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

Sun Aug 1 14:59:37 UTC 2021

Hi,

Short answer yes.

I would just like to make it clear I have had good responses recently from HOT and am not pointing the finger solely at them, just think they have too many projects on the go at any one time so quality control slips. I too have come across poor Apple edits, they had a team following each other around through major towns nudging nodes from side to side and introducing kinks to road I knew to be straight. After I pointed out they were not adding to the map they moved into the rural areas, many major towns in Zambia have been well mapped much by local mappers who can read and a number of them are university students, UNZA (University of Zambia) has a few local mappers.

As regards a survey department perhaps Zambia is lucky because of its relative stability and rich in natural resources. I personally have met a few very talented Zambian surveyors that have used old school chaining and theodolites to locate sunken property beacons without metal detectors, just angles and distances from a map. Or plot perfect circles for centre pivot irrigation fields that even surprised the American installation engineer, he had a bet with me that the pivot end would not line up with the peg, he lost.

One major problem in Zambia is the age of the satellite imagery, it is way out of date, Maxar in parts of Zambia is at least 3 to 4 years out of date, newer over the larger towns but still over a year old, the Lusaka Bypass to the west of the city does not appear in any imagery, not even signs of construction at its northern end. Many major roads will deteriorate over time to such an extent that they are no more than a track and may not be maintained for many years and there may be a sudden burst of road maintenance when aid money becomes available or a politician wants to impress at election time. Even from season to season the roads may fall into disrepair, a heavy wet season may wash out bridges etc none of which shows up in the images obviously. 

Cheers,

Dave

From: Heather Leson <heatherleson at gmail.com> 
Sent: 01 August 2021 16:10
To: John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com>
Cc: dfjkman at gmail.com; OSMF Talk <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] Africa as a training ground was RE: google Open Buildings usage request

HI folks, 

just wondering if someone who is from Africa (one of the ~54 countries) is responding here.

Thanks

Heather

Heather Leson
heatherleson at gmail.com <mailto:heatherleson at gmail.com> 
Twitter/skype: HeatherLeson 
Blog: textontechs.com <http://textontechs.com> 

On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 3:37 PM John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com <mailto:jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> > wrote:

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 <mailto: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  <mailto:skquinn at rushpost.com> <skquinn at rushpost.com> 
Sent: 31 July 2021 08:42
To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org> 
Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] google Open Buildings usage request

On 7/31/21 01:25, dfjkman at gmail.com <mailto: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  <mailto:skquinn at rushpost.com> <skquinn at rushpost.com>
http://www.rantroulette.com
http://www.skqrecordquest.com

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