I dare you to try OpenStreetMap!
I dare you to try OpenStreetMap but also (probably most importantly) contribute!
But first, some introduction,
What even is OpenStreetMap?
Okay well, OpenStreetMap is a database, licensed under ODBL, to create maps basically.
It's kind of like Wikipedia with how the data is crowdsourced from well, anyone. The data can then be used for well, basically anything.
Research? Sure.
Wanna make your own map? Sure.
Wanna just use it for navigation without relying on anyone else? Hell yeah you can.
Basically anything you want as long as you share people's work under ODBL and well, attribute them of course.
How do I use it?
Well, for navigation, on desktop :- Gnome Maps
- GraphHopper
- Qwant Maps
On mobile :
- OSMand
- Maps.me
- Maps (on F-droid)
- Navmii
You can also find other choices on the OSM wiki
Okay so now that you know how to use it for yourself, let's get contributing!
For this, since it's most likely going to be new users editing, we will use iD, it's available right under the edit button on OpenStreetMap's website!
Well, I would explain how to use it and all but thankfully, since iD is pretty userfriendly, there's a walkthrough to get you started.
Please DO NOT copy data from Google Maps or other services, it would violate their licenses. Only add information you personally know from local knowledge or aerial footage which you can use, iD thankfully lets us use most of the available ones which we have the rights to use for OSM.
If you need any kind of help,
the wiki is there which has tons of information but which also has links to mailing lists, IRC, Discord and other services. Oh and of course, feel free to comment below too.
If you're already using OSM or contributing, feel free to talk about your experience below too!
Happy Mapping!
Especially if we're talking about contributing to OpenStreetMap, you should look into StreetComplete as an easy way to contribute! It's an Android app, and while it doesn't enable you to add new points of interest (like buildings or roads or anything), it asks you for all sorts of missing metadata for existing POI near you. Super easy interface, and a very low-friction way to contribute!
I've also heard that OsmGo! is useful if you want a step up from that to add new POI, but still want a convenient user interface, but I haven't personally tried it yet. It is also Android only.
And, of course, OsmAnd is great for navigation and can also edit the map! The UI is a little cluttered, but it's very powerful. This one is also available for iOS.
All the above are FLOSS, some are available on F-Droid, all on Google Play (though, some may require a fee).
Checking back in to let you know that I've been using StreetComplete, and I love it! It's such a simple and easy way to contribute. I've been varying the routes on which I take my dog on walks in order to take care of quests, which has been great for him as well since he enjoys getting to explore new paths. I also open the app up whenever I go someplace new, and it seems like there's always something in the area I can fill in.
Do you know of any app to contribute for roads, since I use the car a lot and I could map some streets in my country.
OsmAnd has a plugin you can download from within the app to contribute.
In most countries the roads are already present from government imports and the like but sometimes have inaccuracies or are out of date for varying reasons.
The main ways to map a road are to drive down it while recording a gpx trace (can do this in osmand) and uploading that to openstreetmap so that it can be overlaid the map in the id editor on the main website (or use a 3rd party tool like josm) and modified respectively.
You can also just add in survey notes either for your self or for "arm chair" mappers to fix up later.
The OSMAnd editing plugin only does points of interest from my knowledge.
It also records and uploads gpx tracks. You could use Vespucci to do more detailed editing on a phone but I find it a lot easier to use my phone simply as a surveying tool to assist making more significant edits on PC.
That's not part of the plugin but yes, OSMAnd can do that. I personally do similar only using my phone as a surveying tool until I can go back to glorious iD.
Um I guess you could try Vespucci, it's the only android application which I know could do this but it's not exactly user-friendly. I would really recommend using iD for that.
StreetComplete is great but when you're trying to create or when the area is under rapid development, the tiles tend to be very outdated which is problematic in some cases from my personal experience.
Please be wary when editing roads and such that aerial imagery may be quited dated or misplaced.
I mean offset so everything in view could look slightly off and of course not all aerial footage is perpendicular to ground so it could also look offset because of the angle the aerial footage was taken in.
I love OSM, I've used the data before for uni and work, and their basemaps via mapbox.
I haven't contributed as much as I would like to, I keep meaning to do more. Hopefully when I'm finished this course I'll have more spare time to give back.
I'm curious, what did you do with the data?
At uni I had a bunch of points, and used open street map to label them with the nearest tourist spot/landmark/address. Then I built a network off their footpath data and did a travelling salesman route through all the landmarks.
I worked for a local council, and they wanted to know if/where certain services were in a neighbourhood to assist with facility planning. Tbh, there wasn't much in open street map, and I ended up bringing together data from a lot of other sources. That's why I want to try and contribute more myself.
So I've signed up and downloaded the apps, but it looks like my tiny corner of the world is already astonishingly well-covered, given its relative remoteness. [I'll admit it's not so remote that Google hasn't deemed the town worthy of exploration - I passed a Street View car a couple of weeks ago.]
I'll contribute when any opportunities arise (back-country trails? road construction?), and use the data to see if corrections are required.
What's the point exactly? Google Maps is amazing and I doubt any crowdsourced map could match it. Also the apps look terrible.
