The Open Source Routing Machine supports bearing constraints for quite a while now. In the following I want to highlight their use-cases and effects on routing.

Suppose you are driving north and make a routing request. An instruction to take a U-turn — since the routing engine does not know your heading — would be undesirable. This is the primary use-case for setting bearing constraints.

Setting a constraint of bearings=0,90 tells the routing engine you are heading north and you want to allow for a variation of +-90 degree around true north. The format is value, range with

• value in 0, 360 degree for the direction; 0 degree represents true north, 90 represents east and so on
• range in 0, 180 degree for the allowed variation around the value; a variation of 90 degree allows for +- 90 degree

The bearings=0,90 constraint therefore allows the route to start off towards north +- 90 degree. But not in the opposite direction you are currently heading. Sweet!

Another interesting use-case I came across at FOSSGIS is fire truck routing where your vehicles have to arrive at the right side of the street. Using bearing constraints not only for the route's start but its end location we can let the routing engine generate optimal routes which guide vehicles to the right side of the street.

Here are two routes from a fire department in Berlin to an arbitrarily chosen location:

• In orange with a bearing constraint of 0,90 guiding the fire trucks to the location from the northern direction (raw request)
• In green with a bearing constraint of 180,90 guiding the fire trucks to the location from the southern direction (raw request)

Of course the use-case for end location bearing constraints is not limited to fire truck routing. The same applies to logistics use-cases or optimizing routes based on the probability of finding parking spots.

In short: providing a start location bearing constraint makes users happy. For advanced use-cases in addition set end location bearing constraints.

Check out the documentation for our beloved Open Source Routing Machine.

Now despite the difficulties of garnering attention when your app doesn't break things, Vespucci development has carried on and I'm pleased to announce that the first "official" beta release of 0.9.9 is available from googles play store and from our github repository.

While there are quite a few user visible changes, most of the work since the release of 0.9.8 has been under the hood, improving the maintainability, testing, documentation and code quality throughout the app, making it much easier to contribute to its development.

It should however be noted that Vespucci has a relatively large code base and contributing to the code (but not to the documentation, presets and other aspects of the app) remains fairly complex. See vespucci on OpenHub for more on that.

The release notes give an overview of what has changed, here just some highlights:

• an Indoor mode see wherecamp blog post
• tag and preset based filters

• way improvement handle use now follows the same pattern as iD
• javascript based scripting

And where is the elusive openinghours editor? I've resumed work on it and there is a reasonable chance that it will be included in the 0.9.9 release even though there is still a fair bit of work to do.

On an average, there are atleast 40 data reverts per day. Most changesets comments are non descriptive like revert previous change making it very hard for the community to track the action and any previous changeset or discussion.

It would be really useful if OSM implemented a changeset mention feature like GitHub, where if I fixed a changeset with a comment Remove duplicate features added in #47398827, it would automatically add a comment to the original changeset and notify the original mapper and anyone in the community know what action was taken. This would greatly improve the social aspect of mapping and link discussions over multiple changesets.

Any other cases where this could be useful?

In and around Jambi Indonesia, most of the roads seem to be incomplete and the satellite information here is in realy low res.

I traveled with the rest of the diplomatic corps to the new potash mine and processing plant near Garlyk, Lebap welayat. Used the Garmin GPS to collect railroad GPS traces to the last station, then Pocket Earth on my iPhone to collect GPS traces of the new road paved from there to the plant. Uploaded all traces yesterday and corrected the rail route, then added a new section of road. The GPS function on the iPhone drains the battery quickly so I used a backup battery nearly the entire trip. The rail car had a 220-volt outlet so I could keep the Garmin GPS charged. The traces are public so anybody can see/use them.

[See Part #3 for Summary & Detail on the 2 streams that constitute the source of Ouse Dyke]

Part #3 brought the story of Ouse Dyke from it's sources up to an old bridge across the lowest point of Lambley Lane. The bridge used to carry the Lane across the Dyke, and the stream still flows in a culvert below that bridge. That culvert follows the course of the original stream through modern housing north of All Hallows Church. I met residents living close-by that recall the original stream as lads & they confirmed each length & dog-leg on it's way to Willow Park.

From the bridge the stream flowed at the bottom of the South Recreation Park; the culvert today (and the stream yesterday) travels under a walk between #122 & #124 that lets folks get to the Park from Lorimer Avenue.

