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<p><font face="Verdana">I am from Uganda and also mapped in South
Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and the DRC.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">The situation here is described well and is
even worse, yet nothing has improved over the years, the
opposite, it has worsened.<br>
It has to be described in the correct context though. Before we
had HOT projects here, there was hardly any mapping in Africa,
still today, it will be hard to find any very active local
mappers not involved in the "HOT building mapping projects for
beginners".</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">HOT does not only dominate the mapping
activities, it does also rule the local chapters. Local chapters
are registered by HOT payed members, local chapter members are
all HOT volunteers, naturally, focusing and organising events to
support HOT projects only. <br>
The core issue: lack of resources, financial means. HOT was
helpful in the past, providing means, including financial
facilitation and IT resources, but has become more and more a
vehicle to support it's ever growing organisation and overhead.
It has become more and more dependent on powerful corporate
financiers, ESRI, Facebook etc... alike, using non open source
tools and corporate non open source resources which reveal or
violate the privacy of OSM members. Well beyond and
contradicting to the free and open source philosophy of OSM.<br>
Over time, the issue has grown due to the sheer extend of their
projects, not only in bb size, but also in the number of
changes. A local mapper or organisation, without financial
support, can hardly compete with thousands of low quality edits
and damage on a daily basis.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">My experience with HOT has been positive in
the way that I tried to establish some "HOT independent" local
guideline activities. After some initial interest, mostly from
HOT volunteers, it has stranded, due to lack of active
participants willing and able to deviate from the HOT interests.<br>
That is a normal reaction though, if you lack even the basic
resources like a laptop, affordable internet or a basic income
to support these, you can't do much. When you get facilitation,
for those lucky ones it's a means of income, not volunteering.
Competing with volunteers from across the world who do have
those means, feeling sorry for the poor African and jumping in,
with good intentions, but actually hindering the local
communities in getting a durable solution and access to
resources.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Compare it with the aid for healthcare,
education etc... . You don't solve these by financing projects
and sending health specialists or teachers ("HOT humanitarian
managers" or the few "OSM specialists" among them) from more
prosperous regions. Engagement, training, management by locals,
supported in every way, even as a basic income, is a possible
outcome. HOT tried this, hardly succeeded, local project
managers, volunteers, rarely respond to any comments outside the
HOT environment, let alone are willing to follow advise or
guidelines not created by HOT. Again, understandable due to
their financial dependencies, intention to slavishly follow
whatever HOT management or board decides, to support HOT's
projects since they provide the financing. Remain non-creative
and innovative mapping thousands of simple building outlines and
roads and deleting anything you come along which I was not
trained for by HOT or unfamiliar with.<br>
We are in a vicious circle here, one which HOT can break by
changing it's policies, or which we as a global OSM community no
longer accept, act against, as a protection and a means of
inclusion for the less fortunate among our communities and
adhering to our initial goals and code of conduct.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">The Africa highway tagging is a result of
and created by HOT. It even has a request on the page not to
edit it's contents without consulting HOT. Not that it is bad,
at least it is something we can use as a guidance. But it is not
a result from a true local African community.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Greetings,</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Bert Araali<br>
</font></p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/08/2021 17:09, Heather Leson
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAHjf0TJr8hA2pf2OXekb4wRsvEvr+zVWW3iygz=A_dEs4766Dg@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>HI folks, <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>just wondering if someone who is from Africa (one of the
~54 countries) is responding here.</div>
<div>Thanks</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Heather</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
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<div>
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data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
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<div>
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<div>Heather Leson<br>
<a href="mailto:heatherleson@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">heatherleson@gmail.com</a><br>
Twitter/skype: HeatherLeson <br>
Blog: <a href="http://textontechs.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">textontechs.com</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<br>
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<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 3:37 PM
John Whelan <<a href="mailto:jwhelan0112@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">jwhelan0112@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>Some parts of Africa do have a survey department and some
do not. It might be an idea to document those that do.<br>
<br>
The African highway wiki page might be the place to do it.<br>
<br>
I'm beginning to suspect we need a new rule on highway
classification changes in Africa, don't do it unless you're
local. I tend to use unclassified to connect settlements
occasionally I'll go as high as tertiary.<br>
<br>
I have concerns about projects mapping buildings. I come
across settlements where half the buildings are mapped and
nothing has been done for a year or two. It doesn't help
that much when you try to use the number of buildings to
estimate the population.<br>
<br>
I also have major concerns about highways being deleted.
They aren't easy to spot though. We need some sort of tool?<br>
<br>
Having said that HOT has added a number of tools to OSM.
