Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Please see https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Key:level

SteveA

___
Talk-ca mailing list
Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2018-02-02 06:06 PM, john whelan wrote:
> 
> It would be useful if someone could produce a sample in R that takes a
> .osm file and counts the buildings. 

R might be rather overkill:

grep "k='building'" file.osm | wc -l

One might have to do some clever trickery around buildings that are
relations (those with courtyards), though.

> A task from that would be to extend
> it to count the number of two storey (story) buildings.

I wonder if OSM uses the UK concept of storey, where a two storey
building has three levels (ground floor, first floor, second floor)? Was
a huge confusion for me when I first moved to Canada: first floor means
one level up.

 Stewart

___
Talk-ca mailing list
Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[john whelan]

ttps://wiki.openstreetmap.
> org/wiki/Life_Long_Learning_Mapping_Project
>
> We have 13 pan-Canadian jurisdictions, so maybe start with some of those
> jurisdictions where OSM capacity already exists and start a wiki flight
> plan.
>
>
>
> Alessandro pointed us to the Philly Fresh Food Mapper
> https://www.geovista.psu.edu/phillyfood/
>
> This is a good example of harnessing “crowdsourcing” and “citizen science”
> to solve a local problem. Sterling Quinn already shared with us the
> following in an email: “We also held a map-a-thon at a public library in
> North Philly where we got people from the food, tech, and education
> communities together. That was probably the most interesting thing to come
> out of the project. I also had a few discussions with people working with
> the city to make a similar database, but they had some of the usual
> concerns about using OSM as their main repository (e.g., liability,
> perceived lack of control).”
>
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> *From: *OSM Volunteer stevea <stevea...@softworkers.com>
> *Sent: *Friday, February 2, 2018 4:58 PM
> *To: *Jonathan Brown <jonab...@gmail.com>; talk-ca
> <talk-ca@openstreetmap.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education
>
>
>
> On Jan 30, 2018, at 7:49 AM, Jonathan Brown <jonab...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don’t mind reviewing the OSM education wiki for lessons learned and
> “promising practices” and seeing how it might inform the design of a
> mapathon event aligned to the K-12 curricula and postsecondary capstone
> project model. It will be messy, but that’s the nature of the beast. To use
> the jargon, start small, fail fast and apply what you learn to the next
> event.
>
>
>
> With all due respect to you, Johnathan, I don't know where you got that
> jargon, but it does not apply to OSM:  our worldwide mapping project is not
> a "dumping ground" to "fail fast" where poor quality data are entered and
> then corrected as a nationwide project finds its footing, lurching forward
> to apply newly discovered corrections to its past mistakes.  No, it must
> plan first.  Pilots file flight plans, and they stay in contact with
> control towers with status and progress reports.  A nationwide OSM project
> is no different if all passengers are expected to land safely, especially
> on a long flight!
>
>
>
> Sure, mistakes happen and we learn from them, course-correcting along the
> way, that's simply human nature.  But as I have been exhorting for months,
> what will MAKE BC2020 a successful OSM project is this:  good planning NOW
> and project management along the way.  BOTH must be front-loaded into the
> nationwide OSM project that BC2020 is, not bolted on later as an
> afterthought.
>
>
>
> > Jamie Boyd and Moses Iziomon at the Treasury Board’s Open Government
> branch may have some funding to support Alessandro’s group in helping to
> engage the OSM “crowdmappers” and citizen science practitioners. This could
> align to their 2 year open government plan http://open.canada.ca/en/
> 4plan/creating-canadas-4th-plan-open-government-2018-20. They are looking
> for workshop ideas for early May.
>
>
>
> If TB has funding, ask them to seek and pay for expertise in
> nationwide-scope OSM project management experience:  good planning,
> harmonizing vision/goals of BC2020 with the culture of OSM to be "OSM
> first" (it is), writing wiki, assuring that mapathons, meetups, university
> and K-12 events have structure, direction and a solid plan FIRST before
> entering vast building data.  Too many large-scale OSM projects fail due to
> poor planning, a lack of standardization as to what and how goals are to be
> achieved and hence suffer poor results.  The method by which this gets
> solved is with up-front planning, that means NOW or very soon.
> Crowdsourcing is not a magic bullet that yields great results for free or
> without planning.  There are costs involved:  thought, discussion,
> consensus, documentation and those take time and effort.
>
>
>
> BC2020 has had a recent "reality check" that is it more than BC2020i (the
> initiative), it is now a full-fledged BC2020 WikiProject (without the i, as
> an OSM project).  That means wikis, import plans, documenting the process
> that each city/event might and should take, etc. get adhered to and
> followed.  To keep this communication in the dark and out of a wider OSM
> view essentially dooms this project to failure.  Please:  plan now for
> superior data later.  It has gotten better in the last week or two, but the
> "messy nature of the beast" approach noted above is not

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

I repeat myself:  less buzzword-compliance, please.  More embracing of 
tried-and-true OSM tenets and culture, like front-loaded planning, ongoing, 
wide-area project management on something with nationwide scope as this, wiki 
writing/updating both intent and ongoing status, making available short video 
clip "flight plans" (OSM curriculum specific to entering building data) to 
explain process to various audiences in Canada  You have Ottawa as a "good 
acorn," clone what was learned there into the wiki (better than now) and target 
other cities and audiences to harmonize with slow-yet-steady OSM-style growth.  
That is how this turns into "mighty oaks."