Here is the bridge, the path of the culvert/stream through the Park & the walk to Lorimer Avenue:–

Almost exactly opposite the walk that connects to the Park from Lorimer Avenue is yet another walk that connects through to Hereford Road. That walk opens out onto a large tarmacked area at the end of the cul-de-sac and just beyond that is an even larger grassed area. Sure enough, the local knowledge is that this was where the stream did a dog-leg turn, so it's not too surprising that there are 3 manhole-covers at the centre of the dog-leg, and that the culvert once again simply follows the line of the original stream, at the end travelling under Saltford Close until it emerges as an open stream again for a little way .

Here is the second walk, part of the large tarmacked area (viewed from the end of Ullswater Close) with the man-hole covers, the long green and the beginning of the open stream (which has been landscaped at his own cost by the chap in the house alongside):–

And finally, this open section of Ouse Dyke goes back into a culvert for a little way before it emerges into Willow Park as an open stream once again. It becomes culverted near the top of a private drive. Even the householder at the top did not know that it was there, but I found it!

The path of Ouse Dyke is well mapped following it's passage through Willow Park, so my search for the source of Ouse Dyke + subsequent mapping is completed.

Introduction

In this article I want to show you how one can add information about immovable heritage to crowd sourced projects such as OpenStreetMap and some of the projects of Wikimedia.

In Belgium, the list of immovable heritage is controlled by three agencies, one for Flanders, one for Brussels and one for Wallonia. In Flanders, the agency is called Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed. They make a catalogue of the items and decide on the protection. They also provide some of their ata as open data. In their catalogue they have churches, abbeys, castles, but also small farmhouses and villas, furthermore it includes small items such as boundary stones and pillories. Occasionally, the list contains important trees on town squares.

Pillory in Aartselaar

What is a crowd-sourced project ? It is a project in which everybody can add data, unlike projects that are run by companies, where only employees can add data. When a company owns that data it can set the rules and price to get access to the data. In a crowd-sourced project, normally the resulting database is free to use and consult. If you want to find out more about crowdsourcing, read the Wikipedia article on the topic.

This also explains why it is interesting to have all the immovable heritage in crowd-sourced project: one no longer depends on an agency or copyright rules defined by that agency to know when a building was created, or use a picture of a watermill in a publication, etc.

The scope of an agency such as Onroerend Erfgoed is also limited to a specific geographic region, the crowd-sourced projects presented below all have a world-wide scope.

Let us now introduce some of the crowd-sourced projects

OpenStreetMap

This is a global database of geographical info. This database can be used to created maps. Wikipedia definition of OpenStreetMap. Note that in OpenStreetMap, we only map features that exist today. We do not map buildings that are completely demolished.

Wikipedia

An online encyclopedia about human knowledge. Items are described in articles and illustrated with images, just as in printed encyclopedia. Wikipedia definition of Wikipedia

[Wikimedia Commons](hhttps://commons.wikimedia.org)

A database of media files such as photos, videos sound fragments and maps. Wikipedia definition of Wikimedia Commons

Wikidata

A database about persons, facts, objects. Wikipedia definition of Wikidata

What can we contribute and where ?

The location and the floor plan of the heritage item, together with its name and some basic information can be put in OpenStreetMap. An article describing the origin and history of the item goes into Wikipedia. Photos, 3D-models, a movie taken with a drone are placed in Wikimedia Commons. And finally, a summary of the above information can be put in machine-readable format into Wikidata.

How do we collect information ?

OpenStreetMap is for a large part based on original survey. That means that the contributors go out and collect information about the world while they look at it. Wikipedia on the other hand is largely based on other sources and each article has a list of articles that are referenced. For Wikimedia Commons, one need to own the copyright of the media that one adds, or the file has to be out of copyright. Ideally, each property of a Wikidata item has a source, so just as for Wikipedia, the data is based on the work of others.

How do I collect information ?

My starting point is the list of immovable heritage items on Wikipedia. For Flanders, previous contributors have compiled a list of items per village. I wrote a [Python](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language) program that converts such a wiki-page into a file with waypoints that can be used on a GPS-device or in navigation programs for smartphones such as OsmAnd.

