[OSM-talk] Smartphone mapping in Africa

[Rebecca Firth]

 Hi,

I just wanted to add some perspective on some of the statements in this
thread

> There are some smartphones in Africa but often internet access is
expensive and poor.

The phrase "some smartphones" is somewhat of an underestimation -
organisations like GSMA estimated 477 million mobile internet users in Sub
Saharan Africa alone at the end of 2019 (
https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/sub-saharan-africa/). Additionally many
countries have 'leapfrogged' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging)
fixed line & dated technology solutions, moving directly to much more
advanced mobile solutions. Internet access cost and quality is also hugely
variable across the whole world. Growth in OSM local editing requires local
perspective & with that, acknowledgement of the specific context of a
particular place, rather than generalisations.

> I don't think the ability to draw in highways is essential but being able
to paste a preset building outline might be nice. If possible it needs to
display the local region and by local I mean say twenty kilometre square.

I absolutely agree that we need more frictionless ways to contribute to
OpenStreetMap on mobile in order to increase local edits (quantity &
quality). We should focus on listening to the objectives of local
communities before jumping to technology solutions,

Thanks, and interested in others perspectives on this,

Rebecca

On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 6:10 PM john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think I hadn't looked at Vespucci for a while but looking at it now it
> looks much improved.  I like the fact you can vary the amount of map you
> download.
>
> Complexity I think is just a matter of documentation.  I ran a session
> with new mappers and JOSM once with the buildings_tool.  I just taught them
> what they needed to be able to add buildings.
>
> Thanks John
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 12:45 Mateusz Konieczny via talk <
> talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Aug 18, 2021, 17:31 by jwhelan0112 at gmail.com:
>>
>> We can do a fair bit of remote mapping but at the end of the day it works
>> better with local input.
>>
>> There are some smartphones in Africa but often internet access is
>> expensive and poor.
>>
>> What is available?
>>
>> Osmand is not too bad but I note it's power demands are growing on the
>> OSMand mailing list.
>>
>> See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors
>>
>> Android:
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm_Go!
>>
>> iOS:
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Go_Map!!
>>
>> I think we need some way to make small areas of Africa available in a
>> compressed format that can be unpacked on a smartphone with limited
>> storage.  We need software that is lightweight or can be side loaded to
>> avoid overloading an internet connection and the software needs some basic
>> functionality such as being able to add or edit tags on nodes or ways.  It
>> needs to be able to work offline and we need to get those changes home.
>>
>>
>> I don't think the ability to draw in highways is essential but being able
>> to paste a preset building outline might be nice.
>>
>> If possible it needs to display the local region and by local I mean say
>> twenty kilometre square.
>>
>> Local language support would be nice.
>>
>> Thoughts on what is available or what could be built?
>>
>> Vespucci fulfills your requirements from what I see.
>> Not sure about OSM Go!
>>
>> StreetComplete has offline capability but not via file unpacked on a
>> smartphone.
>>
>> Both Vespucci and StreetComplete have limitations - in short with Vespuuci
>> people complain about too complex interface, with StreetComplete it
>> is extremely limiting (detail can be added to existing objects, no mapping
>> of new objects).
>> _______________________________________________
>> talk mailing list
>> talk at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
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