I’ve been organised enough to download the Scotland extract on the 1st January. I also have a set of data up to the 30th September 2015, so I can look at progress over the last 2 and quarter years.

First up is Highways:

And listed by length:

To start with, lets look at the roads. As has been the case for a number of years mapping the main road network in Scotland was completed a number of years ago, and the recent changes have been related to some big construction projects such as the Queensferry Crossing, M8 Upgrades and the Queensferry Crossing.

All motorways in Scotland, red shows the new Motorways

The only road type showing a drop in length is unclassified. This is largely down to improvements in the classifications of roads, in particular to tertiary.

Service Roads in Scotland

We’ve also seen a big increase in Service roads, it’s worth noting that a number of these have been added by Amazon Logistics - they seem to be adding just the last little bit connecting roads to buildings, the service road from road to the house or the office. These edits definitely have been rocky at times, such as the removal of a car park, just mapped based on out of imagery. In general I’ve very happy to see commercial edits, but as this shows new mappers need to be properly trained on how to assess the general state of the map especially before removing things.

Paths Tracks and Cycleways - New highways are shown in red

I’m very pleased to see big increases in the mapping of tracks and paths as well as the increase in cycleways although I think these are largely fine tuning of tagging of paths. Hopefully it won’t be long until we have full coverage of all paths and tracks and these will be much more stable.

Finally we have the long tail of tags, of these highway=road, which is really a placeholder and shouldn’t be used still has far too many entries so for the moment, I’ve made a list of these to work through - https://github.com/osm-scotland/scotland-issues/issues/4 if anyone wants to help then jump in, let me know if you need permission for the github link.

The same thing applies to highway=no; These have mostly been used where a highway has been removed. This is useful as it signals to remote mappers (such as the amazon logistics folks above) that the road has been removed. However once the imagery updates having these no longer makes sense. In case any one wants to look at these, I’ve made a list at: https://github.com/osm-scotland/scotland-issues/issues/5

Hopefully I’ll be getting a part 2 out in the next few weeks.

We’ve covered most of the route in OpenStreetMap for a while. But until recently we’ve had a tiny gap missing. I was trying to figure out getting over to do it when I saw Martin McMahon had filled it in with a 9-mile walk between train stations—great effort!

twitter: to map that gap took 2 trains 1 to Helensburgh a 9 miles walk then train from Balloch. Great day

So with some not insignificant effort, we now have the complete route mapped. These can easily be seen by looking at a raw view of either the walking route or the cycling route on OpenStreetMap.

But where OSM comes into its own is the ability to actually do things with the data, so to kick things off I’ve created a set of GPX files of the route. These contain the full walking or cycling route and are suitable to be loaded into your GPS or phone app as aids to navigating the route.

• john_muir_way_cycling.gpx
• john_muir_way_walking.gpx

Map wise, as always I’m disappointed to see the otherwise very nice John Muir Way website using Google Maps rather than an OpenStreetMap based map:

There are also tools such as Relation Analyser. Interestingly this shows cycling distance as 206km and the walking distance as 213km while the route is officially 215 km (I guess they rounded up).

## Tracking, OSM Tracker #

One of the key apps, is something that can track where you are, providing a record of where you’ve been and allowing you to upload it to the OpenStreetMap website. OSM’s heritage is built around collecting data using a GPS, and it still remains a powerfull way of mapping an area without requiring other sources. And we actually are all carrying a GPS device around with us in our pocket it is very easy to do.

I use OSM Tracker it’s a simple app, and does it well, as well as recording a GPS trail, it also allows you to take pictures, and display the track on a map.

Use is really simple, start a new track:

Once it is running, it displays the currently GPS Position, shortcuts for taking a picture, and noting various features:

It is also possible to view the track on a map, this is really useful for checking the current area mapped, and seeing where you’ve been:

Finally, it’s possible to tag save and upload the track:

Editing, Vespucci

Editing is generally done as after mapping on a computer, but it can be really helpful to be able to make some changes from your phone, especially once you’re more experienced, I would recommend using Vespucci, Vespucci is getting better and better all the time, and does a really good job editing using the touch interface. This isn’t necessary a beginners tool, but a good tool that continues to improve that’s definitly worth looking at.