I met Clifford in Seattle two summers ago, he presented some excellent OSM 
community-building strategies at SOTM-US, I had a contract with Telenav for a 
while, I know maps.me, and I watched Philly Fresh Food turn into rather 
impressive results, as it was well-planned and was ready to receive beneficial 
and unexpected synergies.  (That didn't happen because somebody said "synergy," 
by the way).  I've been around the OSM block and I'm obviously passionate about 
it yielding awesome results.  But only when some awesome happens up-front.  
Otherwise (and I've both seen it and cleaned it up), it gets messy, and fast.

Yes, gathering "how" intelligence from existing projects is smart.  Yes, 
learning that concerns like liability and a PERCEIVED "lack of control" in an 
open, public, crowdsourced database like OSM can pose problems, but only if you 
push through these perceptions with an understanding of previous pitfalls, and 
the commensurate good planning and active management which can and do avoid 
these.  With both, you can address not only these (perceived) issues, "you" 
(and who is that?) can "drive" the project virtually anyplace desired, provided 
it sticks to OSM's good tenets and keeps the finish line in sight while hewing 
to good bounds to get there.  This project does better at that now, I think it 
will continue to do so.  It seriously needs a flight crew, steering committee, 
whatever you wish to call it.  While those specific individual human beings 
might be in a government bureaucracy (or, they might not), they MUST (I repeat, 
MUST) be steeped in culture and methods of OSM.  Knowledge of ArcGIS or other 
GIS/cartography experience is fine, knowledge of other sorts of crowdsourcing 
can help, yet the way that things are well-built and work in OSM is unique to 
OSM.  Embrace that, and fly.  Don't, or put too much emphasis on "the way we've 
always done things here" and you create more difficulties.

It is getting better.  (As my tone hews closer to honey than vinegar, it will 
get better).  Again, I've said it and said it and said it.  So please:  do it.  
The good intentions to do so are clearly there, that is a terrific place to be 
to continue onto the next steps.

SteveA
___
Talk-ca mailing list
Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[Jonathan Brown]

Fair enough. It’s jargon from the “innovation, creativity and entreprenship” 
focus in many education sectors these days. Eduspeak, agreed. What I meant to 
say is that the workflow and the technology to support the teaching and 
learning environment for future “citizen scientists” needs to be piloted before 
we can expect students contribute to a well-planned flight plan. I can’t see 
teachers investing instructional time to enable the required training to happen 
unless it is connected to a cross-curricular activity as the Manitoba folks 
point out. 

In Ontario, school boards are licensed to use ArcGIS. This is what many 
municipal and regional GIS staff us. For the non-GIS experts it is not 
user-friendly. I saw this first hand with an outdoor education teacher I was 
observing as he tried to get his GPS data into the program. I also heard from a 
group of teachers I spoke to a professional development session in Toronto 
today that they would love to use GIS tools to teach problem-solving in their 
courses, but not if the technology is too complicated or unreliable to use in 
their classes. I know you’ll have an opinion about that, so fire away. I’m 
trying to figure out what Keith pointed out with his experience in Manitoba.  

So, I concur with the need for OSM project management. My guess is that might 
be the role of the Ministry of Infrastructure under the current SMART cities 
challenge they issued:  
http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/cities-villes-eng.html
Also, the Canadian Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development 
announced $50 million funding to train 1 million K-12 teachers and students on 
how to use digital technology in the classroom. The CanCode federal program 
aims “to equip youth, including traditionally underrepresented groups, with the 
skills and study incentives they need to be prepared for the jobs of today and 
the future.” The funding, however, is going to NGOs because our K-12 education 
sector in Canada is a provincial responsibility. Canada does not have a 
Ministry of Education or a federal department of education like in the US. 

