4.3 KiB
'Pin je Punt' - one year later
About a year ago, we launched a mapping campaign at the request from Visit Flanders (Toerisme Vlaanderen). (The project is explained below)
A part of the campaign involved a guided import. The agencies had many datasets lying around (e.g. about benches or picnic tables) which they wanted to have imported in OSM. As doing a data import is hard - and the data was sometimes outdated, we opted for another approach: for every possible feature, a map note was created containing a friendly explanation and instructions to open MapComplete - which would close the map note on behalf of the contributor, marking them "imported", "not found" or "not valid" depending on what the contributor chose.
Most map notes are closed by now, but the central question in this analysis today is: should remaining map notes be closed in batch, or do we leave them open for longer? Note that input of the local community will be gathered as well.
The project in a nutshell
This is what I sent to the Belgian Mailing list on the 5th of february. Note that the actual launch was later, around the 4th of March
Toerisme Vlaanderen will be launching an OpenStreetMap-based project on the 14th of February. This is a rather big project which I'd like to introduce to you with this email. The project consists of a few parts which might have some impact:
- A MapComplete theme with focus on some touristical POI's will be launched
- A guided survey/data import will be started
- Toerisme Vlaanderen will ask their partners to start mapping, so hopefully we'll welcome a group of new mappers
This project will focus on the following POI's:
-
Benches and picnic tables
-
(Public) toilets
-
Playgrounds,
-
electrical charging stations (with a focus on charging stations for electrical bicycles)
-
Bicycle pumps and repair stations
-
and observation towers
*What is this project about?*
/Toerisme Vlaanderen/ is a Flemish state agency which promotes tourism in Flanders, together with the 5 provincial touristical offices and some other organisations. Historically, these 5 offices have each held their own small set of geodata for typical items such as benches, public toilets, picnic tables, playgrounds, ... to put those items on their maps.
And of course, these offices have kept this data in their own spreadsheets, in their own formats (except for one - which has been using OSM for years now).
Toerisme Vlaanderen would like to unify all these databases into OpenStreetMap, increase the data quality of the items already there and improve the surveying flow.
This is where MapComplete comes in. MapComplete <mapcomplete.osm.be/> is a web-app where one can show information about POI, can answer questions about these POI and can add new points. Depending on the chosen map, some categories of POI are shown.
For this project, a theme showing (and asking information about) benches, picnictables, playgrounds, charging stations, ... has been created and will be launched on 14 februari/. (If you look around a bit, you can already find a link to the theme, but another email will follow when the project is live.)/
A slow data import: methodology
Of course, there is quite a bit of geodata laying around with the provincial offices, which ideally ends up in OpenStreetMap too.
For this, a slow data import has been started. Instead of dumping all the data into OSM, a map note is created for every item that should be checked.
This map note is structured in such a way that a contributor can use it, but MapComplete can also pick this up to show this to a contributor. This contributor can then quickly add/import the new feature if they found it, or they can mark the note as a duplicate or not existing anymore - closing the note in at the same time. These notes also link to both the wiki page and to the mapcomplete page where they can be easily added.
As with all things in life, this method has advantages and drawbacks:
- The biggest advantage is exposure of the import to experienced contributors. (Case in point: I've already had valuable response on a few notes within 24hours of them going live)
- The import is tracked in OSM itself, containing a lot of information and providing a flexible forum
- It is quick and easy to setup
- Others can make a similar note, which will be picked up by MapComplete too!