When you click on the map, it allows you to choose what item you wish to edit, which is a good solution to the problem of never being able to select accurately enough with your finger. Geometries can then we tweaked as neccessary.

Although I tend to use it to make small changes such as editing tags rather than big edits, it’s a powerfull tool that only gets better.

Data Gathering

Accessibilty, Wheelmap

Wheelmap is a great example of a simple data gathering app. The wheelchair app collects accessibilty information as well as some simple addressing information to be displayed on the Wheelmap Site

Addressing, Keypadmapper

As we have mapped a significant proportion of the road network, there is now a big push to collect addressing data Keypadmapper is a simple app to collect addressing data as you move down the road simply enter the numbers as you pass them. Later the address points can be loaded into JOSM for adding into OpenStreetMap.

So a quick summary of the apps:

• Tracking: OSM Tracker
• Editing: Vespucci
• Accessibilty: Wheelmap
• Addressing: Keypadmapper

Please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below!

1. Android Apps

## Tracking #

One of the key apps, is something that can track where you are, providing a record of where you’ve been and allowing you to upload it to the OpenStreetMap website.

I use OSM Tracker it’s a simple app, and does it well, as well as recording a GPS trail, it also allows you to take pictures, and display the track on a map.

Use is really simple, start a new track:

Once it is running, it displays the currently GPS Position, shortcuts for taking a picture, and noting various features:

It is also possible to view the track on a map, this is really useful for checking the current area mapped, and seeing where you’ve been:

Finally, it’s possible to tag save and upload the track:

Editing

Editing is generally done as after mapping on a computer, but it can be really helpful to be able to make some changes from your phone, especially once you’re more experiences, I would recommend using Vespucci, Vespucci is getting better and better all the time, and does a really good job editing using the touch interface.

When you click on the map, it allows you to choose what item you wish to edit, which is a good solution to the problem of never being able to select accuratly enough with your finger. Geometries can then we tweaked as neccessary.

Although I tend to use it to make small changes sich as tags rather than big edits.

Data Gathering

Accessibility

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wheelmap.android.online

Addressing

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.enaikoon.android.keypadmapper3

I don’t get enough hits to justify the performance need of a static site, but it has the advantage of being one less wordpress site to maintain, and for me writting posts using markdown in vim is a definite win.

I have also taken the oportunity to switch to a small cluster I’ve setup using ByteMark’s BigV

Also a change, the code for this site is all on github. The commit history provides a nice history of the work and changes I’ve made to the standard Octopress site. This is largely in area’s of the category handling, and removing the banner. I may base some future posts on this.

I had the plesure of doing a talk for the Rotary Club of Esk Valley this Tuesday, the talk was based on the talk I gave at SoTM Scotland,  with some of the more detailed information removed and some more introductory material added. So this posting is to cover some of the new stuff I covered or at least meant to cover.

I started with an introduction to OpenStreetMap briefly touching on the licencing terms and then lot of examples, such as cyclestreets for cycle planning, foursquare, ski maps, and not forgetting the Gaelic Map.

I then moved on to talk about HOT’s Humanitarian Work, borrowing lots of material from a previous HOT presentation.

After some talk about quality and contributors, I showed how to create an account and some slides on starting to use potlatch. I moved on to talk about phone apps. The full list for Android and iOS on the OSM wiki is quite intimidating so I wanted to give some specific suggestions to help get people started.

Simplest of all and working on both platforms is wheelmap.orgWhich provides a really simple interface to allow users to add accessibility information to existing places in OSM.

To add or edit POI’s on iOS there really is a simple choice, Pushpin a really nice simple well though out interface.

On Android, I recommend  Vespucci, it’s not as simple as pushpin but does allow a lot more to be edited on the go.

For more advanced mapping users may want to collect tracks. For Android I had lots of apps to choose from:

and I would recommend OSMtracker, it collects the GPS track and also allows some POI’s to be noted on the go.