The first is the task manager. Locally in Canada it's been
used for imports etc.<br>
<br>
New mappers are fine with the right tools in their hands.<br>
<br>
We had a mapathon organised to map buildings in in
Edmonton. The buildings added were of a poor enough quality
to create comments on the local email list. Out of
curiosity I got involved with another mapathon, we had a
poorer turnout but I only gave them JOSM and the
buildings_tool. With half the number of mappers over two
hours we managed to map twice as many buildings, some
mappers for some odd shapes drew two rectangles then joined
them. Either HOT needs to use JOSM and the buildings_tools
plugin or it desperately needs a buildings_tools something
in iD.<br>
<br>
To help with validation there is SelectduplicateBuildings.js
I've deleted a few thousand duplicates using the todo list.<br>
<br>
I wanted to import the local bus stops in Ottawa. There
isn't any practical way to map them otherwise. If you have
all the bus stops in the system great, if you only have a
few it really doesn't work for route planning.<br>
<br>
Somehow I got invited to a meeting with the Canadian
Minister responsible for Open Data at which I identified we
couldn't use their Open Data because of the license. A few
years later we got a new license which has been blessed by
OSM's Legal Working Group. <br>
<br>
The City of Ottawa was kind enough to adopt the same license
so now I have my bus stops.<br>
<br>
Treasury Board are now working with a number of African
countries to make their data available under the same
license. What sort of Open Data data license does Zambia
have?<br>
<br>
My understanding is it was the result of a HOT project that
decided Maxar to make their imagery available to OSM.<br>
<br>
HOT aren't the only problem, I've seen dubious edits by
Apple etc.<br>
<br>
HOT are improving, their projects now tend to map only
simple things. Their instructions are improving, their work
on validation is getting better. You now need to have a
bit of experience before you are allowed to validate.<br>
<br>
On balance I think that HOT adds value to Africa. Ideally
all mapping would be done by experienced local mappers with
ten years experience but unfortunately they aren't enough of
them in Africa unlike say Germany.<br>
<br>
I think what we do need is better work flows for Africa.
There are plenty of smartphones around which are quite
capable of adding detail such as village names etc. What we
don't have is a set of simple instructions on how to do it.<br>
<br>
There is also an education problem in parts of Africa. To
be able to follow instructions you need to be able to read.<br>
<br>
These things are all interrelated and it isn't black and
white.<br>
<br>
Cheerio John<br>
<br>
<span><a href="mailto:dfjkman@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">dfjkman@gmail.com</a> wrote on
8/1/2021 2:12 AM:</span><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Hi Shawn,
One of the problems is the number of projects on the go at any one time,
Africa has more HOT projects on the go than the rest of the world put
together, many of them overlap and many of them die a natural death without
ever being validated leaving a great deal of mess behind. Many of the HOT
mappers are new to OSM and the same few validators tend to be spread over
many projects and even they may not know what they are looking at in the
satellite imagery, I suspect they also get overwhelmed with the amount of
corrections they have to make. I have been in contact with the leads of some
of these projects and they have responded well to any advice I have given.
Some of the validators also respond well others just move off to other
projects. The real problem comes where you have a particular mapper who is
unwilling to take the advice given and continues to make the same errors
over and over. Worse still they tell you they are doing it for the good of
the country so development decisions can be made. The assumption being that
Zambia does not have a survey department and is unable to produce their own
official ordinance survey maps, something they have been doing for over 50
years.
Then you get projects that come through and make changes to major road
classifications, remove roads that do not appear in imagery but have been
mapped by a local mapper and change classifications. After you make
corrections the whole thing kicks off again with the next project that comes
through with a new hashtag. Sort of like a 'Mad Max' movie. As a local
mapper you either run around trying to fix the errors or slink off to some
far flung corner and map in peace.
That being said interpreting imagery in Africa is not easy, particularly in
Zambia as it is highly seasonal, what may appear to be a track in one image
may appear as a path in another particularly if the image was taken towards
the wet season and everything is greening up and vegetation is encroaching
on to the track. Whole well defined roads or tracks may disappear under a
tree canopy and what once appeared to be nothing but scrub now looks like a
well wooded area. Zambia in particular has a seasonal wetland feature that
during the rains resembles a wet meadow and in the dry season, when most
imagery is taken, resembles a grassland and may even appear black once it
has burnt with wild fires. Some of these 'dambos' will have a temporary pool
of water at the lowest point known as a pan. Some will have an ephemeral
steam that runs through the centre of them while with another the stream
runs to one side of it or there is no stream at all, in the dry season the
stream bed may be used as a track, I have often come across these dry stream
beds mapped as tracks. A small collection of buildings does not necessarily
imply a village but is more likely a small family farm. All this makes
Africa not the ideal place for a beginner mapper. It is not a given that a
local mapper in one part of Africa will recognise all features in another
part of Africa either.
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn K. Quinn <a href="mailto:skquinn@rushpost.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><skquinn@rushpost.com></a>
Sent: 31 July 2021 08:42
To: <a href="mailto:osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org</a>
Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] google Open Buildings usage request
On 7/31/21 01:25, <a href="mailto:dfjkman@gmail.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">dfjkman@gmail.com</a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Another point is touched upon by Craig, 'If the same thing had
happened in Germany there would have been a riot on this channel'.
Africa is treated as the training ground for new mappers, this is all
well and good, new mappers are welcome and needed, but the large areas
they map and errors introduced are many and varied and can take
considerable time and effort to correct and as a result nobody
bothers. Nobody actually asks the Africans what they want or whether
they mind this mess being created in their backyard, judging by the
response to this thread they don't want it. No wonder many in Africa feel
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre>they are just the guineapigs for the rest of the world.
This concerns me. Both the use of Africa as a training ground without any
input from the residents, and the apparent lack of a real, proper training
ground for new mappers. While we do have a sandbox, apparently either the
new mappers don't know about it or it doesn't fit the needs for practice of
mapping new features.
At the very least, we should be practicing the ethic "if you wouldn't want
someone mapping like that in your city, don't map like that in Africa (or
wherever)". Basically, it's a variant of the golden rule.
Thoughts?
--
Shawn K. Quinn <a href="mailto:skquinn@rushpost.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><skquinn@rushpost.com></a>
<a href="http://www.rantroulette.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.rantroulette.com</a>
<a href="http://www.skqrecordquest.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.skqrecordquest.com</a>
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