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88 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 56
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Title: HPR0056: Open Street Map
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0056/hpr0056.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:50:16
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---
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Up.
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Hi and welcome to Acro Public Radio. My name is Ken Fallon and today I'm doing an
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episode on a project that I think is really rather cool. I first come across this project
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last year at the Linux World Expo in the Netherlands and I commented on deviates to show
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about the project and it's called OpenStreepmap.org. Now the idea behind the project is to
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do for mapping what Wikipedia has done for the unsightly media and that's to generate
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an open database of free maps around the world. Now you might ask yourself why are the
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bothering when you've got APIs available for Google Maps and Yahoo and all the other people
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who are offering mapping? Well the simple answer is that data is copyrighted and if you
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look on Google Earth and the bottom right hand corner you can see who the particular
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map data is owned by. Okay so let's talk a little bit about the maps. The process involved
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in doing the maps is five step process. The first being collect the data, two is upload
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the data, then you create and edit the data, you add labels and add details to it and then
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step five is you render the maps. Now if you've got a device with a GPS unit in it you
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can help the project by collecting some data and uploading it to the website. It's very
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simple, you just go and create yourself an account and as you travel your GPS units will
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give you your position along the road which is essentially nothing more than a whole
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of points with a latitude, longitude, elevation and probably time. Now at the end of your journey
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you should be able to export out your data and upload it to the OpenStreepmap project and
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if that's all you want to do with project you're adding information for the mappers to
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create their mapping data. Okay let's move on to the next one. That's creating an editing
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OpenStreepmap data and the OpenStreepmap has three elements, an old, ways and closed ways
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and an old is a point in space at latitude and longitude. So think about it as donating
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postbox or a signpost or something like that. A way is a series of nodes ordered in one direction,
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a one way street for instance, or a bicycle path or something of that nature and a closed way
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is a loop of a way, something like a park, a lake or an island. So if you think of it as a bit
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like a vector drawing, an old is a point, a way is a line and a closed way is an area. I'm not
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actually going to go into too much detail here on how to edit them up because it's a little bit
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outside the scope of what I can do here in an audio podcast but there are two tools that are
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available to you. One is a Java application called port latch. She can use to join the dots
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essentially and the other is a Java application called Java OpenStreepmap editor and they're both
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available on the OpenStreepmap.org site and I advise you to read a little bit more
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about both of those before you go creating some maps and then the final process of this is to
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render the map. So if you want to get involved with the project, the easiest way to go about that
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is probably uploading DSM data. If you're interested into in vector drawing or use of packages
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like Inkscape or AutoCAD or something like that then the mapping and tagging features might
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be of interest to you. The project itself has met some inroads in getting map data and here in
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the Netherlands the map data has been donated. A lot of the map data has been donated at least.
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However, even though the map data has been fairly comprehensive in all the streets and towns
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there is a project going on to add the cycle paths for the Netherlands in and the cycling is
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very popular here so that would be actually quite useful. But if I just look around the neighborhood
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here myself I can see that in the time since the survey was done for the roads and streets around
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there has been several auditions and changes in the area that would necessitate
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somebody going in and modifying these maps and that's the main benefit of the open street map
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project that when the data is there should be very easy for people in the locality with local
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knowledge to go in and change things. For instance they've blocked off the streets to make it
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inaccessible by cars and it's now only accessible by bikes. They've put an audition round about
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that moved, they've rebuilt the swim pool and they've moved the recreation area and they've
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blocked off certain things and this is all just in within 500 meters of where I'm living at the
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moment. So there's definitely a lot of work to do even in areas where there is complete
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and airports there are complete mapping data. Just a few weeks ago I was went back home to Ireland
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and a lot of the areas in Ireland haven't been mapped at all so it really is an opportunity to go out
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and get your hometown and put it on the map so to say, forgive the pun. So actually that's quite
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interesting just to see people coming who probably work in towns and cities, drive down the motorways
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down the local roads and end up going up some boring somewhere for the weekend to visit the family
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to bring the GPS with them and then they upload their data. Now when that data gets uploaded it's
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essentially like a transparency that the mapping person would use and you can turn it on and turn
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it off in your mapping data and then the actual drawing of the roads is done on a different layer
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so that's kind of how that whole thing operates. A few little tips here if you're going to be getting
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involved in some mapping is the coordination, if you've got a camera that has a GPS in it,
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as you go along you can take photographs of streets, points of interest like street names,
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their type of road, if it's a bicycle path, if the road is a bicycle path, if it's one
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bicycle path on either side, if it's the bicycle path on the pavement, if it's paved road or whatever.
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And it's important to do this ourselves and not pick up information from copyrighted maps because
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that kind of defeats the whole purpose. And it's important for us to take that information in and
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not be tempted to use actual maps that we've purchased our data from other locations because very
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often that information is copyrighted and very often they will have easter eggs stored in the maps
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so that they can prove in the court that the map data was taken from their data set.
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And some very interesting things on the wiki there describing how fake roads and churches have
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been added to make their data set unique. If you are going to be going taking photographs as you
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go along and your camera does not have a GPS unit in it, a very simple tip is to take a photograph
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of your GPS unit showing clearly the data and time on it. And then later on the JOSM
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application, you can drag in the photo and correspond the time on your GPS unit and the time
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on your camera so that the offsets are correct so that all subsequent photos which have a time
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in the XBIF data are corresponded to a physical time on your GPS plot which corresponds to a
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latitude and a longitude. Anyway, I'm going to think you're going to wrap it up there. Thank you
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very much for listening to this for the episode and come across something that's interesting
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or that tickles your fancy so to speak, grab your microphone, record a little podcast about it and
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submit it. Thank you very much for your time and have a nice day.
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Thank you for listening to HACCA Public Radio. HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to
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