The choice was much more limited on iOS and in the end I couldn’t quickly find a free app, so I find myself recommending OSMTrack which costs a mere 69p as is ideal as it can upload directly into OSM as well as supporting offline data.

and that was it, I had already talked far too long and so it was time to finsh up and go to questions.

We had some good questions, about using OSM for teaching, one of the users had already installed wheelmap and was adding information.

Someone also asked if we had Kevock Road, so I took a deep breath and entered it into the search box.

and I was very happy to find the road was there and we had lots of details around it.

A big thanks to the Club for inviting me out and being such a good audience.

When I started to write this talk, I wasn’t sure where it was going to end up, I found it interesting and I hope that you do to.

For me one of the most exciting trends, over the last year is seeing OpenStreetMap appearing invarious places:

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xerones/131963343/)

the switch2osm, 2012 started with an announcement by nestoria that they were moving over OSM.

Triggered  by the ever improving quality of OSM, as well as google looking at charging, it was great to see this long term support switch to using our map.

Another example is is foursquare.

I was amazed when I opened the site at the prominence given to the map on the foursquare homepage. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given the nature of the site but I don’t think  a google map would have  made the landing page here.

It was also interesting to watch the foursquare community, I think overall OSM has gained visibility and exposure from this change (citation needed)

Flickr has  continued to have some OSM maps and improve those maps, despite a new deal yahoo has to switch to Nokia maps, has continued to have some OSM maps.

I would love to see  OSM as a layer across flickr’s maps, the Nokia maps are a big improvement but are still aimed at car drivers and so still miss lots of places where photo’s might be taken. Hopefully we will see  more OSM on flickr in the future.

Finally as a more personal example of a switch2osm. I switched my parents B&B in Kent over to use OSM.

This change was a little overdue, but for me is a milestone on my journey with OSM, I first discovered OpenStreetMap when I was trying to locate local attractions when I first added a google map to this site, back around 2006.

I wasn’t surprised by the detail on the Sissinghurst page, as I mapped this myself.

but in fact zoomed in, almost every page such as this one for Bodiam Castle has lots of the little bits of detail, such as the moat, ticket office and car park (not shown here).

A lot of this is now possible, because more and more companies are starting to provide services around OSM. As I said last year:

Rightly or wrongly OSM is currently setup largely as a data provider -so it’s really great to see these other “consumer” facing options and websites appear as the more people see OSM the better our data becomes even if only a ting percentage of these can be converted into mappers. Obviously better information and simpler tools may help to lower the entry barrier in the future.

The biggest recent impact has been from mapbox:

Also a big shout out to the Stamen map styles and tiles:

such as the toner style above or the acclaimed watercolour style that I used on the first slide.

While we’re on styles, we can’t ignore the continuous improvement’s to the OSM “house” style:

The cycle map style:

]

public transport style: ]

and mapquest style ]

again mapquest open provides a great example of a complete web mapping site, with search and routing. So provides a potential OSM powered  google maps replacement.

So last year we did a comparison between the OS Locator dataset and OSM using the ITO Analysis tool, by region. I’ve added this years data into the table.

The first thing that struck me as that in both Edinburgh and Midlothian the total number of roads has increased, but we’ve missed some so we’re not longer at 100%.

There have been some fantastic, improvements Glasgow was missing 171 roads last year and these have been accounted for. Dumfries And Galloway was bottom of the list last year and it’s now in 7th, as has Aberdeen City.

There are also some places such as Na H Eileanan An Iar; also known as the Outer Hebredies which are looking quite static.

So what does that all add up to?

In 2011, we  were shown as having 4316 Roads that hadn’t been accounted for, so 93% match.

When I looked a few days ago, we only  don’t align on 1972 missing roads, or a 95% match.

So what are these missing streets? I started by looking at the 9 roads highlighted in Edinburgh.

The first stop are these Roads in Kirkliston, we seem to have one of these roads, but are missing the name, the other two roads are shown in OSM as under construction as below.

So the conclusion is probably a draw on this one, it looks like neither OS Locator or OSM have the full picture, but a visit is needed.

The next example is around Edinburgh Airport

OSM Shows Almond Avenue, but OS Locator Almond drive. A visit here will need to take place to confirm who is right.

