[Talk-ba] BiH Ground Survey

[Michal Fabík]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 12:02 AM Jonathon McClung
<jonathon at kaartgroup.com> wrote:
> If you are an active local editor, please contact us. We would like to hear from local editors, so that we can be aware of what makes BiH unique.

Hello Jonathon,
unfortunately, Bosnia doesn't really have an OSM communtiy in the
sense of mappers' cooperation or coordination of their efforts. There
are very few active mappers to start with and they're not interested
in communication for reasons I'm not sure of myself. Here's a few
worth mentioning, you might want to contact them individually:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/ljubop - very active in the
northeast of the country, good quality contributions but doesn't seem
to be focused on anything in particular.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Kulin%20Ban - did a lot of work on
road network, in particular he categorized all the roads in the
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Muslim/Croat part of the
country).
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Lutalica_1974 - has been quite
active for many years, again, not focused on anything in particular.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/alenmahovic - did a tremendous
amount of work in the early days of OSM in Bosnia, mostly to do with
landuse.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/damirex - not very active lately
but seems to be very knowledgeable when it comes to historical
heritage. However, his edits are quite sloppy and he doesn't like
foreigners touching "his" data.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Janjko - one of the most active
mappers in the Croatian community, maps in Bosnia too from time to
time.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jonwit - an American mapper with
contacts in Bosnia, active around Visoko.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/crv303 - a German mapper with
contacts in Bosnia, active around Prijedor.

Be warned that, with the exception of the last three (who might also
be following this list), communication with the above is difficult or
outright impossible, at least in my experience.

As for any tips for mapping Bosnia, here's a few from me:
- We need as many GPS traces as possible, especially from windy
mountain roads. The terrain is very hilly so there's a lot of
perspective distortion in the aerial imagery. We need traces to be
able to align it properly.
- Information about road surfaces is important as even some of the
high-category roads lack tarmac and are hardly usable in winter.
(Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/43.8433/17.9049)
- Many of the roads in the residential neighbourhoods of larger cities
are only wide enough for one car but they aren't one way streets. It
would probably be useful to tag this explicitly (lanes=1+oneway=no) to
give them a penalty in routing algorithms.
- Be careful when tagging speed limits. Local law distinguishes
settlements (marked with traffic signs with settlement name, speed
limit 60), built-up areas within settlements (speed limit 50) and open
road (speed limit 80). These limits aren't indicated explicitly with
traffic signs. Moreover, speed limit signs are only valid until the
next intersection according to the law, however they are often posted
incorrectly, as if they were valid past the intersection as well. This
sometimes makes it difficult to tell what speed limit applies to a
given road section.
- Most towns could use mapping of HGV restrictions (max. weight for
bridges, underpass heights, access restrictions for town centres) to
prevent HGV traffic routing through them.
- Addresses sometimes have "bb" instead of a house number. It's an
abbreviation for "no number" in the local language and it's often the
case in industrial areas on the outskirts of towns where streets
aren't well defined. Incidentally, this is also where a lot of HGV
traffic is headed.
- If you happen to go through Doboj, you could map the electric
vehicle charger there. It's advertised by the roadside and it's one of
the only two or three in the country. It's a shame it isn't in the
map. :)
- Don't worry about landmines. People ask about them all the time but
you won't run into them unless you go far off the beaten track.

I can't think of anything else at the moment. If you have any
questions, just ask.
Have a great time mapping Bosnia!

-- 
Michal Fabík