That said, I think from my conversations with this community and phone calls 
with folks at Telenav and within the OSM community (a phone call with Clifford 
was most helpful for me). Telenav’s presentation at SOTM 2017 was also helpful. 
Telenav talked Maproulette.org, a gamified way to parse out small tasks for 
mappers to fix, and Improveosm.org, a big data resource where Telenav has 
collected billions of GPS traces that point our errors in OSM. A heatmap 
highlights the zones of errors that includes information and action items. 
Someone at the conference commented that, “historically OpenStreetMap was 
rather clunky and best for those with more patience than I. Thankfully useful 
apps like MAPS.ME & OSM.And have emerged. These apps use OpenStreetMap as a 
base map, but present it in an aesthetically appealing and more efficient way. 
They also allow you to download regions for offline use, an invaluable feature 
when you’re travelling.”  ,

As an example of a K-12 use case flight plan there is the Lifelong Learning 
Mapping Project, a European Comenius-funded project involving 5 different 
countries in 5 different languages. What was the quality of the data collected 
by those students? Who were the experienced flight crew that provided the 
schools with support? Do they have a flight plan that could be adapted to the 
BC2020 project? 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Life_Long_Learning_Mapping_Project
We have 13 pan-Canadian jurisdictions, so maybe start with some of those 
jurisdictions where OSM capacity already exists and start a wiki flight plan.  

Alessandro pointed us to the Philly Fresh Food Mapper 
https://www.geovista.psu.edu/phillyfood/
This is a good example of harnessing “crowdsourcing” and “citizen science” to 
solve a local problem. Sterling Quinn already shared with us the following in 
an email: “We also held a map-a-thon at a public library in North Philly where 
we got people from the food, tech, and education communities together. That was 
probably the most interesting thing to come out of the project. I also had a 
few discussions with people working with the city to make a similar database, 
but they had some of the usual concerns about using OSM as their main 
repository (e.g., liability, perceived lack of control).”

Jonathan 

From: OSM Volunteer stevea
Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 4:58 PM
To: Jonathan Brown; talk-ca
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

On Jan 30, 2018, at 7:49 AM, Jonathan Brown <jonab...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don’t mind reviewing the OSM education wiki for lessons learned and 
> “promising practices” and seeing how it might inform the design of a mapathon 
> event aligned to the K-12 curricula and postsecondary capstone project model. 
> It will be messy, but that’s the nature of the beast. To use the jargon, 
&g

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[john whelan]

I think we need to identify the possible problem areas and those things
that would be useful to the students.  Not all students will have the same
needs.

The first is we really want to avoid students tracing building outlines in
iD.  Experience has shown they aren't very good at it.  JOSM and the
building_tool plugin works well but needs some preplanning.  If NRC LiDar
building outlines come off that gets round the problem.

First to get an understanding of GIS basics we need to reduce the idea of
an electronic map to two things.  Nodes and ways and we add tags to these.
You can call them different things but basically the nodes have a Longitude
and Latitude tag and the ways connect them.  Tag the way as a highway and
you have a road.  Tag it as a waterway and you have a river.  Four nodes
with four ways connecting them gives you the outline of a building.  Closed
ways are a special case and take tags such as building=yes.

Because my background is technical I would suggest a mention of XML format
of fire type .osm.  It evolved from SGML and is today used in many ways
including the internal file format for Microsoft Word.

An exercise might be to extract a building from OSM in JOSM save the file
and look at it in something such as notepad++


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  














  


You can see from the idents around way and /way the tags for the building
are grouped together.  The important thing about .xml are the tags.  In a
conventional database if a tag is unrecognised strange things can happen.
With XML only data from within recognised tags are used which means new
tags can be added without affecting the normal processing.  It is often
used as a file transfer format from one system to another.

On a less technical level often people have difficulty in grasping that the
map shown on www.openstreetmap.org is not the real live map.  It would be
useful to mention the concept of rendering and to show the map rendered in
different ways.  OSMand comes to mind.  Look at map layers on
openstreetmap.org.

For the building project itself it would be useful to look at how we
extract the data from the map.  With paper map you'd need to count the
buildings but with an electronic map a program can count them for you.

It would be useful if someone could produce a sample in R that takes a .osm
file and counts the buildings.  A task from that would be to extend it to
count the number of two storey (story) buildings.  Legally in Canada by act
of parliament "storey" is used rather than the American "story".  Discuss
perhaps?

Local knowledge is always preferred in OSM.  So I would suggest for the
mapathon ensure the building outlines are in place then ask the students to
enrich the map by adding tags.  Run R before and after to show the
differences and the impact.

Dig into https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Education and see if there is
anything useful.

Be aware there are many different points of view within OpenStreetMap, as
an example map features and taginfo often differ.  Map features is
someone's idea of this is how to tag taginfo is this are the tags that have
been used.  Could students explain why this is so?

OpenStreetMap isn't just about geography and producing a printed map.
Maperitive is an excellent tool for creating your own map either to the
screen or printed by the way and it can be customised.  Making a simple
change is easy but its almost a programming language in its own right.

The suggestions may or may not be relevant but they cover a fairly wide
range of subjects.