Garmin Dakota 10 showing heritage items as red and blue flags, as well as some details on the item

In OsmAnd the waypoints are displayed as red circles with white star. Clicking on a star shows additional information at the bottom of the screen. In case there are multiple items close to one another, the details are listed for each item

This allows me to make small detours during my planned walks in order to visit (or view) the historical items. At the location I check whether the item still exists and take pictures of it. When the item no longer exists, I inform the Onroerend Erfgoed agency later on so they can update their database as well. I have the impression that they appreciate this kind of feedback.

How do I process the collected data ?

Back home, I make sure that the pictures get georeferenced by using the GPS trace of my walk and the timestamp of the picture. I use Geotag for that purpose.

The good, georeferenced photos are uploaded to Commons Wikimedia, a name and description are added as well as some categories. This category system is not always easy to understand, but I try to at least add "Onroerend erfgoed in " and the category of the "part-village".

When this is done, I update the Wikipedia page with the list of heritage items in a town with a link to the newly uploaded photo. Of course, only when that page did not had a picture of the item before.

I also add the building layout to OpenStreetMap, and add the necessary tags to mark the area as a historic/protected item, with references to Onroerend Erfgoed. When there is a Wikipedia article or a Wikidata item those references get added as well.

Adding the necessary tags is easy in JOSM, especially when you use the preset for historical objects found in the BENELUX presets.

BENELUX Preset for monuments protected by Onroerend Erfgoed

You can also start writing Wikipedia articles for the items and/or create a Wikidata item with some properties. I recently started adding items for churches in Flanders based on information found the in the Onroerend Erfgoed and ODIS databases.

How can you use the data ?

Wikipedia

The articles on Wikipedia can be read by anyone and further information can be found through the referenced articles, e.g. the article on the Cathedral in Antwerp.

OpenStreetMap

There are a number of maps based on OpenStreetMap that show those items.

HistOsm

Is a map created by University of Heidelberg GIScience (Geoinformatics) Research Group. More information

HistOSM, all data (c) OpenStreetMap Contributors

Historic Places

Is a map developed by some German enthusiasts in their spare time. It is available is several languages and has some nice features such as the possibility to display old maps instead of contemporary maps based on OpenStreetMap data.

Historic Places, all data (c) OpenStreetMap Contributors. Topographical Map Vandermaelen.

Each historic feature has a popup window which shows the information about the item as it is stored in the OpenStreetMap database. The popup can contain links to Onroerend Erfgoed (if there is a tag ...), wikipedia and wikidata. The tag image is recognized and will display the image if it is released under an open license (as is the case for images on Wikimedia Commons). The tag wikimedia_commons is also recognized and the link will bring you to the Wikimedia Commons page displaying the category with all images on the item.

The wikidata tag can not only be explored on the wikidata.org website, but also in "beautified" pages such as Reasonator and Sqid when you click on the icons next to the Wikidata item number.

The Sint-Pieterskerk in Rumst as seen on the Reasonator website with data from Wikidata

If you look at a Reasonator page such as the one for the Parochiekerk Sint-Pieter (Q28464643), you will find a link to "Overpass" under the maps. This will show the item on OpenStreetMap. So it is possible to define user interfaces on either Wikidata or OpenStreetMap and jump to the other project.

The result of clicking the Overpass link on the above Reasonator page, shows the following page in which the Sint-Pieterskerk is highlighted and positioned in the middle of the visible map.

Overpass UI showing the item with Wikidata identifier Q28464643

Wikidata

Since the data in Wikidata is structured, unlike the full text sentences in Wikipedia, one can query the data. This makes it e.g. possible to create a time line with the inception date of Belgian churches, or a bubble chart with their architectural styles. By clicking on the links in this paragraph, you are taken to the query site of Wikidata where you can run the queries and explore the data yourself.

A time line of churches in Belgium

Architectural Styles used in Belgian churches

You can also make maps that combine Wikidata with OpenStreetMap shapes. The following map retrieves all Belgian churches from Wikidata when they have an inception date. According to this date, they get a different colour. The shape is taken from OpenStreetMap.

Combining Wikidata and OpenStreetMap

You can look at the map on my Wikimedia user page and explore the data yourself, or look at the code used to generate the map.

Conclusion

I hope that the examples give you an idea of what is possible with crowd-sourced, open data. I think the possibilities to connect Wikidata and OpenStreetMap are endless and that better integration tools will appear in the future.

p.s. the article is also published on the Belgian OSM website.

Some time ago, I noticed that the Bosnian news portal Klix.ba sometimes use drone photos to accompany their news articles. I contacted the company and the author, their staff photographer Edin Hadžihasić, and they have kindly given their permission (in Serbo-Croatian) to use the pictures for tracing.

