[Osmf-talk] Alternative Strategic Plan

Thu May 18 07:58:22 UTC 2023

Hi,

Dave has basically captured most of my thoughts applicable to Kenya. In
addition, there are proportionately fairly few active local mappers

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 9:23 AM Dave <dfjkman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> Sorry I am late to this conversation but would like to make a few
> observations sitting here in Zambia.
>
>
>
>    1. Making the map go blank or roads translucent where address
>    information is missing will mean large parts of the map will go blank in
>    Africa. Even in major cities like Lusaka street level addresses are not
>    used although they do exist in some form, even mappers using smart phone
>    apps would not be able to add any information as there would be no way of
>    knowing what the actual address was. Out of the city centre in the outer
>    suburbs some of the street addresses are based on the subdivisions of older
>    plots and farms so you will get an address like 59 H/ 3777 (sub division H
>    of plot 59 a subdivision of farm 3777), the next house on the street may be
>    59 E/ 3777. There have been efforts to rationalize this by using simple
>    numbers so in the above example the above addresses may also be addressed
>    17 and 19 but you will find both forms being used. Even local mappers may
>    be seriously confused. Many businesses will provide location information
>    referencing a well known local landmark and sometimes this may be another
>    business that was well known in the past but no longer exists or may have
>    even changed its name. I am sure the government and local city
>    administrations will have the information and the preferred method of
>    addressing but it is not readily available. It is also being rationalised
>    but this will take some years. The informal residential areas around the
>    centre of Lusaka may have house numbers where there has been an attempt to
>    formalise them, these are known as site and service areas, but the majority
>    of them are pretty haphazard.
>
>    This is the situation in the larger cities. In the smaller towns there
>    will be no address information at all.
>
>    2. Much of the imagery available in Zambia is many years out of date
>    so people are mapping the past situation not the current. In larger cities
>    the imagery is more up to date but as there is a great deal of development,
>    particularly in Lusaka, even more up to date imagery is soon no longer
>    valid. In the more remote areas whole clusters of buildings, usually
>    houses, will disappear between imagery updates, especially as slash and
>    burn farming is practiced and farmers move on to a new area. I have seen
>    mention of using building information to extrapolate population numbers,
>    this will definitely not be anywhere near accurate in Zambia, particularly
>    as many anthills and trees have been mapped as buildings. Also Microsoft
>    building footprint data has been used to map buildings and in Lusaka this
>    has resulted in large advertising billboards being mapped as buildings.
>
>    3. Inaccurate data in Africa is not confined to OSM, Google Maps also
>    suffers from this and I think is worse than OSM. Many small towns and
>    settlements have the wrong name, the road reference numbers in some places
>     are plain wrong and Google Maps has somehow removed a major National Park,
>    South Luangwa, which used to appear on their maps. It is not easy to
>    correct information on Google Maps, I have tried and many of my corrections
>    have been rejected, as a result I have given up informing them. Much of
>    this incorrect information gets carried across to OSM as mappers copy the
>    information from Google even though they shouldn’t, I have come across data
>    in OSM giving the source as Google Maps.
>
>    Using Google Maps for navigation in Zambia can result in some
>    interesting routes. A recent example was some tourists using Google Maps to
>    navigate to the Lower Zambezi. There are two options for this route, the
>    most straight forward is via the main T2 to Chirundu and then via a fairly
>    rough but passable dirt road through Chiawa, The second is for the more
>    adventurous down the Leopards Hill Road (D152) and then a very rough dirt
>    road (RD481 Google has it as RD491 which is incorrect) requiring a 4x4
>    vehicle, Google routed the tourists down this route in a Mercedes car not
>    4x4. When I heard this story, I tried for myself and sure enough that is
>    the route recommended by Google, obviously the state of the road and the
>    type of vehicle required is not taken into account by Google, this is
>    possible with OSM as the road state can be tagged. In fact, the RD481 is
>    easier going from Chiawa to Lusaka than from Lusaka to Chiawa owing to the
>    Mufundeshi river crossing that has a steep bank on one side.
>
>    4. Both OSM and Google suffer from POIs being inaccurately positioned.
>    I have only been able to correct Google a few times.
>
>
>
> These are just a few of my observations.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Graeme Fitzpatrick <graemefitz1 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 18 May 2023 7:19 am
> *To:* Steve Coast <steve at stevecoast.com>
> *Cc:* osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Osmf-talk] Alternative Strategic Plan
>
>
>
> Not the only time something similar has been suggested!
>
>
>
> https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/8919
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> Graeme
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 18 May 2023 at 14:09, Steve Coast <steve at stevecoast.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for this, I think it shows very clearly how features are actually
> decided.
>
>
>
> Best
>
>
>
> Steve
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Cj Malone <CjMalone at mail.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 16, 2023 3:48 PM
> *To:* osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Osmf-talk] Alternative Strategic Plan
>
>
>
> On Sat, 2023-05-13 at 15:38 +0000, Steve Coast wrote:
> > c.     Map notes will be turned on by default.
>
> https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/3971
>
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