[Osmf-talk] Africa as a training ground was RE: google Open Buildings usage request

[John Whelan]

Some parts of Africa do have a survey department and some do not.  It 
might be an idea to document those that do.

The African highway wiki page might be the place to do it.

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.

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.

I also have major concerns about highways being deleted.  They aren't 
easy to spot though.  We need some sort of tool?

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.

New mappers are fine with the right tools in their hands.

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.

To help with validation there is SelectduplicateBuildings.js I've 
deleted a few thousand duplicates using the todo list.

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.

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.

The City of Ottawa was kind enough to adopt the same license so now I 
have my bus stops.

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?

My understanding is it was the result of a HOT project that decided 
Maxar to make their imagery available to OSM.

HOT aren't the only problem, I've seen dubious edits by Apple etc.

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.

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.

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.

There is also an education problem in parts of Africa.  To be able to 
follow instructions you need to be able to read.

These things are all interrelated and it isn't black and white.

Cheerio John

dfjkman at gmail.com wrote on 8/1/2021 2:12 AM:
> 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 <skquinn at rushpost.com>
> Sent: 31 July 2021 08:42
> To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] google Open Buildings usage request
>
> On 7/31/21 01:25, dfjkman at gmail.com wrote:
>> 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
> 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 <skquinn at rushpost.com>
> http://www.rantroulette.com
> http://www.skqrecordquest.com
>
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