[OSM-talk] Easy to use system for countryside surveying

elvin ibbotson elvin.ibbotson at poco.org.uk
Mon Aug 18 10:17:11 BST 2008


From: Nick Whitelegg <Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>
Date: 16 August 2008 16:57:17 BDT
To: talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: [OSM-talk] Easy to use system for countryside surveying

> Have thought of an approach to make countryside OSM mapping using  
> phones
> with inbuilt GPS (N95, etc) easy to the end user.
>
> A user could survey their walk using an N95 or similar, and then,  
> using a
> very simple interface, select whether they are on a footpath,  
> bridleway,
> unclassified road, track, etc every time the type of path or road  
> they are
> on changes. So if they're on a road, then turn off down a footpath,  
> they
> could select "footpath". Then if the footpath merges into a bridleway,
> they could select "bridleway".  The result would be a GPS track with
> sections "tagged" with footpath, bridleway etc.
>
> A track simplification algorithm could be applied and ways  
> generated from
> the GPS trace automiatically. This could then be uploaded to OSM for a
> more expert user (who could subscribe to an RSS feed to inform them of
> such uploads in their area) to refine the way, i.e. remove extraneous
> points and connect the auto-generated way to existing ways.
>
> Any thoughts?

I could probably add the first part of the functionality into my mom  
app for mobile phones which already allows GPX tracklogs to be  
collected on a mobile phone with either built-in GPS or a Bluetooth  
GPS. Mom allows waypoints to be added very easily to the tracklog  
with descriptive text and/or voice notes and/or photos for logging  
the type of path, street names, etc. This functionality could be  
further developed. My worry is with the second part of the process -  
converting this collected GPX data into ways. I can imagine all sorts  
of problems trying to automate what is not a difficult task for  
someone familiar with Potlatch or JOSM but could need a great deal of  
programming skill.

elvin ibbotson

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