[talk-ph] Mapping experience

riber101-osm at yahoo.com riber101-osm at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 9 09:37:21 GMT 2010


Hi,

I just finished mapping Valley View, Cainta - a smal sub division with some 34 roads.

The tracking went very smoothly using the following modus operandi:

  - Prepare equipment:
      - Garmin Nuvi 800 set to Off Road and Trip Log Show
      - Camera with GPS tagging

  - Drive around all 34 roads

  - Stop at all intersections and take photo of street signs


It was amazing to see the track being drawn on the Garmin screen as I drove the streets. Just like using a pen on a piece of paper, except in this case the car was the pen!!


When I got home I used Merkaartor to edit the tracks and name the streets:

  - Import current.gpx track log from the Garmin and drawn up the streets

  - Transfer the geotagged photos to a folder and used HoudahGeo to read the location and display it on a map (Merkaartor Mac does not yet support import of photos/Potlatch photo import is experimental)


Merkaartor uploaded most of my changes but ignored a few so I had review the result in the browser and repeat some of the work so the editing took longer than the actual tracking.

All in all a very rewarding experience using my car as a pen and recording all facts without need for pen or paper. That was definitely the fun part.

Editing the maps takes a lot of work and require attention to detail and the lack of information regarding naming standards, recommended tags and undocumented software makes it a challenge to do good mapping.

I believe we could really benefit from a clear and concise description of basic tagging.

What's done here is a good start http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Philippines/Mapping_conventions

If only we could update that so all information needed for basic mapping on the Philippines was in one place.

Then we could refer to:

  The PH POI info is also needed http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PH:Map_Features

  And finally the bible http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features

However the learning curve is quite steep if you have to read the bible before beginning mapping.

A one page info intended for people using Potlatch would allow a lot of people to get down to mapping without further ado and ensure they all use the same guidelines for tagging.

Happy mapping
Sehested
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