStreetMap Association Annual General Meeting

Agenda der Generalversammlung der Swiss OpenStreetMap Association 2016

Saturday, April 2nd 2016, 11:00,

Samstag, den 2. April 2016, 11:00,

Hotel Am Spisertor, Moosbruggstrasse 1, 9000 St. Gallen

  1. Opening and Welcome / Eröffnung und Begrüssung
  2. Election of the minute taker and vote counters / Wahl des Protokollführers & der Stimmenzähler
  3. Adoption of minutes of the 2015 AGM / Annahme des Protokolls der GV 2015
  4. Activity report 2015 / Tätigkeitsbericht 2015
  5. Financial results 2015 / Jahresrechnung 2016
    •  Auditors report / Bericht der Kassen
    • Presentation by the treasurer / Bericht des Kassiersprüfer
  6. Membership fees 2016 / Mitgliederbeiträge 2016
  7. Budget 2016
  8. Elections / Wahlen
    • Board / Vorstand
      • Candidates for all positions are welcome. Pascal Mages will be stepping down as treasurer and will have to be replaced.
      • Kandidaten für alle Positionen sind willkommen. Pascal Mages tritt als Kassier zurück und muss ersetzt werden.
    • Auditors / Kassenprüfer
  9. Vote on the OSMF Local Chapter agreement / Abstimmung über den OSMF Local Chapter Vertrag
  10. Any other business / Varia

Missing Crosswalks – A MapRoulette Challenge

Posted on by

Take part of this MapRoulette Challenge which is about checking if there’s a pedestrian street crossing (crosswalk) or not. This verification goes on until it’s all done. MapRoulette is a kind of gamified website and a mapping campaign similar to MapZen’s targeted editing series.

image

Once integrated in OpenStreetMap (OSM), crosswalks are shown in web maps (e.g. OSM Cycle Map/OSM Radfahrerkarte/OpenCycleMap, OSM France and OSM2World). And they are useful for pedestrian navigation apps (like OsmAnd).

So help OpenStreetMap to improve this missing information!

image

Figure 1: Cycle map from OpenStreetMap main page showing pedestrian street crossings (crosswalks) as yellow dot markers.

A crosswalk node needs to be placed as part of a way. It requires the tag highway=crossing (search for “Crossing” e.g. in built-in online editor “iD”). For the capture of other attributes like the existence of islands or traffic signals see Key:crossing on OSM Wiki.

Important notes: When using editor “iD” the presets suggest tag crossing=zebra. This tag is mainly used in UK. Since this challenge is in Switzerland you can delete this tag. Finally: When saving, a changeset comment is needed. You can use there e.g. “Missing Crosswalks Challenge”.

image

Figure 2: A “Street Crossing” node shown in the online editor “iD” built-in OpenStreetMap main page.

The street crossings (crosswalks) in fact are coordinates our automated process found in aerial images by using a parallel image detection algorithm. This new software works mainly with yellow crossings of Switzerland on aerial images with certain quality at zoom level 18.

The coordinate data around eastern Switzerland has been extracted at December, 2nd. 2015. This covers about a tenth of the total area of Switzerland.

Contact us if you have questions or ideas around this hot topic.

Happy mapping!

This article was originally published on geometalab.