[Talk-GB] Terraced Houses Mapping - JOSM and iD

Fri Apr 9 21:04:47 UTC 2021

Hi Rupert

I might be being very dim or I might have missed the initiation of this
discussion but could you explain the precise nature of this project like
its timescale and deliverables and the role of the various stakeholders?
I'm confused as to who the originator of the project is and your role in
it  and I'm even more confused as  to whether this is a voluntary project
or a funded project when you start talking about recruiting local mappers.

Zoom call if it involves UK OSM Chapter sounds like  good idea

Regards

Brian

As a way forward I think from the poor state of the buildings appped

On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 19:31, Rupert Allan <mail at rupertallan.com> wrote:

> Dear Andy, Ed and all on the group,
>
> I have become aware that not all the members of Talk GB are aware of the
> proposed project in South Wales, and why I wanted advice on UK mapping
> conventions, particularly Terraced Houses. Previous to launching the
> mapping tasks, I posted on Talk GB to get a sense of how best to map houses
> (including terraces) in South Wales, and to specific OSM UK members about
> the nature of the project. Unfamiliar with the communication networks in
> OSM UK, I mistakenly thought word had got around about this potential
> (exciting) project.
>
> Thanks so much for all this excellent guidance. I really appreciate the
> feedback (good and bad) about the Tasking Manager tasks, and all the
> efforts to correct these maverick edits getting made. The roads seemed to
> have been done outside of Missing Maps/HOT mapathons. These projects are
> yet to be validated, and have now been made private whilst we continue that
> work. Hopefully, that should prevent further mishap.
>
> I wanted to respond to some comments in the thread:
>
> *Why MapUganda were initiating/authoring the Tasks: *
> The intention of this project, once launched, is very much that local
> mappers are mapping South Wales - their own community priorities, on their
> own terms. For everybody's information, these 'mapathon-friendly'
> small-area tasks were meant for use as a demonstration/pilot, and for local
> mappers getting trained to refer-to later. I hope to secure resources for
> this work, and need all the technical help I can get. Further
> tracing/tagging is expected to happen when the project gets properly
> launched. It is proposed that locally-recruited mappers in Merthyr will be
> partly-trained by members of MapUganda. It is also hoped that OSM UK will
> take as active a role as possible in the project, and that some
> collaborative relationship might develop between OSM Uganda, OSM UK, and
> OSM in Wales (in its different forms). As mentioned in my email last
> evening, I'm not HOT staff, and do not represent HOT except for my
> voluntary status as a voting member in the community. Although I am local,
> I am not claiming to be 'OSM in Wales', and am in correspondence with Ben
> Proctor and Dafydd Wyn, but no other OSM Wales community members.
>
>
> *OSM UK Participation*
> If OSM UK projects could putr some resources into help with building
> mapping - and much more if possible - it would be amazing.
>
> *COVID 'Outbreak' and 'The Director of Public Health'*
> Re the 'compelling' narrative used in the Merthyr tasks, subsequent to the
> Christmas/New Year COVID spike in South Wales, more recent press releases
> from the Public Health team have highlighted their ongoing/ressurgent need
> for a community-indexed map more than ever. This is why I have been asked
> to make this feasibility study.I shall review the task 'Description' before
> re-publishing.
>
> *Ordnance Survey cadastral layer: *
> I am still reading up on/understanding this, but I shall doubtless end up
> having full access to it as the project evolves. Current investigations and
> discussion of the OS data makes us confident, though, that a new set of OSM
> mapping data can be more useful for our purposes. this conclusion is on the
> basis of various factors:
>
> 1) What is truly 'open' and available to use is incomplete/oversimplified.
> (we downloaded the shapes to check, as advised)
> 2) Under ODbL, I believe we cannot trace to OSM using the detailed OS data
> available to Health and other officials (this is the highly detailed stuff.
> 3) Therefore, we have no platform where we can easily combine
> community-contributed data (and community-prioritised indicators) with OS
> data (even if we did, this would negate/undermine community buy-in - see
> below).
> 4) Even if we did have this platform, there would be bureaucratic
> obstacles to keeping it current or 'open'.
>
> *Community Buy-In:*
>
> There is a perennial challenge of community buy-in in the South Wales
> Valleys, and a notorious history of communities being exploited by 'outside
> interventions' - commercial, industrial, social, etc... Apparently local
> health authorities do not have good geospatial, dynamic, and cross-sector
> analytics such as we have been able to develop in other humanitarian crises
> when using 'participatory' community mapping. The practical creation of
> data originating in, authored-by, and accurate-to embedded 'indigenous'
> community needs is understood to be a way of obtaining difficult community
> entry, and is central to the project. Another factor assisting with
> community buy-in is the international demonstration of allegiance of the
> 'marginalised' community status, recognised in a partnership/collaboration
> with a team from another 'resource-poor' setting.
>
> *Keeping it simple:*
>
> The OSM aim of this was that 'simpler' methods would make for better
> tracing/tagging. I had good and varied feedback from Talk GB on technical
> building mapping, which could be summarised by the comment 'use
> building=house'. This, coupled with the JOSM Terracer, suited the basic
> nature of the tagging, and so the tasks were made public.
>
>
> For the purposes of COVID Vulnerability, tagging should initially focus on
> shape, size, and proximity of houses, and number of households - to be
> aligned with average household numbers for situated population aggregates. The
> Disaster Risk Reduction aim of this is to understand population exposure to
