Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: Open survey on participation biases in OSM

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

Sorry, this was drawn to my attention.
I can vouch that Zoe Gardner is a researcher at Nottingham University 
Geospatial Institute. Her institutional webpage is here: Zoe Gardner - The 
University of Nottingham
  
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Zoe Gardner - The University of Nottingham
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Zoe took the time to come along to the Nottingham OSM July meeting, and I've 
bumped into her at a University facility on the Jubilee Campus site when I had 
a further discussion of her research (and probably caused her coffee to get a 
bit cool, in which case my apologies). I also believe, and I think it is stated 
in some of her emails, that she is collaborating with Dr Peter Mooney of 
Maynooth University in Ireland. He was a co-editor on a recent scholarly 
multi-author book on OSM, and has presented work at various SotM conferences.
I have no affiliation with Nottingham University nor with her research. I 
therefore cannot say why her institutional email address has not been used, 
although I would expect that for this type of activity a distinct email address 
is probably useful to avoid confusion with regular day-job communications.
I have not checked, but normally research of this kind, storing personal data, 
will need some approval via an ethics committee. Furthermore institutions in 
Britain and Europe need to adhere to current (and future) European data 
protection legislation.
Requiring researchers to seek approval for their research via OSMF, or local 
chapters (affiliated or otherwise), would, in my view, raise a rather high bar 
for academics, and one which may be perceived to be contra OSM's openness. On 
the other hand the it may be appropriate for OSMF to consider guidelines w.r.t. 
collection of personal data of mappers for academic research, particularly as 
the new European directive comes into force next year.
HTH,
Jerry CloughSK53



  From: Charlotte Wolter 
 To: Talk-US@openstreetmap.org 
 Sent: Monday, 4 September 2017, 19:25
 Subject: [Talk-us] Fwd: Open survey on participation biases in OSM
   
Follks,

  It wouldbe nice if we could get some confirmation that this is a real 
researchprojects being done by an actual researcher at Nottingham. If it 
islegit, why is the return email address from Gmail rather than theuniversity?
  Is theresome mechanism that we can set up to confirm that the 
research is forreal, such as running it through the US board first? I don't 
mindcontributing to a survey. I just want to be sure it is for real.

Charlotte




From: Zoe Gardner
To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org ...snip... talk...@openstreetmap.org
Subject: [Talk-us] Open survey on participation biases in OSM

 
 
Dear OSM talk subscriber
 
I am a Research Fellow in the Nottingham Geospatial Institute at theUniversity 
of Nottingham in the UK, interested in participation biases ingeospatial 
crowd-sourced projects such as OSM and other VolunteeredGeographical 
Information (VGI) projects. My current research project isconcerned with the 
way in which participation biases in OSM maypotentially affect the usability of 
the data that is collected andsubsequently what is available to location-based 
service providers thatuse OSM as their primary geospatial database.
The project is motivated by recent research that has found a strong malebias in 
OSM participation. This has led to assertions that variousgeospatial knowledge 
could be under represented or poorly recorded on themap. However, the actual 
consequences of this bias remain little exploredor reported. By collecting 
information about contributors to OSM, whichcan then be analyzed along with 
their editing patterns, the impacts ofthis bias might begin to be measured and 
therefore better understood. Ihave therefore published an online survey 
designed to collect informationdirectly from OSM editors and I would like to 
invite as many of you aspossible to participate. The survey is anonymous and 
takes a couple ofminutes to complete.
If you are an OSM contributor and are interested in or would like toparticipate 
in the study, please click on the link below, which will takeyou to the Bristol 
Online Survey website where you will find moreinformation and an opportunity to 
participate in the survey. As a smallincentive, at the close of the survey in a 
few weeks' time, 60respondents will be drawn at random to receive a £15 Amazon 
voucher.
To participate in the survey, click on the link below:
https://nottingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/osm-user-profiles
Please do think about participating. It is hoped that knowledge about theway 
participation biases impact on crowd-sourced maps will enable newstrategies to 
be developed to address any resulting voids in thegeospatial information 
provided by amateur mappers. In turn this couldstrengthen the role played by 
platforms such as OSM in urban planning andsustainability, and could raise the 
profile of the important 

Re: [Talk-us] Pittsburgh neighborhood boundaries mapped with admin level 9?