I aligned the photos with existing map data using Map Warper:

http://mapwarper.net/maps/18372#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18361#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18422#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18475#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18483#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18750#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18805#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18813#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/18816#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/19060#Preview_Map_tab
http://mapwarper.net/maps/19332#Preview_Map_tab

My workflow was as follows:
- pick control points recognizable in both Bing imagery and the drone pictures
- map the control points in OSM as accurately as possible (or adjust position of existing OSM objects)
- align the drone photo with the updated OSM map using Map Warper

Sure you can see how inefficient and error-prone this method is but I couldn't find a way of aligning the drone photos with Bing directly, say by zooming and rotating a semi-opaque copy of the drone photo to fit with the corresponding part of Bing imagery. Any ideas?

Another problem is that there's a lot of distortion in places with sloping terrain - this can be best seen in the picture with Žuta Tabija.

The results aren't the most accurate thing in the world but as of now, there is no accurate imagery offset info available for the areas in question anyway, so I guess I didn't break stuff more than it already was. After tracing the photos in JOSM, the results are quite pretty, I dare say:

Before:

After:

There's still stuff to be done of course. I plan on mapping driving lanes but I want to fix a couple of major intersections first and I need to do some on-site survey for that.

See the latest changesets by new mappers where:

• maps.me was used to add atleast 10 POIs
• maps.me was used to modify more than 5 POIs
• iD was used to delete more than 50 features
• iD was used to modify over 100 features
• iD was used to add over 500 features
• JOSM was used to delete over 30 features
• JOSM was used to modify over 50 features
• large number of features were deleted, modified and added
• greater than 5 features were deleted, none added or modified
• greater than 20 features were modified. none added or deleted
• greater than 500 features were added. none modified or deleted

Feel free to tweak the filters for any map area or another editor. Do share any other interesting lists.

[If any of the following does not make sense, then read Part #1 / Part #2 first]

Another survey yesterday (Thursday 30 March 2017) & I think that I can now say that the trace from source (or rather, both sources) & the beginning of the line of Ouse Dyke can be established. I needed to return to determine the line of the dyke from the Southern Basin to the beginning of it's culvert, and then it's passage between Lambley Lane & Jessops Lane. I've not only done both, but have met residents (and in particular a former Gedling Colliery miner) who have told me their memories from 40 years ago (1970s) as children or young men when the Ouse was placed in a culvert, and thus where it now travels, confirmed it's course within Gedling Country Park and some have expressed concerns that the many streams that fed it may currently be undermining the culvert.

Below is a summary, and then horrible amounts of detail, of those findings:–

Summary

There are 2 streams that are the source for Ouse Dyke:–

1. A stream to the west (name currently unknown) that originates within Mapperley Golf Course, empties into a culvert just north of Kneeton Close, and then travels south and east along the line of a stream which was part of the northern boundary of Gedling Village. After crossing at the dip in Arnold Lane the stream (now culvert) ran almost due east-west and met the 2nd stream in the middle of what is now Lambley Lane Recreation Ground.
2. The eastern stream originates now as a Northern Retention Basin, which overflows into a Southern Retention Basin, which itself overflows into a dyke, which enters a culvert at it's southern end and flows down to the original line of Ouse Dyke to a bridge across the lowest point of Lambley Lane, then south to Willow Park.

Detail

Detail on the western source is well covered at the end of Part #1 and the beginning of Part #2, so this detail will concentrate on the eastern source, the amalgamation of the two sources + it's passage through to Willow Park.

Important note:– I made the survey below when the weather was dry & the water was low; even so, it was more than a touch treacherous. Surveying this or similar areas in other conditions is an excellent way to drown and/or break limbs. You perform all such efforts at your own risk & expense. You have been warned.

Historically the eastern source originated upon what is now known as Gedling Country Park, and in particular upon the higher parts to the North & East of that land. This entire locality of Nottinghamshire is geologically composed of layers of Sandstone & Clay. Clay is impervious to water, so that structure leads to the land having many springs.

In more recent times, the Digby Coal Company sunk it's pits in that area, and deposited it's spoil on land to the north of Glebe Farm (the miner told me that in his working life he watched as an abandoned farmhouse on the hillside above the West fields was steadily buried - it now no longer shows). Springs are a terrible danger for Spoil Heaps, and Severn Trent Water have used Ouse Dyke as part of it's water-management regime.