Freedom of information I would personally say is imporant.
Let's take some examples of uses that I could want to use Google's mapping data for :
If I want to use Google Maps for research with their data? Forget about it.
I wanna make a competing product? Pay up forever and never have any kind of independence.
Also, it's been especially popular relatively recently in humanitarian work where Google Maps has absolutely no data so people have to make maps quickly and OSM allows that. See : HOT.
And well, there's also an argument for privacy, I could never make a service using Google Maps which allows privacy unless I want to proxy all my users which would be a pain really.
Google Maps is almost a monopoly on navigation and cartography to a certain degree, competition needs to exist in the space.
On another note, I personally enjoy mapping. I find it relaxing and rewarding.
OpenStreetMap actually has an extremely rich data set, better than Google Maps for certain uses
Lots of big things make use of OSM. Pokemon Go for example uses OSM, and for its purpose (generating certain types of areas and overlays) it's very good.
There are the usual privacy concerns. So much of what makes google maps "good" is actually all based on the data mined from it's slav..erm...users. Traffic data? Mined from users location data. The data and images of businesses? Provided by users.
Walking out of a supermarket and suddenly google maps pops up asking for info about said store? How can anyone not think that is creepy as all hell! That's a nope from me.
Many of the arguments saying gmaps is 'better' than OSM are similar to those that say windows is better than mac or linux etc.... It mostly comes down to muscle memory and what you are used to. There is a lot of value in familiarity. Now I'm used to OSM, I actually find gmaps to be of much lower quality. It is built for simplicity and shows roads well and that's basically it. There is so much extra information within OSM. Of course it is dependant on where you live, OSM can sometimes be lacking in less populated areas, but with more users comes more contributions. It's also quite fun to add and modify map data, too.
Its actually really good from the developer side. Mapbox is a company that sells services using OSM data and their map viewers are really high quality and a lot lot cheaper than google maps. For the use case where you want to show the location of your store on a map or maybe show a some other kind of visualization it actually doesn't matter that all the data like the opening hours of the local library are missing.
From the user side, OSM is better for things google maps can't make money off. The mountain bike trail data on OSM is actually quite good but on google maps its non existent.
There are some pretty decent apps for OSM. My favorite is "Maps.me" which is also available on F-Droid, and just called "Maps".
"Maps" on F-droid doesn't use the Maps.me servers and lacks certain certain services because some of Maps.me is proprietary.
Maybe not related, but I am actually trying to set up a web application with some gis data I've downloaded from my county right now. This data includes municipal boundaries and parcel tax data. I want to crate a website that uses that data along with additional information about political candidates for a voting precinct. So far, I've looked at GeoServer and openstreetmaps, but I'm not quite sure how all those pieces fit together to make an application. Do you have any guidance on a good GIS web application stack to use existing shapefiles?
I don't have much experience in this, but for the little jobs I have done, I've found mapbox gl js to be pretty good. I only had a little dataset to deal with, so I linked it directly to a geojson. I've also played around with their vector tiles - you can upload your shapefiles onto their website for free (where they are automatically converted to vector tiles), and then you just link to them.
If you used the same kind of service as this one: https://download.geofabrik.de (which downloads the whole database of openstreetmap for a region you select).
You can then use a tool like osmium (github repo here) to extract what you want through the tag system of open street map (You can see which tag has every node/way/feature via the Query Features on openstreetmap like this), and use the same osmium tool to convert the file to a more javascript friendly format such as .geojson
So, I love the idea of OpenStreetMap and have attempted to use it before (I think through Maps.me but I could be wrong on that -- this was a while ago). I played around with it only to find out it didn't have house numbers in the app. As such, it wasn't really able to give me meaningful directions, as it could just take me from one street to another, but not specific addresses on either of those streets. Not too big of a problem when the streets are smaller/shorter, but definitely an issue when they're long. Why is this? Is it simply that the areas I was trying to go were unmapped at the time?
Yeah, they would have to been unmapped for that to happen. That's kinda surprising but those places definitely do exist. In some places, addresses will be imported from open data with estimations (or manually if someone knows the interval and end addresses of a part of a street) rather than buildings which makes it a little inaccurate in some cases but does the job mostly. Thankfully, if a building is assigned an address, the navigation should take that instead of the estimation. Consider making your neighborhood better by contributing!
I'm willing to help map buildings from aerial footage if you want. My city is still lacking in those still but we have addresses so my navigation needs are mostly satisfied. Considering potentially making a mapathon at my college which might be fun.
It does seem like my area is not very well mapped, but everyone here has inspired me to help out. I downloaded StreetComplete as mentioned in another comment and am excited to get out and do the quests in my area. There are a ton! It's like Pokemon Go for information!
EDIT: None of the StreetComplete quests seem to address unnumbered houses/buildings, despite there being plenty in my area. What's the best way for me to add this info to OSM? (Preferrably via mobile, so I can make updates while walking my dog.)
To do this, you'd most likely want to add the building shapes so you'd go and map the buildings on your computer using iD, update StreetComplete and the quests for it will appear.