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

Further to this thread, this fascinating article came up in my twitter 
timeline: The Legacies of Redlining in Pittsburgh
  
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The Legacies of Redlining in Pittsburgh
 Devin Rutan reveals how Pittsburgh's current geography is still defined by 
historic housing discrimination. ...  |   |

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  From: Peter Dobratz 
 To: Albert Pundt  
Cc: "talk-us@openstreetmap.org" 
 Sent: Thursday, 27 July 2017, 18:29
 Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Pittsburgh neighborhood boundaries mapped with admin 
level 9?
   
(Appologies as I was in the middle of writing my reply when inadvertantly 
hitting send.  Here's the whole message)
Boundaries below admin_level=8 are still being discussed.  There was some 
discussion on this list as well as the OSM wiki
https://wiki.openstreetmap. org/wiki/Talk:United_States_ 
admin_level#Nine_state_ improvement

Having lived in Pittsburgh, I remember that the neighborhood boundaries are 
well defined and many of the street signs have the neighborhood names printed 
across the top of them (epecially on more major roads with bigger signs).
If you were to divide up Pittsburgh into smaller administrative units, how 
would you do it?
Pittsburgh resides within Allegheny County.  Allegheny County is divided into 
Wards and districts, some of which could be used to divide up 
Pittsburgh:http://apps.alleghenycounty.us/website/MuniPgh.asp

Pittsburgh city council is made up of 9 people who each represent a council 
district of the city.  It looks like each council district covers a group of 
neighborhoods (that might lend itself to making the council districts 
admin_level=9 and the neighborhoods admin_level=10).  For example, council 
district 5 contains the neighborhoods, Hazelwood, Glen Hazel, Greenfield, Hays, 
Lincoln Place, New Homestead, and Regeant 
Squarehttp://pittsburghpa.gov/district5/about

Pittsburgh is also divided up into 32 wards, each being divided further into a 
variable number of districts each.  These wards and districts are separate from 
the Allegheny County wards and districts.  I'm not sure how the cities wards 
relate to the neighborhood boundaries.
Peter


On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Peter Dobratz  wrote:

Boundaries below admin_level=8 are still being discussed.  There was some 
discussion on this list as well as the OSM wiki
https://wiki.openstreetmap. org/wiki/Talk:United_States_ 
admin_level#Nine_state_ improvement

Having lived in Pittsburgh, I remember that the neighborhood boundaries are 
well defined and many of the street signs have the neighborhood names printed 
across the top of them (epecially on more major roads with bigger signs).
If you were to divide up Pittsburgh into smaller administrative units, how 
would you do it?
Pittsburgh reside within the Allegheny County


On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 7:36 PM, Albert Pundt  wrote:

I noticed that the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are mapped as administrative 
boundaries with admin_level=9. Is this proper? The wiki page for U.S. admin 
levels doesn't list any use for admin level 9 in Pennsylvania, though this 
seems appropriate if Pittsburgh neighborhoods are true administrative 
divisions. It just needs to be documented, or perhaps used elsewhere in the 
state, like with the fairly distinct neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
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[Talk-us] Hillsborough, NC

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

 Someone on twitter has been asking if there is anyone who can make 
Hillsborough, NC look as good on OSM as Chapel Hill: Kevin Otte on Twitter
  
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Kevin Otte on Twitter
 “Do we have any map/GIS geeks at @HillsboroughGov? I'd love to have our town 
look as good on @openstreetmap ...  |   |

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Any one care to get in touch (the brit in me, cant bring myself to write "reach 
out" here, it always feels too portentous). 
Jerry___
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Re: [Talk-us] Municipal Tree Survey

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

  From: Frederik Ramm 
 To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org 
 Sent: Monday, 19 September 2016, 19:09
 Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Municipal Tree Survey
   
Hi,

On 09/19/2016 05:13 PM, Adam Old wrote:
> For the most part we would like to send people out using their mobile
> devices and an app like Go
> Map!! https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/go-map!!/id592990211?mt=8
>  or a
> paper survey form that we could then update OSM with. Hopefully this
> would introduce a good number of new people to OSM as mappers and/or
> users. 

Sounds like a win-win situation.


Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

I'd agree with Frederik.
Only this morning I was looking at a site for volunteer tree wardens in Surrey, 
England; and at the weekend a friend in our party was visiting what are known 
as veteran trees in Kent.
  
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STWN
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We already have a fairly extensive set of tags for mapping trees and their 
attributes. In a few places well-attributed tree data has been imported to OSM: 
take a look at Vienna of the London Borough of Southwark as examples for a 
reasonably extended set of tags.
Basically I would look for a minimum of circumference (in UK this is usually 
Breast-height girth BHG or roughly circumference at 1.5 m above ground level), 
species (& if appropriate cultivar). Not strictly necessary but very useful are 
genus (especially if precise species is not known, or for things like flowering 
cherries), leaf_type & leaf_cycle (both make it easier for data consumers & 
editors). Date of planting is very useful but often not readily available.
Now to other things:
   
   - Height. Harder to survey if not specifically equipped for the purpose. 
Obviously useful.
   - Spread. Again a bit harder to survey, although finding the drip line on 
wet days makes it easier. This is less often added to tree data in OSM, but 
there was an interesting HOT project using tree spread to estimate fire risk. I 
have the details somewhere.
   - Condition. I think as long as volunteers are working from a protocol to 
assess tree condition there is no trouble in adding it. If you do have a given 
scale then it may be worth adding the information to the wiki, and then others 
can use it. It may also be useful to use a condition:description tag to add 
additional information (e.g., crown thinning, leaf spot, fungal growth etc).
   - Survey Date (actually should be tagged last_survey_date). Important for 
assessing things like height & condition, but also circumference. The 
professional arboriculturalists woring for my local council seem to get round 
the tree estate every 3 years: adding or updating tags at his frequency on OSM 
is unlikely to cause any issues.
   - Proposed Work. This is the only item raised which does not fit into OSM 
typical tagging approach, but I can see no harm in it.

Lastly & most important from a mapping/tagging perspective:

By all means use OSM but create & maintain your own unique identifiers for the 
trees. OSM identifiers are not guaranteed to be stable, and the nodes may 
accidentally be re-purposed. Current best practice is for trees to be labelled 
with a tag giving the identifier for the tree register ( (See this site for 
examples). Even if a register is only kept in a spreadsheet (which I wouldn't 
recommend as I've accidentally created duplicates when doing it myself) the 
identifiers can be added to OSM as ref tags. 

For actual mapping of trees either use an enhanced version of an existing OSM 
tool (e.g., Vespucci can read xml files designed for josm), or combine 
something more dedicated to capturing tree data with more accurate GPS readings 
(I use ObsMapp & add Garmin waypoint info when recording species detail). To 
date I've found using a mobile phone app GPS a little unreliable when mapping 
trees which are close together, the individual trees are often not positioned 
correctly in relation to adjacent trees. If you have good quality aerial 
imagery (or even better Lidar) then use this as the guide. A tape measure or 
digital measurer, and compass are still useful tools for getting correct 
relationships within a grove of trees.
Lastly, I'd like to point out that this data is useful for many purposes. As an 
enthusiastic amateur entomologist I often want to search out rarer trees to see 
if I can find particular insects. I've written about the possibilities for 
using city tree registers for education here: From Mapping Trees to Tree 
Trails: some thoughts
Best wishes with the project.
Jerry
Coda: I was vaguely aware of OpenTreeMap but they seem to be anything but open 
with a monthly charge of 80 bucks.
  
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>From Mapping Trees to Tree Trails: some thoughts
 The other day I engaged in a twitter conversation with Oliver Pescott, a 
biologist at the Centre of Environment ...  |   |

  

[Talk-us] Survey Township Sections

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

A quick question: Are there any guidelines for tagging of public land survey 
township sections?  I found a clear description of mapping civil townships for 
Ohio on the wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ohio/Boundaries/Townships, 
but have failed to find anything on survey townships and their sections. Jerry___
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[Talk-us] Peculiar values for natural key in California

[Jerry Clough - OSM]

 I have just been looking through the long tail of natural values and 
natural=K2156 stuck out like a sore thumb. These seem all to be nodes imported 
around 2009 roughly around Salinas : http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/9hM.
I'd appreciate if someone more local could take a look at these and sort them 
out.
Jerry Clough___
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