Again it looks like some new houses here have led to some new developments that we don’t yet have.

This one was quite simple the Lane and the footpath should be joined, so I fixed this myself.

I think that this one is a new development, that needs visiting.

Again this one in Newhaven is probably a new development, that needs visiting.

Interestingly in the few days since I gave this presentation, some of these have been fixed, by changes such as this one: “Added missing street names from ITO in Kirkliston” and this “Added initial layout of new housing development in Newburgh, Edinburgh.”. I really hope that these were done with local knowledge especially as adding the through road through Kirkliston doesn’t looks like the kind of road layout that would be permitted as it would allow a rat run through a residential area.

Anyway, we have evidence that OS Locator data can’t always be relied upon.

Already in Edinburgh 2.2% of roads in Edinburgh do not match what OS Locator shows.

Glasgow, 1.4 % and looking at one of the other places at 100%, Kings’s Lynn shows 7.4% out. This is really a warning, we should be using this as a datasource to help us know where to map, but this data cannot be relied upon.

Something else was causing me concern, and that was in the Outer Hebrides.

It also helps that I’ve holidayed and mapped here (or should it be the other way round) and so have lots of photos :)

There weren’t many changes in 2011 of 298 roads we were missing 5 and in 2012 the total roads is 297 and we’re missing 4.

So first thing, I thought that I would look at the last modification data of a selection of the objects:

This wasn’t quite what I expected, so  far this year there has been a lot of activity.

And so I thought I would break down into months:

So the basic level is quite small, but with a big peak in June and July.

Looking in detail at June I saw, most of the changes:

we’re made by a single user, brianboru. I was very happy to see that he had been there and  and some of the information is surveyed on the ground with lots of detailed tracing of terrain, helping to fill in the map, so I thought I would see what else this user was up to?

So he’s from Birmingham, and by the looks of things he like I holidayed and did a ton of mapping and tracing whilse on holiday.

But once I ignored the holiday based tracing binges, there is a steady background work by seumas, and looking at his page, I was again very pleased to see that he does live on the Island.

and busy doing some mapping of shops, pubs, chippies and some paths:

This was really for me the Golden Road, to be honest I didn’t expect to find a local mapper living on the edge of the country, but here he is.

So how much data do we have:

Overall the breakdown over Scotland is:

]he uncompressed XML weighs in at 1.2G on disk, consisting of nearly 6 million nodes, nearly 500 000 ways and 5000 relations.

I also ran this against a dump from before the licence change, and we have grown significantly since then, by over 600 000 nodes, and  30 000 ways. So we are well above the numbers from before the change, and thanks to the hard work of the community in Scotland to get local mappers on board and also to mitigate against loss I don’t think we had any big problems.

What’s in a name?

We have 36 660 named nodes and 134 724 named ways.

Place?

6807 of these are places, from Cities down to Hamlets and localities.

So how long are the ways:

The table above lists the top 20 way types by length.

The total, motorway length in OSM shows as 827km compares well with the total motorway length in wikipedia (once I remembered that OSM will have ways for both directions)

We have 4 226km of paths, I suspefct there are a lot more in Scotland.

We’re up to 1 645 km of cycleway, and additionally cycling is permitted on a further 1000km of footways and paths.

We have 53 km of steps, I wouldn’t want to climb those all at once.

There is also the longtail of the list:

Somewhere we have 30m of broken bridge (not the one pictured), 10 km of racing track and 1 099m of train platforms.

all made possible by OSM’s flexable tagging system:

and the 1776 users who have contributed!

Last year I asked the question.

I still don’t think we have a really good answer to that question, but whatever we do, we must Tell People.

It’s the only way of improving the map.

When I started to write this talk, I wasn’t sure where it was going to end up, I found it interesting and I hope that you do to.

For me one of the most exciting trends, over the last year is seeing OpenStreetMap appearing invarious places:

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xerones/131963343/)

the switch2osm, 2012 started with an announcement by nestoria that they were moving over OSM.

Triggered  by the ever improving quality of OSM, as well as google looking at charging, it was great to see this long term support switch to using our map.

Another example is is foursquare.

