[Openstreetmap-dev] openstreetmap roadmap?

[Lars Aronsson]

Ehud Shabtai wrote:

> My main interest is doing maps for routing which means I need an 
> option to add meta data for each road segment (name, street 
> numbers, connection to other segments, etc'). The approach I'm 
> thinking of is having a server which will receive GPS tracks, 
> transfer them to road segments and nodes and merge with current 
> map. I also think that it is important to use postgis database 
> as there are already many tools which can connect to it and 
> allow viewing (mapserver) or editing (qgis, uDig, etc').

I'm entering OSM from Sweden with very much the same wishes and 
questions as you do.  I'm more and more convinced that we need two 
projects on different levels: One for collecting GPS tracks, and 
another one for making maps.  In fact, there could be many 
parallel projects that make maps, but they could all benefit from 
one big collection of track logs, available either as public 
domain or licensed under Creative Commons or something similar.

Directly from a collection of track logs, you can answer a lot of 
questions without drawing a map.  For example, you can determine 
the speed limit and congestion patterns of a certain road just by 
looking at how fast people go at different times of day and week.  
You can also see what percentage of people turn right or left in a 
certain intersection.

Or you can see that people who drive from Copenhagen (west) to 
Odense and Esbjerg tend to continue west to the Netherlands after 
Bremen, while people who drive from Copenhagen (south) to Lübeck, 
tend to continue south through Germany after Bremen.

                     Esbjerg--Odense--Copenhagen
                      |               |
                      |               |
    ----Bremen------Hamburg-------Lübeck
          |
          |

How can it be that if you aim to go west after Bremen, you drive a 
different, more westerly route to Hamburg than if you aim south 
from Bremen?  Is this just Sxpert, or is it a general human 
psychological behaviour?  I think I would have done the same.  
Apparently, we will need a great many track logs to find answers 
to these questions.

Right now I'm looking for something better than openstreetmap.org, 
but haven't found any.  So I'm helping to build maps here in the 
hope that this will convince more people to give away their track 
logs.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se