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

[Pierre Béland]

Hi Bert,
Note that I am the original author of the Highway Tag Africa wiki page (not HOT) and that many volunteers contributed to enhance it https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa.  And we prefer prior consultation before this wiki page is edited for revisions.

At the beginning of this thread, Dave (aka dfjkman) described quite well the reality of the highway system in Africa.

While I coordinated the OSM North Mali response in 2013, I observed similar problems with seasonal flooding of large territories including villages and roads, plus the quality of highways in such context.  Since then, many have approved the philosophy of this wiki page where we classify based on the economic and social role of the highway and not the appearance.
About the quality of building mapping, good observations have already been made in this thread similar to analysis I have published over the last years.
It is quite a challenge to map dense african cities. I agree that we cannot obtain good results using outdated images.  Often,. the lack of details and quality of satellite imagery limits the possibiliies to map. This is surely not a task for newcomers. If AI softwares do observe the same inaccurate imagery, they surely wont do better.

HOT and Missing Maps partners have often justified Building Mapping projects to support Vaccination.  But how the too often bad quality data can help ? And why they never come back to enhance the data?
 Pierre 
 

    Le dimanche 1 août 2021 11 h 55 min 41 s UTC−4, Bert -Araali- Van Opstal <bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com> a écrit :  
 
  
I am from Uganda and also mapped in South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and the DRC.
 
The situation here is described well and is even worse, yet nothing has improved over the years, the opposite, it has worsened.
 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".
 
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. 
 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.
 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.
 
 
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.
 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.
 
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.
 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.
 
 
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.
 
Greetings,
 
Bert Araali
  
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