The section of the map known as Solar Power Plant has been extensively filled with dykes which drain down to two Detention Lagoons to the west & south. The photograph below looks across the south basin at one of the two overflow channels between the higher north basin & itself:–

The next photograph is from the other side of the same Southern Basin, looking across to the very position from which the first photo was taken. There were 2 moorhens on the water just before I took the photo, and one dived down just as I pressed the shutter (it was hiding it's embarrassment at the fact that I left my finger in view). If you look at the shore immediately beyond the circles that it left in the water you will see an overflow channel which empties on the further side into Ouse Dyke:–

So the North Basin overflows into the South Basin, and it overflows into a concrete channel which, the miner informed me, follows the exact path that Ouse Dyke took in his youth. This is the point where the overflow channel empties into the dyke:–

...and now some of the path through the scrub (and yes, I forced myself through bramble & thick brush to convince myself that I was tracking the real McCoy the whole route) (the path is more complicated than a single line, and lots & lots of other pipes also empty into this section of dyke) (I had a great time!):–

The drain is not very long at this point; this is at the end before it enters a 6' / 2m high culvert, looking back the other way:–

The retired miner told me that Ouse Dyke ran “alongside the old railway” (that is the old mineral railway which Gedling Council have safe-guarded from development as a possible extension for the Nottingham Tram). The short section of drain photographed above runs parallel to that previous railway line, but stops short just before where the safe-guarded section stops. On the other side of where the line of the railway was is a cutting in the land. I explored it & found yet another man-hole cover for the culvert, at about the same height as the culvert, with a strong noise of flowing water above it (this was the manhole that I discussed with STW in Part #2). Here is it's photo (I have zero idea as to where the basin of water came from!):–

As spoken about in earlier parts, the culvert follows the original line of Ouse Dyke through (what is now) a Recreation Park. There are two further manhole-covers within the park, with the southern one being the point at which the two source-streams currently & historically united. The stream (and now culvert) continued south to the lowest part of Lambley Lane, where an old bridge carried the lane across the stream. The stream is gone & the bridge is mostly buried, but enough shows to give some indications of the stream that once flowed openly beneath it (this photo is from the southern side of the bridge):–

[continued in Part #4]

Just received this PM:

Hi alexkemp,

Fatty200 has sent you a message through OpenStreetMap with the subject Good morning,:

Fatty200
31 March 2017 at 11:30

My name is Fatima, please lets talk very well with my email address[ [email protected] ] for good friendship and i will send you my pictures if you want. Thanks and take care.

(someone with the necessary admin clearances, please delete this idiot)
(he has gone - thank you)

I've seen a lot of mistagged roundabouts lately in Texas (with the help of Keep Right). Please review the definition on the wiki: junction=roundabout should have at least three roads coming from it (two directions of a through street and a side street). Not everything round is a roundabout, and routing tools will give incorrect and/or confusing directions if something is mistagged as a roundabout.

OSM has some more or less clear criteria to decide if a certain information should be added to it or not. However, these criteria only take a nature of it into account. For example, there is no doubt that store operator is verifiable once it is known. Anyone could confirm that using the same source (store nameplate that refers to a company, open business registry, etc.) But will they do that?

I mean, time passes, store changes its owner. How possible it is that someone will update this kind of information? Definitely, less possible than, say, in a case of changed store name. Simply because it is harder to notice that change than to find out all details when you just going to create a POI.

It doesn't mean that we should avoid adding this kind of information, but it does mean that an ability to keep a certain fraction of information up to date should be taken into consideration before adding it.

This diary entry is inspired by a question I came across today: "How to/ should we add time zone information to OSM?" My own short answer was "no". A longer answer is: while OSM is not an authority on keeping reliable time zone information (IANA tzdb is), nobody who uses this information for something important will look for it here. At the same time, OSM can not be an authority exactly because of its nature: "anyone can edit it" (and nobody is truly responsible for data quality, unlike with tzdb, where Paul Eggert is an official responsible person).

So, theoretically, time zone information meets general criteria for data that could be added to OSM database, but it just doesn't make any sense to add it since nobody can guarantee that it will be up to date and more or less accurate/complete. Here, I'd suggest using another OSM principle that usually refers to new tags: "don't propose (here - don't add) anything that you aren't going to use (here - to keep up to date) by yourself".