> hazards (hazards currently thought to be found around public amenities,
> waste water disposal, childcare sharing, and other indicators). These are
> informed by humanitarian response experience, but referenced with local
> health workers. Most importantly, we need more input from members of the
> community itself.
>
> *UK Objectives of the Project:*
>
> 1) That this locally-defined data will provide insights as to how the
> community themselves identify and prioritise their own risks (fieldwork has
> invariably shown that communities are more aware of where disease gets
> spread, problems originate, risks are, and solutions, etc.).
>
> 2) That this data can be better than Ordnance Survey data which, whilst
> detailed, is not currently providing useful anthropocentric/ethnographic
> analytics on why disease is spreading.
>
> 3) That OSM will be adopted and possibly institutionalised as a resource
> to include communities in decision-making and representation of local needs
> above and beyond government-informed metrics. Who knows - this may persuade
> Ordnance Survey towards opening their data, or at least holding less value
> in keeping it closed (e.g. maybe one day allowing it to be shared into OSM
> basemap....?)
>
> These tasks remain my responsibility, and so the ownership of the project
> is currently being adjusted to reflect their origin in Wales, to avoid
> future confusion about who we are calling 'local'. This will allow for
> correspondence to get directed straight to me in future. Meanwhile,
> before we make the project public again, the task manager and OSM Wiki
> description of this project will be adjusted according to OSM UK community
> inputs, and with gratitude. We shall add more detail about what notes
> should accompany changesets, and I shall update the Wiki using the
> guidelines above (thanks Andy - I knew they were somewhere out there). Once
> the project launches properly (it's still in concept form) I shall list it
> on the edits projects page
> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities>.
>
> Is there any interest in a group chat via zoom (or another platform which
> can allow screensharing), to go over anything I have missed, and/or discuss
> collaboration possibilities? I'd really appreciate some skill-sharing if
> that's a possibility. I think this is a very exciting project, and am eager
> to get it right.
>
> Thanks for all your attention and help.
>
> Best,
>
> Rupert
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 12:21 AM Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 08/04/2021 22:33, Rupert Allan wrote:
>> > (snipped)
>> > This has been a rambling apology, and I appreciate your patience, as
>> > well as understanding the concerns raised. Tomorrow I shall start the
>> > work of repairing any damage done on the TM and in OSM.
>> >
>> Firstly - thanks for your apology above, your messages to this list to
>> explain what happened, and your committment to resolve any remaining
>> issues.
>>
>> For the avoidance of doubt, there is an OSMF policy that explains the
>> steps that should have been followed here.  It's set out at
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines ,
>> linked from the front page of the OSMF website at
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Main_Page .  Lots of organisations,
>> of all sorts of different sizes and flavours, have added details of lots
>> of activities at
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities .
>>
>> The requirements aren't particularly onerous - they're designed in part
>> so that the person actually doing the edit (who may be a newcomer to OSM
>> and may therefore be still learning) gets protected from comments that
>> they might not yet understand, and the person organising the activity
>> gets contacted about possible problems instead.
>>
>> This would have been helpful here because a quick glance at
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/history#map=14/51.7565/-3.3746 shows that
>> there has been a failure to communicate with mappers how they should map
>> things (for example, that they should include a changeset comment that
>> explains what they are actually changing rather than just some
>> hashtags).  It also seems that basic "how to map things" information was
>> not communicated in all cases - the plethora of secondary roads and the
>> extra motorway attest to that.  Even the building mapping is of such
>> poor quality (unsquared buildings, unclear whether buildings are joined
>> to each other or not, etc.) that I doubt it'll be of great use, and
>> would likely take considerable work to redo to an acceptable standard -
>> perhaps more work than if the initial mapping had not been done in the
>> first place.
>>
>> In a way it's actually lucky that this is an area with which people are
>> familar and which has active mappers - the damage got spotted early and
>> didn't sit in the database for a long time that made subsequent sorting
>> out even more difficult.  It's easy for future mapping to compound
>> mistakes with things like road class, and more difficult to resolve
>> issues afterwards - the "wrong" data is no longer easy to revert.
>>
>> For completeness - I'm a member of OSM's Data Working Group, members of
>> which (though not me) were instrumental in steering what became the OEG
>> from a community recommendation to something approved by the board.  I'm
>> not familiar with Merthyr but I have spent many happy hours in the Red
>> Cow just up the road, though not recently for obvious reasons.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Rupert Allan:
>
> Spatial Intervention Design, Research
>
> In Print:  'Motorcycle-Mapping: Modalities of United Statelessness' in *Mapping Crisis: Participation, Datafication and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping* <https://www.sas.ac.uk/publications/mapping-crisis> (University of London/Chicago Press, Human Rights Consortium <https://www.sas.ac.uk/projects-and-initiatives/human-rights-consortium>)
>
> UK: +44 (0)7970 540 647
> Skype: Reuben Molotov
> MARINE CALL SIGN: 24VN3 <https://www.facebook.com/rupertanddorry/>
>
> FRGS, Missing Maps/HOT OSM Voting Member
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>
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