Plepe's Blog

I love mapping for the OpenStreetMap project, it’s a very pleasing thing to do. I especially like to do it as vacation activity, because then I’m exploring new places anyway, but I also like to do it at home.

Recently I’m concentrating on mapping artwork and memorials. Even in a well-mapped city like Vienna, Austria, there’s still plenty to do. For example, most social housing building complexes (Vienna is famous for it’s social housing) have some kind of artwork, e.g. some murals or statues in the gardens.

Some examples:

I think, having a map feature in OpenStreetMap is not enough though. I want to add pictures and meta data (who made the object, when was it created, …). This is done in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation. In this article, I want to explain how I map these objects.

1. Wikimedia Commons

Often these objects already have photos on Wikimedia Commons. If not, I upload one or a few photos (whatever is reasonable). If there are several photos of the picture (or the object seems important enough), I create a category for the object (if it does not exist yet).  Of course, the category should have the relevant categories for the location, the motive, the artist, etc.

2. Wikidata

Next, each object should have its own Wikidata entry. Haven’t heard of Wikidata yet? It’s a sister project to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. As Wikimedia Commons is the platform for media (which is linked by Wikipedia), Wikidata is a platform for semantic and linked data. E.g. an entry for a city would have values for the population size at specific historic dates, links to the wikidata entry of current and former mayors, link to other data sources (Encyclopedia Brittanica, Library of Congress), link to its Wikimedia Commons category, and so on (e.g. Vienna). Most infoboxes in Wikipedia are now automatically created from Wikidata data.

So, each object should have its own Wikidata entry. Of course, you should check if a Wikidata entry already exists – if yes, check if the data is complete. It should have values for (if available):

• label and description (at least in local language, preferred also in English)
• instance of (e.g. memorial monument, sculpture, …)
• depicts (the entity being depicted)
• dedicated to
• geographic coordinates
• image (link to a Wikimedia Commons image)
• commons category (link to the Wikimedia Commons category for this object)
• country
• administrative territorial entity
• inception (start date; if possible the date of its inauguration)
• material used

When done, edit the Wikimedia Commons category, and add the following line (replace „Q1234“ by the ID of the wikidata entry), so that the category gets a nice infobox on the side:

{{Wikidata Infobox|qid=Q1234}}

3. OpenStreetMap

Finally, the map feature in OpenStreetMap. This can be a node or an area. If the object is located on the wall of a building I make the node a part of the building contour. The entry should have the following tags:

• tourism=artwork, artwork_type=* and/or historic=memorial, memorial=*
• name=*
• wikidata=Q1234 (the wikidata ID from above)
• subject:wikidata=Q2345 (the wikidata ID of the main subject)
• artist_name=*
• artist:wikidata=Q3456 (the wikidata ID of the artist, resp. the artists separated by „;“)
• start_date=* (the date of the inauguration)
• year_of_construction=* (if there’s information when the object was being built, this can be a range)
• material=*

Further tags like wikipedia=*, image=*, wikimedia_commons=* are not necessary, as this information can be read from the Wikidata entry. I do not remove these tags though, if I find them.

Often, map features already have a wikidata/wikipedia-tag which points to the person which it memorizes. This is wrong, because this should be a „subject:wikidata“ resp. „subject:wikipedia“ tag. Please change this.

Final

How can you test your entries? There’s a list of tools which let you explore wikidata tags. I recommend OpenStreetBrowser, which is an application for OpenStreetMap data written by myself. It will show images of the map features and excerpts of Wikipedia articles.

Examples

Here are some examples of such features:

• Goethe memorial near the Viennese ring road:
  Wikimedia Commons category, Wikidata entry, OpenStreetMap feature, OpenStreetBrowser
• „Hill arches“ by Henry Moore at Karlsplatz:
  Wikimedia Commons category, Wikidata entry, OpenStreetMap feature, OpenStreetBrowser
• Mosaic „The tanners as founders of the labour union“ on a building:
  Wikimedia Commons category, Wikidata entry, OpenStreetMap feature, OpenStreetBrowser
• Mosaic of locomotive „Philadelphia“ on the facade a building
  Wikimedia Commons category, Wikidata entry, OpenStreetMap feature, OpenStreetBrowser
• Zirkusgasse 11 (see picture above) – here I haven’t done a Wikidata entry (yet?)
  Wikimedia Commons image, OpenStreetMap feature, OpenStreetBrowser

Morgen, den 10.10.2013 werd ich wieder mal einen Vortrag über die OpenStreetMap halten, diesmal auf der „Shareconomy“ Konferenz der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Datenverarbeitung.