Hello everybody. I just mapping in Peru for add jungle and river via Bing satelite. This to monitor some weather event Also, this help to the citizens for disaster prevention.[1]

Thank you for considering the note. [1] http://unasolafuerza.pe/

P.S.: Sorry for mapping in Brasil, too.

Hi all, my name is Pete Masters and I am the outgoing Missing Maps coordinator at MSF UK (I change jobs in a few weeks).

I would like to be considered as a HOT board member because I have a lot of respect and admiration for what HOT does in the humanitarian sphere and I think my skills, experience and networks can be of value to HOT on a strategic level. For me, it represents a chance to contribute to a community that I have come to be very proud of in a different way. This would be my first board position and I am eager to prove to myself and to the community that I can operate at this level and help to take HOT forward.

In my eyes, the future of HOT is very interesting. On the one hand, local communities are growing strong in places where previously HOT would have been only mapping remotely. The size and diversity of the community behind the first State of the Map Africa this year is testament to this growth. On the other hand, NGOs, large and small, are coming to rely more and more on OSM data and HOT through activations, and initiatives like Missing Maps. These are serious organisations with short timelines and specific needs. In my opinion, HOT must continue to walk the line between these two vital elements; the bottom-up, grassroots communities and the top-down, humanitarian actors. I do not have the answers to how HOT does this, but I believe I have some good ideas.

The most important in my eyes, and the one I would like to discuss here, is credibility, and this works both ways.

For the NGOs, HOT's activations, both emergency and long term must be impact-focused and appropriate. This means providing data that meets the needs of the situation in a timely fashion. We will need to better able to understand and translate operational needs, prioritise mapping, mobilise resources and motivate current and new community members and mappers effectively. I think my experience with MSF can help HOT to do this. Over the past two and a half years, being the bridge between an extremely operationally-focused NGO and a volunteer community has been my job and translating what an epidemiologist or a logistician or an emergency team needs into mapping projects has been my day-to-day. Through this, I have learnt the importance of understanding of where limitations of humanitarian mapping lie and how expectations need to be managed.

On the other side, I believe HOT needs to stay true to its roots and HOT's roots are in community. The community members and the mappers should be an integral part of what HOT is. This means supporting people to be more proactive in their engagement with the mapping, but also with the decision making. At the heart of this should be information flow. Too often I feel that a lot is asked of the community without them necessarily being offered much in return. For me, the best Missing Maps collaborations have happened where MSF has been able to externalise a problem it faces, volunteers have felt empowered to add value to the medical care being delivered in the field, and where that value has been reported back quickly. I feel I have been able to instill this successfully in the culture of Missing Maps (although improvement is always possible) and would look forward to putting this experience and my background in communications and community building at the disposal of HOT to help try and make this happen at a broader level.

To be honest, whether as a board member or not, I look forward to a long relationship to HOT. I love being a part of this community and love the conversations (easy and hard) that come with it.

I apologise for the brevity and lateness of this post. I have been on the road with MSF for a few weeks now and have only just found the time.... In the interests of transparency, it is important to note that my new job will also be with MSF (as Medical Innovation Advisor).

(If any of the following does not make sense, then read Part #1 first)

It's raining heavily this morning so no field survey (it kills the smartphone), but some most valuable desk-surveys using NLS - OS 1:25k 1st Series 1937-61 imagery within JOSM + a phone-call (+44 (0) 800 783 4444) to Severn Trent Water.

The culvert from Mapperley Golf Course was (badly) mapped using one of the NLS maps — probably NLS - Bartholomew Half Inch, 1897-1907, which is very low resolution and, in any case, few of them help much in accurate mapping. I'm going to trim the line of the culvert from Mapperley Golf a little to match the higher-res NLS maps; one of the reasons for this is that this brings the line of the culvert not only into line with the stream on those maps (one of the points where the earlier mapping went bad) but also with the point where that stream crosses Arnold Lane. At the moment the culvert passes straight through some houses on both The Fairway and High Hazles Close (not very likely) then across Arnold Lane north of the Village boundary. It is far more likely to have followed the original line of the stream, which would also have been Gedling Village boundary at that point. That would have taken it under the line of The Fairway (a private road) and across the bottom of the High Hazles Close’ gardens (that is almost due East-West, with the gardens to the north & a playing field to the south, a line of hedges in between. The old stream/OSM culvert then pops out close to the signpost on Arnold Lane that says “Gedling Village”, which also the lowest point of Arnold Lane on that section of road and thus where you would expect a stream to flow:–

All of the pre-WW2 maps show two streams meeting within the Northern Recreation area, and that has put a big grin on my face!

