weeklyOSM 762

20/02/2025-26/02/2025

Community

• ENSTP’s OSM Club is back and you are invited ► to participate. On the agenda: training, conferences, projects, and many other surprises. This event marks the beginning of the activities of the OSM community at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Travaux Publics in Cameroon.
• Jean-Christophe Becquet delivered a presentation titled ‘Encouraging Contributions in Your Area’ at AlpOSS ►, the open-source and free software event held in Isère, France. Drawing from experiences within the OpenStreetMap ecosystem across various regions and themes, this presentation outlines a methodology for fostering engagement around a digital commons.

Events

• ^[1] You can read about the OSM Hack Weekend, hosted by Geofabrik in Karlsruhe, Germany, which discussed and worked on things related to KDE Itinerary, Transitous, and emergency and weather alerts, involving OSM.
• You still can register for the 5th annual OpenStreetMap Local Chapters and Communities Congress, which will be held online on Saturday 15 March 13:00 to 16:00 UTC.

Education

• Raymond Lay introduced QMapCompare, a newly released plugin for QGIS that allows users to compare multiple maps within the platform using a range of visualisation techniques.

OSM research

• Peschanski, Jurno, and Hilsenbeck Filho, from Wiki Movimento Brasil, have published an open access paper in Texto Livre (Open Text), supported by UFMG (Brazil), discussing some successful case studies on open solutions in digital extension projects. The uMap of the roads and bridges damaged or destroyed during the Rio Grande do Sul disaster of 2024 was mentioned. The problematic bridges and highways were mapped in OpenStreetMap by Fernando Trebien (we reported earlier) and the uMap was created by Raquel Dezidério Souto.

Maps

• hflan proposed renaming that body of water between Mexico and the USA the Gulf of OpenStreetmap. Using the same MapQuest tool you too can find where the Gulf of Have a Dream is.

OSM in action

• OpenStreetMap in the wild: a few weeks ago, the French Department of Doubs posted ► on LinkedIn about one of their new recruits, Adrien Zhang. Some contributors spotted the OSM logo displayed on his desktop. The department uses an instance of InfoRoute to share traffic information, also shown on his desktop, that relies on OSM as a base layer.

Open Data

• As we reported earlier, the OpenLandMap is provided by OpenGeoHub, displays a lot of thematic layers, and uses OpenStreetMap as one of the available base layers. This project works with open data and is based on open-source software including Geoserver, React, plumber R and OpenLayers. What’s new is that it now includes Bing aerial images.
• Kailash Nadh and Madhav Pai highlighted the significance of OpenStreetMap as a digital public good and a key component of digital public infrastructure in their recent talk titled ‘Open Data in Mobility’. The session took place on Friday 21 February, during Day 2 of Namma Raste, a three-day in-depth exploration of Bengaluru’s urban mobility that brought together experts, policymakers, and citizens to shape a safer and more sustainable transportation future.

Software

• User RollTideRoll_asdfjkll reported that Bing imagery is inaccessible in JOSM, prompting the reopening of a related issue ticket. Mikel Maron confirmed there is ongoing coordination with Microsoft to inquire whether all OSM editors could use the key currently used by iD. As of this writing, Microsoft has not yet responded.
• David Karlaš updated his script that adds helpful buttons to the OpenStreetMap website. The updated script now includes direct links to OSMCha and the Level0 editor and works with the recently updated layout of the OpenStreetMap website.
• Lucas Jellema has published a guide on using CartoDB and OpenStreetMap in QGIS.

Did you know that …

• … there are more than one thousand OSM datasets on data.europe.eu, the official portal for European data?

Other “geo” things

• Reddit user Throwboi321 has conducted a GIS analysis to investigate the hypothesis that kebab quality declines the closer you get to a railway station. By integrating OSM data for navigation networks and railway station locations with Google Maps reviews as a proxy for taste, they aimed to assess the validity of this claim.
• Diego Alonso has given us a rundown ► on the highlights of the QGIS 3.42 (Münster) release candidate.
• Burghardt, Demidova and Keim have edited an open access book about volunteered geographic information, which was published by Springer Nature in 2024, and included articles from the VGIscience programme, developed by the Institut für Kartographie of the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany).

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Port Townsend	Virtual Mapping Party – Port Townsend, WA	✓	2025-03-01 – 2025-03-02
Flensburg	2. Open Data Day in Flensburg		2025-03-01
Dwarka	14th OSM Delhi Mapping Party (Online)		2025-03-02
	MapRoulette Monthly Community Meeting		2025-03-04
Molenbeek-Saint-Jean – Sint-Jans-Molenbeek	OpenStreetMap meetup in Brussels		2025-03-04
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2025-03-04
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2025-03-05
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2025-03-05
	Online-Diskussion OSM-Förderprogramm des FOSSGIS e.V.		2025-03-04
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2025-03-04
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2025-03-05
	iD Community Chat		2025-03-05
	OSM Indoor Meetup		2025-03-05
Brno	Kvartální OSM pivo		2025-03-05
	Missing Maps – DRK & MSF Online Mapathon [deutsch]		2025-03-05
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2025-03-07
Anglet	Rencontre Mapadour (Groupe local Pays Basque – Sud Landes)		2025-03-07
Zagreb	Zagreb mapathon @ FER		2025-03-07
Moers	Starke Frauen, Brot und Rosen – Community-Hackday im JuNo in Moers		2025-03-07 – 2025-03-09
Dwarka	14th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2025-03-09
København	OSMmapperCPH		2025-03-09
Grenoble	Découverte d’OpenStreetMap		2025-03-10
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #74		2025-03-10
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2025-03-11
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2025-03-13
Marseille	Conférence présentation d’OpenStreetMap		2025-03-14
Marseille	Balade et cartopartie – Parcours de fraîcheur		2025-03-15
Metz	Cartopartie – Quartier du Pontiffroy Metz		2025-03-15
Comuna 13 – San Javier	Junta OSM Latam – Avances SotM Latam 2025 Medellín		2025-03-15
	Local Chapters and Communities Congress 2025		2025-03-15
	Panoramax monthly international meeting		2025-03-17

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.