I was amazed when I opened the site at the prominence given to the map on the foursquare homepage. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given the nature of the site but I don’t think  a google map would have  made the landing page here.

It was also interesting to watch the foursquare community, I think overall OSM has gained visibility and exposure from this change (citation needed)

Flickr has  continued to have some OSM maps and improve those maps, despite a new deal yahoo has to switch to Nokia maps, has continued to have some OSM maps.

I would love to see  OSM as a layer across flickr’s maps, the Nokia maps are a big improvement but are still aimed at car drivers and so still miss lots of places where photo’s might be taken. Hopefully we will see  more OSM on flickr in the future.

Finally as a more personal example of a switch2osm. I switched my parents B&B in Kent over to use OSM.

This change was a little overdue, but for me is a milestone on my journey with OSM, I first discovered OpenStreetMap when I was trying to locate local attractions when I first added a google map to this site, back around 2006.

I wasn’t surprised by the detail on the Sissinghurst page, as I mapped this myself.

but in fact zoomed in, almost every page such as this one for Bodiam Castle has lots of the little bits of detail, such as the moat, ticket office and car park (not shown here).

A lot of this is now possible, because more and more companies are starting to provide services around OSM. As I said last year:

Rightly or wrongly OSM is currently setup largely as a data provider -so it’s really great to see these other “consumer” facing options and websites appear as the more people see OSM the better our data becomes even if only a ting percentage of these can be converted into mappers. Obviously better information and simpler tools may help to lower the entry barrier in the future.

The biggest recent impact has been from mapbox:

Also a big shout out to the Stamen map styles and tiles:

such as the toner style above or the acclaimed watercolour style that I used on the first slide.

While we’re on styles, we can’t ignore the continuous improvement’s to the OSM “house” style:

The cycle map style:

]

public transport style: ]

and mapquest style ]

again mapquest open provides a great example of a complete web mapping site, with search and routing. So provides a potential OSM powered  google maps replacement.

So last year we did a comparison between the OS Locator dataset and OSM using the ITO Analysis tool, by region. I’ve added this years data into the table.

The first thing that struck me as that in both Edinburgh and Midlothian the total number of roads has increased, but we’ve missed some so we’re not longer at 100%.

There have been some fantastic, improvements Glasgow was missing 171 roads last year and these have been accounted for. Dumfries And Galloway was bottom of the list last year and it’s now in 7th, as has Aberdeen City.

There are also some places such as Na H Eileanan An Iar; also known as the Outer Hebredies which are looking quite static.

So what does that all add up to?

In 2011, we  were shown as having 4316 Roads that hadn’t been accounted for, so 93% match.

When I looked a few days ago, we only  don’t align on 1972 missing roads, or a 95% match.

So what are these missing streets? I started by looking at the 9 roads highlighted in Edinburgh.

The first stop are these Roads in Kirkliston, we seem to have one of these roads, but are missing the name, the other two roads are shown in OSM as under construction as below.

So the conclusion is probably a draw on this one, it looks like neither OS Locator or OSM have the full picture, but a visit is needed.

The next example is around Edinburgh Airport

OSM Shows Almond Avenue, but OS Locator Almond drive. A visit here will need to take place to confirm who is right.

Again it looks like some new houses here have led to some new developments that we don’t yet have.

This one was quite simple the Lane and the footpath should be joined, so I fixed this myself.

I think that this one is a new development, that needs visiting.

Again this one in Newhaven is probably a new development, that needs visiting.

Interestingly in the few days since I gave this presentation, some of these have been fixed, by changes such as this one: “Added missing street names from ITO in Kirkliston” and this “Added initial layout of new housing development in Newburgh, Edinburgh.”. I really hope that these were done with local knowledge especially as adding the through road through Kirkliston doesn’t looks like the kind of road layout that would be permitted as it would allow a rat run through a residential area.

Anyway, we have evidence that OS Locator data can’t always be relied upon.

Already in Edinburgh 2.2% of roads in Edinburgh do not match what OS Locator shows.

Glasgow, 1.4 % and looking at one of the other places at 100%, Kings’s Lynn shows 7.4% out. This is really a warning, we should be using this as a datasource to help us know where to map, but this data cannot be relied upon.

