Map on osm.ch now includes contour lines

The default style on osm.ch now includes contour lines and is updated to the latest version of the openstreetmap-carto style sheet.

(c) OpenStreetMap contributors

Elevation data created from a mash-up of SRTM and ASTER GDEM data. ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA. Post processing was kindly provided by Yves Cainaud from opensnowmap.org.

SOSM Annual General Meeting April 7th 2018 Solothurn

The 2018 AGM will take place in Solothurn on April the 7th, 11:00. The venue is at the

Amt für Geoinformation
Rötistrasse 4
4501 Solothurn

Many thanks to SOGIS for supporting us

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.

Agenda for the 2018 Swiss OpenStreetMap Association Annual General Meeting

Saturday, April 7th 2018, 11:00,

Amt für Geoinformation, Rötistrasse 4, 4501 Solothurn

1. Opening and Welcome

2. Election of the minute taker and vote counters

3. Adoption of minutes of the 2017 AGM

4. Activity report 2017

5. Financial results 2017

– Presentation by the treasurer
– Auditors report

6. Discharge of the Board

7. Membership fees 2018

8. Budget 2018

9. Elections

– Board
Candidates for all positions are welcome.

– Auditors

10. Any other business

Planned Power Outages 16th of January and 6th of Feburary

There are two planned power outages:

  • 16th of January, 04:30 – 08:30 AM CET
  • 6th of February, 04:30 – 08:30 AM CET

Due to construction work in the building where the SOSM servers are located. All SOSM services are unavailable during that time:

  • sosm.ch and osm.ch websites
  • Swiss overpass and overpass-turbo instances
  • Swiss routing services
  • Swiss umap instance
  • DIDOK comparison map

DINAcon Awards – Open Source Hero

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.

Updates to overpass-turbo and routing

 overpass-turbo is an easy to use data mining tool for OpenStreetMap. To reflect the continued improvement of the tool, we have updated this software on the SOSM servers to the latest version. Thanks to Martin Raifer who is the developer of this tool.

routing.osm.ch also got an improvement: Now the link to the debug map works correctly and shows the routing speeds and turn weights used by the currently selected profile.
To access the debug map, click on this icon  in the lower left corner: rectangle with magnifying glass

server outage

We had a server outage from Saturday evening June 24th until Monday afternoon June 26th. The main reason was that three disks had failed in the production server and had to be replaced. Fortunately, we had enough spare disks. Sorry for any inconveniences this outage has caused. Everything should be back to normal now.

Metanet donates hard disks to SOSM

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.

New Routing Frontend

Update: the old interface is turned off. The new one is available at routing.osm.ch

 

There is a new routing user interface for osrm which I am testing at routingnew.osm.ch. I would welcome feedback here as a comment or on the Swiss mailing list.

Why the new interface?

There was no easy way forward. A little background: Last year, we bough some shiny new SSDs to speed up our servers. I decided to install the new Ubuntu 16.04 onto the new disks, the new long term support version. In the mean time, most services are moved to the server with the new Ubuntu and the SSDs, except routing. I couldn’t get our old version of OSRM to run on Ubuntu 16.04, so I was forced to upgrade to the newest version. But a lot was changed in OSRM in the mean time: the API for routing requests as well as the syntax for the routing profiles. That is the main reason why we still run such an old version. The old user interface we used is no longer maintained, therefore incompatible with the current API. But there is a brand new one, which does not support multiple routing profiles. So starting at the hack weekend in Karlsruhe, I hacked the profile selector into the new interface.

The plan is now to switch to the new OSRM and user interface on Sunday, March 19th.

SOSM Annual General Meeting April 8th 2017 Fribourg

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