Hier mein Abstract:

Am Anfang stand der Wunsch eine lizenzkostenfreie Straßenkarte der Welt zu erstellen und die OpenStreetMap war geboren – quasi die „Wikipedia der Landkarten“. Zuerst wurde sie von den großen kommerziellen Unternehmen belächelt – besonders aufgrund ihres scheinbar unstrukturierten simplifizierten Datenmodells. Schnell hat sich aber eine schier unüberschaubare Datenvielfalt etabliert, die sehr differenzierte thematische Karten ermöglicht – Karten historischer
Sehenswürdigkeiten, Radwegkarten, Karten für Personen mit eingeschränkter Mobilität oder speziell angepasste Karten für humanitäre Katastrophenfälle sind nur ein paar der Möglichkeiten.
Außerdem hat sich rund um die OpenStreetMap ein riesiges Ökosystem an Software entwickelt – das meiste davon natürlich Open Source. Schließlich wollen Daten gesammelt, eingetragen, abgezeichnet und vor allem weiterverarbeitet und schließlich dargestellt werden. Die großen Datenmengen stellen auch besondere Anforderungen an die Datenbanksysteme.
Die OpenStreetMap bildet inzwischen die Basis für einige erfolgreiche Unternehmen. Außerdem kann sie gut mit Open Data Initiativen kombiniert werden. Last but not least gibt es viele wissenschaftliche Projekte die sich mit diesen Daten auseinandersetzen.

Hier finden sich die Folien:

 

As I told I’m gonna present some features of the OpenStreetBrowser from time to time. It’s also a good documentation for the project.

Routes of public transportation

Routes of public transportation are still not being displayed on the main Mapnik and OsmaRender renderings, although they are very important in my opinion. For me this was actually the start of the project, I had planned to make a nice map with public transportation routes. Now they are only an overlay, as they would clutter the main map too much.

There are two noteworthy features: The references of routes sharing the same way get collected and separated by ‚,‘, which looks much better, and stops with the same name get combined and get a box drawn around. Both of these features improve visibility.

Link to Wikipedia

In the OpenStreetMap it’s possible to link to the Wikipedia. The key is „wikipedia:language“, e.g. „wikipedia:en“ or „wikipedia:de“. If such a link exists, the OpenStreetBrowser displays an abstract of the article and an image, when it finds one (it has to be before the first abstract … this is something still to improve).

Stylesheet for the Overlays

The last feature for this time is the newest feature. The styles of the Overlays „Food & Drink“, „Shops“, „Culture & Tourism“ and „Services“ is generated from a page in the OSM-Wiki. So if you find something missing on these overlays, or you have better icons (many objects don’t have an icon or share icons with other features), feel free to upload them there (the new style sheet will be used after the next database reload, so typically after 1-3 weeks).

If you have suggestions for new feature, complaints or praise, feel free to leave me a comment :)

This time I want to show you some features of the OpenStreetBrowser. One of the goals of my project is to display as many information as possible in a simple and understandable way. Sounds like the quadratur of the circle? Maybe it is :)

Housenumbers

The first feature I want to show you are house numbers. Sounds rather boring, isn’t it? The default Mapnik and Osmarenders styles don’t rotate the numbers, so it’s hard to say where they belong to. It’s also a problem of the software (I can only speak for Mapnik, because I’m using it too), there isn’t really a possibility to rotate texts and icons. So you have to use crude workarounds, which are a pain in the ass. But I think I’ve done a pretty good job … although ideas for improvements are always welcome! The house numbers are also being listed in the details of the street in the side pane.

