[HOT] OSM Quality problems in UN Peacekeepers monitored zones (was HOT Digest, Vol 144, Issue 7 )

[Pierre Béland]

Thanks Michael to inform us how the OSM data is used for Peace missions.  

About sume the private/custom imageries available, other then the access to all, I think that  it is important that this imagery stays available for a reasonable period of time (a year ?) for others to use it to map or validate. regard

Pierre 
 

    Le mardi 1 mars 2022, 03 h 28 min 46 s UTC−5, Michael Montani <michael.montani at un.org> a écrit :  
 
 Dear all,

thank you for mentioning us on this thread. For sake of clarification, we are mapping no more buildings in Mogadishu, as the Virtual Operation Center (VOC) pilot project ended last September https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/11003 . The project output was presented at HOT Summit 2021.

Anyway, we keep a close eye on Mogadishu as it is one of the areas (and actually the most imporant one) of interest for UNSOS peacekeepers in Somalia, and we daily fetch OSM data for our operational activities. Among the features we look after the most, surely we have landuse and landcover relations (the residential area of Mogadishu was indeed broken by an activity related to swm, and corrected by us), as well as highways and buildings.

About the usage of private imagery, this seems not to be forbidden but it's a hot topic in discussions with the OSM community at large, and it is always suggested to open it to the public when possible (especially in places of interest as it may the capital city of Somalia). Thank you to HOT and World Bank to manage that! UN Mappers are going to use it when needed.

We are anyway a bit concerned about the HOT projects related to swm. It happens to us to seemany errors (roads that become not straight, unsquared buildings) coming from swm ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5055097#map=18/2.04283/45.35256 ) and despite we are happy to validate and have a look from time to time to Mogadishu city, it's a bit difficult for us to cope up with continuously upcoming issues. 

When mapping buildings in Mogadishu for VOC, knowing the harsh situation for beginner mappers, our approach was to create many tasks aligned with roads and including 2-3 islands of buildings in them, to have mappers interacting the least possible with roads. We also gave good instructions, including squaring of buildings, mapping of footprints at the base and not at the roof of the buildings and so on. You can have a look to our previous projects https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/11003 https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/10881 https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/10869 (we were mapping only areas of high priority identified by our security, but nonetheless big ones). At the end of each project, our internal mappers proceed with validation (e.g. mass alignment of buildings with JOSM, square the unsquared and add more details to simplified buildings). So far, we never received a complaint.

I hope you may take inspiration from our approach and ensure consistent validation in Mogadishu!

Thanks,


--



Michael Montani

GIS Consultant, Client Solutions Delivery Section

Service for Geospatial, Information and Telecommunications Technologies

United Nations Global Service Centre

United Nations Department of Operational Support
  
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