[Talk-GB] Mapping the unloved and unwashed

Peter Miller peter.miller at itoworld.com
Fri Dec 12 07:49:30 GMT 2008


On 12 Dec 2008, at 00:40, Mark Williams wrote:

> Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote:
>> A quick scoot around our green and pleasant land reveals a number  
>> of really
>> unloved places (Why are so many in Lincolnshire!). We need ideas on  
>> how to
>> get these places on the map, whether it be motivating the natives  
>> or sending
>> in the OSM swat teams to raise the profile. I'd like to hear your  
>> crazy as
>> well as sensible ideas :-)
>>
>> In no particular order:
>>
>> Scunthorpe
>> Grimsby
>> Lincoln
>> Doncaster
>> Darlington
>> Middlesbrough
>> Sunderland
>> Perth
>> Bolton
>> Northampton
>> Newport
>> Plymouth
>> Weymouth
>>
>> I'm sure you can spot plenty of others too.
>>

I have been working on adding wiki pages for every County and Unitary  
Authority in the UK (there are 140 in total) so that we have a  
consistent place to add this sort of information. There were articles  
for some and there are about 19 added so far. Could people add county  
pages for their areas and and use this for a hit-list section of  
wanted places?:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:County_in_England

This is the sort of format I use. A general overview of what is done  
and not done and what people could do:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Suffolk(UK)

For villages it is necessary to create district pages as well  
otherwise there are too many of them in the list. Here is a district  
page with details of what needs to be done and what has been done in  
East Cambs
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/East_Cambridgeshire

New mappers should be able to see what needed to be done in their  
areas and we can use it to plan the 'mopping up' of the missing areas!

Btw, Lincolnshire has the lowest population density of any county in  
England, that might be one reason for the lack of mapping.

Regards,


Peter


>> Cheers
>
> Basildon, in Essex.
>
> I can't think of many reasons anyone would go there, other than  
> perhaps
> bowling at Bas Vegas or walking round, well, the bits I've already
> walked round... It's all a bit chavvish with added drug users.
>
Muki Haslan at UCL published a paper last summer that pointed out that  
OSM was not mapping deprived areas. It has some other useful  
information. I wonder if he could be encouraged to update his research  
and produce a more detailed map.
http://povesham.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/openstreetmap-quality-evalution-and-other-comparisons/ 
.

> It needs a mapping party sometime - I think I'll look at that when the
> weather picks up though, Basildon in the rain is just too awful :)
>
> Although I did see on Ito-world that someone's done a bit recently.

For some time we (at ITO) have being planning to do a thematic mapping  
view of these un-loved places by combining the census data and OSM  
data. Each census output area covers about 100 households so there  
must be able 300,000 of them so it is very detailed. The idea would be  
to check that there are roads in each OA and to look at the ratio of  
roads/people in each  area. We would then produce a thematic map for  
the UK showing where there were people but no roads in OSM. Would that  
be useful? I would need to check but it is my understanding that there  
are no copyright issues with doing this and anyway we are not using it  
to map from we are using it to tell us where to map.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONS_coding_system

>
>
> We could do a mapping party with 10-pin bowling after; there may  
> well be
> somewhere amenable to accommodating us for the day.
>
> Has anyone tried a geocaching event with mapping included? Sort of
> 'cache in maps out' as it were... it should pick up some GPS owners.
> I've never understood why there's so little crossover with that. There
> are really quite a lot [of geocaches] in & around Essex.
>
> Can we convince one of the pub listing or similar websites to take on
> our mapping? This would give some fairly public places an incentive to
> get their area done, at least. Things like WI & religious groups often
> have a website & don't want ads all over it as well, and could use  
> clean
> maps, and have lots of activists - mostly without GPS in my  
> experience,
> though.
>
Do remember that the local councils might be interested themselves.  
There is growing official awareness that OSM exists and might be  
useful to them. That is one reason why I am building the local  
authority pages.

Peter

> Mark
>
>
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