The conversation with STW concentrated on culverts and was considerably complicated by my need to give him X-Y references drawn from the Adopted Highways register map and to keep cross-referencing to my marker points within JOSM. However, I was able to establish that yes, an (almost) East-West culvert joins with the southern man-hole cover and then runs south to the bridge. I've also established the precise location of where the northern spur meets the surface-drain. Most excellent! Final mapping on this section will have to wait for a final survey to establish some GPS tracks for the current drain/Ouse Dyke to the north (hopefully tomorrow).

One feature that I find so very interesting in all this is the way that modern culverts (as just one instance) follow ancient streams. I guess that it is simply engineers taking the line of least resistance (as, indeed, did the stream before them). In this particular case, the meeting point for the two streams in the maps is almost exactly on top of the southern manhole, which makes life very simple.

To try to help keep some eyes on the page, here is a couple of photos showing the bridge for Ouse Dyke across Jessops Lane (originally called “Hanging Lane”, the old road made a dog-leg at this point, although the modern road is straight) and then the stream (plus duck) on the other side as it makes it's way into Willow Park, and finally at the opposite end of Willow Park before it becomes culverted again:–

(see Part #3 for completion of the search)

Looks like a small bridge for pedestrians to cross a drain - that's what I perceived from Bing imagery. Nope! It's an advert sign for an automobile shop.

with the roads they only have one speed. Alot of roads in Australia have different speeds on both sides of the road. Is it possible to have a speed for the left side and right side of the road

Entire Local government

Maproulette challenges have become fairly popular recently, especially due to Jochen's Area fixing project. But it seems this has gotten out of hand now and creates serious damage to the OpenStreetMap project.

In general this kind of tool is prone to inviting mechanical work. But with the recent Island and Shoreline Alignment challenge this really gets over the top. I first saw this when various edits turned up in remote areas of the world by various mappers in very high frequency editing islands in changing locations far apart within minutes, often without factual basis and often factually incorrect.

This challenge does everything wrong that can be done wrong with a fixing effort:

• there are no useful instructions to the mapper what to do and what problems to consider. It only says: ''Align the highlighted island to match imagery''.
• there is no documentation who created this task and how the allegedly misaligned islands are detected.
• and most importantly: the task covers areas where the global images routinely available offer no basis for improving the existing data.

Task: Align the highlighted island to match imagery (link)

Especially the last point is a big practical issue now since the edits made through this challenge misalign and worsen a lot of data in OSM. I commented on two most obvious cases where Bing offers no image at all but mappers none the less blindly followed the task to Align the highlighted island to match none-existing imagery with obvious results. But even in areas where Bing offers low resolution images these hardly ever allow improving existing data. These images in Bing are mostly from >15 years old L1G Landsat 7 images which have positional errors of sometimes more than 100m and rarely allow substantially improving existing mapping. In most cases attempts to do so made within the challenge worsen data which has often been mapped from either better data or with better alignment of the images.

With edits like this the island in question is not necessarily less accurate than before - the mapping before was done based on - if at all - only slightly better aligned images. But it is no improvement since it is likely not more accurate than before in absolute terms and is definitely less accurate relative to the surrounding features.

Yes, these images show a lot of potential to improve mapping here

The least that needs to be done here is

• stop the challenge as it is now
• limit it to areas where high resolution images are available in common sources
• create clear instructions for the mapper advising them to properly check image alignment and find the best quality sources in the area and check if existing mapping might already be of better quality based on other sources. This is not possible to do within a few minutes if you pick random locations all around the world of course.

Of course not all edits made within these challenges even in areas where Bing is poor are bad, there are also some experienced mappers participating here who know how to properly assess and select images.

If whoever created this challenge seriously wants to improve mapping in remote areas the most basic, most productive and most obvious way would be to provide better quality images.

And in general i think we need to put a review regime on organized mapping efforts like maproulette challenges requiring at least basic documentation of the process used to generate the task and ensuring there are proper instructions for the mappers and no nonsense tasks on a larger scale. A lot of thoughtful tasks have been offered in maproulette in the past but apparently this is not something that can be relied upon to be ensured without a QA process for the QA process...