Something else was causing me concern, and that was in the Outer Hebrides.

It also helps that I’ve holidayed and mapped here (or should it be the other way round) and so have lots of photos :)

There weren’t many changes in 2011 of 298 roads we were missing 5 and in 2012 the total roads is 297 and we’re missing 4.

So first thing, I thought that I would look at the last modification data of a selection of the objects:

This wasn’t quite what I expected, so  far this year there has been a lot of activity.

And so I thought I would break down into months:

So the basic level is quite small, but with a big peak in June and July.

Looking in detail at June I saw, most of the changes:

we’re made by a single user, brianboru. I was very happy to see that he had been there and  and some of the information is surveyed on the ground with lots of detailed tracing of terrain, helping to fill in the map, so I thought I would see what else this user was up to?

So he’s from Birmingham, and by the looks of things he like I holidayed and did a ton of mapping and tracing whilse on holiday.

But once I ignored the holiday based tracing binges, there is a steady background work by seumas, and looking at his page, I was again very pleased to see that he does live on the Island.

and busy doing some mapping of shops, pubs, chippies and some paths:

This was really for me the Golden Road, to be honest I didn’t expect to find a local mapper living on the edge of the country, but here he is.

So how much data do we have:

Overall the breakdown over Scotland is:

]he uncompressed XML weighs in at 1.2G on disk, consisting of nearly 6 million nodes, nearly 500 000 ways and 5000 relations.

I also ran this against a dump from before the licence change, and we have grown significantly since then, by over 600 000 nodes, and  30 000 ways. So we are well above the numbers from before the change, and thanks to the hard work of the community in Scotland to get local mappers on board and also to mitigate against loss I don’t think we had any big problems.

What’s in a name?

We have 36 660 named nodes and 134 724 named ways.

Place?

6807 of these are places, from Cities down to Hamlets and localities.

So how long are the ways:

The table above lists the top 20 way types by length.

The total, motorway length in OSM shows as 827km compares well with the total motorway length in wikipedia (once I remembered that OSM will have ways for both directions)

We have 4 226km of paths, I suspefct there are a lot more in Scotland.

We’re up to 1 645 km of cycleway, and additionally cycling is permitted on a further 1000km of footways and paths.

We have 53 km of steps, I wouldn’t want to climb those all at once.

There is also the longtail of the list:

Somewhere we have 30m of broken bridge (not the one pictured), 10 km of racing track and 1 099m of train platforms.

all made possible by OSM’s flexable tagging system:

and the 1776 users who have contributed!

Last year I asked the question.

I still don’t think we have a really good answer to that question, but whatever we do, we must Tell People.

It’s the only way of improving the map.

New Lanark itself, is a World Heritage Site was originally founded in 1786 as Cotton Mills and Housing for the workers, it’s an early example of planned urban development and the business itself was run with consideration for the well being of the workers and lead the way in reform, socialism and welfare. But the wikipedia article covers this, and is well worth a read.

The area either side of the cycle is the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Falls of Clyde a nature reserve

The day started with a quick get together, where we choose our slices of the area to map, with Bob and Tim taking the new mappers around the village and because the mapping party was sponsored by The Central Scotland Green Network Community Fund  I picked a green area with other side of the Clyde, without quite realising how far it was to get to a bridge to cross….

This didn’t matter as the the morning’s rain cleared and the sun came out, the scenery was quite special.

although parts of the area had been mapped in advance, there were lots of details to add:

as well as the obligatory danger signs:

and closed roads, which Dair - seen running out had already covered.

In all we covered 11km of mostly footpaths, I was glad of the lack of tree cover at the moment which meant that I could vastly improve area’s such as this windy downhill:

and some more urban mapping:

By the time we got back, we had missed lunch but it was good to see everyone busy processing the afternoon’s work:

In all it was a great success, and a huge thanks go to Tim for doing the hard work of organising the day, sponsorship, venue and publicising the event. There is a mapping workshop in Glasgow on the 17 March and our next social meetup is on the 20th March in Edinburgh.

Have a look at the finished map..