More informations about entering house numbers to OSM.

Cemetery

I don’t know about you, my precious reader, but I like visiting cemeteries. Maybe it’s a Viennese thing, they were always crazy about their afterlife. On cemeteries you can visit all these graves of famous people. Even better if you can see them on the map, isn’t it? The important graves on a cemetery are also listed in the side information pane. Time to visit your local cemetery!

What is still missing is the background of the cemeteries, at the moment there are theses crosses, which is not really appropriate for graves of other religions.

There is no approved method for tagging graves in OSM yet, the OpenStreetBrowser currently accepts cemetery=grave and historic=grave.

Borders

Places (Countries, Regions, Cities, Villages, …) are only entered as Point (Node) to the OSM right now. In many cases you also have borders, but it’s hard to see them and the information which border belongs to which node is missing. The OpenStreetBrowser combines the borders and the nodes and shows both of them if you see the places‘ details.

The border is a relation of the type boundary or multipolygon, the tag admin_level matches more or less to the place-tag. To help find the correct border add the node to the relation and give it the role ‚label‘ (which is a proposed feature).

These were just three of the features of the OpenStreetBrowser. I will show you more another time.  If you have some ideas or questions, you can post them as comment here or to this page.

I’m very happy, that I finally can publicly announce the project I was working on the last months. I already told you about the OpenStreetMap, this astonishing project with the goal of creating a free map (as in free speech and in free beer) of the world. The great thing about it … you can take the data, use your imagination and think of better ways to visualize the data. And I used my imagination and creativity and created the OpenStreetBrowser.

On the webpage you have a „Slippy Map“, as you know it from the OpenStreetMap Homepage or commercial services like Google Maps. But on the left side you can investigate the current map view. Get a list of Pubs or the Public Transport routes or a list of street names. When appropriate a thematic overlay is displayed. Just play with it, you will see you can’t stop :) If you want to get more information about an object, then just click on it on the map.

So. I don’t want to go into more detail here. Just give it a try. If you want more information there’s a page in the OpenStreetMap-Wiki for the project.

Disclaimer: The project is not finished yet, it’s still a big construction site. So, please be patient if it gets slow or if you find bugs (please report them here) or something is still missing.

I want to send special thanks to Manuela for talking and encouraging and for sure for the web design. I’m looking forward for further co-operation. And I also want to thank Monika for mental assistance :)

As I got stuck in Bulgaria, looking for flat-mates, I continued my work on my OpenStreetMap-Project, I was mentioning earlier on my blog (in fact I was not talking about this project since beginning of November).

As I already said, the OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of geographical data. The data is collected by volunteers or imported from free data sources (e.g. gouvernmental data if available or free satellite images). In Austria a company – plan.at – donated their data, as mapping is not their main business anymore. This improved the Austrian part of the OpenStreetMap greatly, especially on the countryside (although the import is not finished yet).

My project consists mainly of two parts. The first – and main part – is an interface to browse the available information in the OpenStreetMap. E.g. if you are looking for a pub or the nearest fuel station. But this is not the part I want to talk about this time.

The second part is an improved rendering of the OpenStreetMap. I’m not very satisfied with the default rendering, it looks very pale. I decided to make it more flashy. Additional various overlays can be displayed, e.g. the routes of public transportation (which none of the default renderers of OpenStreetMap do yet).

Attention, technical details: I’m using Mapnik as render engine, the same as the default view of the OpenStreetMap uses. To make developing of the new style easier, I’m using Cascadenik, a kind of CSS for Mapnik.

As I don’t want to announce my project here (it’s still quite buggy and slow), but I want to talk about it, I will show you some example renderings:

In the first example you can see a part of Bulgaria. As you can see the country borders are clearer, and the names of the Cities are displayed in the country language and in the English translation (as available).
In the second example you can see the surroundings of Schottentor in Vienna. Buildings have different colours, depending on their function and a little border.
The last example shows the inner city of Graz with an overlay of the routes of public transportation.

I’m busy developing on my application, I hope to be able to show you more of it soon.