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

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

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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/

Panoramic photos of the streets of Vevey

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The city of Vevey has published on the Cartoriviera portal the data from a “mobile mapping” survey that took place at the end of last year. The 45 km of Vevey’s road network was covered and images were taken every 3 metres (people and license plates were blurred).

This data is freely available on the Internet https://cartoriviera.ch/rues-vevey, and these images are available for digitisation. Use the following source in the changesets based on this data:

Ville de Vevey – Photos panoramiques des rues 2020 – https://cartoriviera.ch/rues-vevey

Thanks to the city of Vevey for making these photos available for mapping

Use of swisstopo data and products with and in OpenStreetMap

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As announced in our previous post, from the beginning of this month (March 2021), geodata and products from Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo) have been available on far less restrictive terms than previously.

As I noted then we didn’t have details available at the time so couldn’t comment further on the use of this data in OSM. In the meantime the terms are available and are limited to an attribution requirement which however applies downstream too. In the case of an use in OSM this would require products using our data to display attribution to swisstopo, this might seem to be an easy to fulfil requirement, but our licence specifically allows use that only credits the overall source of the data (that is the OpenStreetMap project). Considering the 100’s if not 1’000’s of 3rd party sources and 1.6 million individual contributors, this makes a lot of sense. But as a consequence this rules out direct use in OpenStreetMap till we have agreed alternative arrangements with swisstopo.

But it isn’t all gloom and doom, we have already agreed that we can make swisstopos high quality orthophoto product “swissimage” available in OSM editing apps and naturally applications that combine OSM and swisstopo, for example a map with swisstopo derived hill shading, is possible as long as swisstopo is credited.

It will take a bit until configuration updates have reached the major editors, if your favourite one supports custom imagery backgrounds from WMS servers you can add swissimage manually with

https://wms.geo.admin.ch/?FORMAT=image/vnd.jpeg-png8&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=ch.swisstopo.images-swissimage&STYLES=&CRS={proj}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&BBOX={bbox}

the above will work for JOSM, for Vespucci replace {proj} with EPSG:3857. The images are from flights in 2017 to 2020 (Map) in some cases we have access to cantonal imagery that is more recent. Please note that use of swisstopo infrastructure is subject to additional terms of use that should be respected.

To keep up with the developments, follow us on twitter @SwissOSM and subscribe to the Swiss OSM community mailing list.

Update September 14th 2021: swisstopo has now clarified that central attribution is acceptable for uses that combine many different data sources. See https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/de/home/meta/konditionen/geodaten/source.html

Background aerial imagery ©swisstopo, map data ©OpenStreetMap.

Welcome swisstopo!

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Today we are welcoming the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo) to the open data community. After many years of free access for consumers, today, finally, it is providing reusable open government data that can be used to build and enrich new applications and datasets.

This is a high point of a development of open data availability in Switzerland in which the cantons have been leading for many years starting with the Canton Solothurn over a decade ago and is now policy in nearly all of them.

What does this mean for OpenStreetMap?

Short term nothing is going to change. While at the time I’m writing this we don’t have access to the final terms of use, we do have a good idea of what the content will be and some of the terms will not be completely compatible with our distribution licence, the ODbL. This rules out direct inclusion in our data, but will allow use as reference data for quality assurance. We are negotiating with swisstopo for compatible access terms, just as we have previously done for the municipality administrative boundaries way back in 2011 and more recently for use of the GWR address data and expect these issues to be resolved soon.

The most interesting data for us right now is access to swisstopos “swissimage” aerial imagery. This will at last provide us with good coverage in Switzerland’s mountainous regions, something that has been sorely missing from the global orthophoto mosaics.

To keep up with the developments, follow us on twitter @SwissOSM and subscribe to the Swiss OSM community mailing list.

Map image ©swisstopo

JOSM Plugin receives DINAcon 2020 Award!

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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

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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