Have fun

Cheerio John








On 30 January 2018 at 10:49, Jonathan Brown  wrote:

> I don’t mind reviewing the OSM education wiki for lessons learned and
> “promising practices” and seeing how it might inform the design of a
> mapathon event aligned to the K-12 curricula and postsecondary capstone
> project model. It will be messy, but that’s the nature of the beast. To use
> the jargon, start small, fail fast and apply what you learn to the next
> event.
>
>
>
> Durham Region is planning on hosting a mapathon event as early as this
> March. I’m working with the GIS Supervisor who also teaches GIS to 2nd
> year environmental science students at Durham College. I also have a
> teacher who is very good at working with students who normally would not
> participate in these kinds of events, but who have street knowledge.
>
>
>
> Jamie Boyd and Moses Iziomon at the Treasury Board’s Open Government
> branch may have some funding to support Alessandro’s group in helping to
> engage the OSM “crowdmappers” and citizen science practitioners. This could
> align to their 2 year open government plan http://open.canada.ca/en/
> 4plan/creating-canadas-4th-plan-open-government-2018-20. They are looking
> for workshop ideas for early May.
>
>
>
> Does anyone know of OSM expertise that we could tap into for a mapathon
> event in the Durham Region? Thanks.
>
>
>
>

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

On Jan 30, 2018, at 7:49 AM, Jonathan Brown  wrote:
> I don’t mind reviewing the OSM education wiki for lessons learned and 
> “promising practices” and seeing how it might inform the design of a mapathon 
> event aligned to the K-12 curricula and postsecondary capstone project model. 
> It will be messy, but that’s the nature of the beast. To use the jargon, 
> start small, fail fast and apply what you learn to the next event.

With all due respect to you, Johnathan, I don't know where you got that jargon, 
but it does not apply to OSM:  our worldwide mapping project is not a "dumping 
ground" to "fail fast" where poor quality data are entered and then corrected 
as a nationwide project finds its footing, lurching forward to apply newly 
discovered corrections to its past mistakes.  No, it must plan first.  Pilots 
file flight plans, and they stay in contact with control towers with status and 
progress reports.  A nationwide OSM project is no different if all passengers 
are expected to land safely, especially on a long flight!

Sure, mistakes happen and we learn from them, course-correcting along the way, 
that's simply human nature.  But as I have been exhorting for months, what will 
MAKE BC2020 a successful OSM project is this:  good planning NOW and project 
management along the way.  BOTH must be front-loaded into the nationwide OSM 
project that BC2020 is, not bolted on later as an afterthought.

> Jamie Boyd and Moses Iziomon at the Treasury Board’s Open Government branch 
> may have some funding to support Alessandro’s group in helping to engage the 
> OSM “crowdmappers” and citizen science practitioners. This could align to 
> their 2 year open government plan 
> http://open.canada.ca/en/4plan/creating-canadas-4th-plan-open-government-2018-20.
>  They are looking for workshop ideas for early May.

If TB has funding, ask them to seek and pay for expertise in nationwide-scope 
OSM project management experience:  good planning, harmonizing vision/goals of 
BC2020 with the culture of OSM to be "OSM first" (it is), writing wiki, 
assuring that mapathons, meetups, university and K-12 events have structure, 
direction and a solid plan FIRST before entering vast building data.  Too many 
large-scale OSM projects fail due to poor planning, a lack of standardization 
as to what and how goals are to be achieved and hence suffer poor results.  The 
method by which this gets solved is with up-front planning, that means NOW or 
very soon.  Crowdsourcing is not a magic bullet that yields great results for 
free or without planning.  There are costs involved:  thought, discussion, 
consensus, documentation and those take time and effort.

BC2020 has had a recent "reality check" that is it more than BC2020i (the 
initiative), it is now a full-fledged BC2020 WikiProject (without the i, as an 
OSM project).  That means wikis, import plans, documenting the process that 
each city/event might and should take, etc. get adhered to and followed.  To 
keep this communication in the dark and out of a wider OSM view essentially 
dooms this project to failure.  Please:  plan now for superior data later.  It 
has gotten better in the last week or two, but the "messy nature of the beast" 
approach noted above is not acceptable to the greater OSM community.  Both wiki 
and talk-ca are important venues for this dialog, private email exchanges can 
supplement it, but a nationwide project deserves a nationwide discussion that 
is front-loaded and transparent, not (exclusively) "fail fast."  In fact, OSM 
insists upon this.

Please install pilots in your large, jet aircraft.  If it is to fly and land at 
its destination (years into the future), it not only deserves, it simply must 
have an experienced flight crew.

With respect to you, all OSM volunteers in Canada, and indeed the OSM community 
at large,
SteveA
___
Talk-ca mailing list
Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

Re: [Talk-ca] BC2020i OSM Distributed Model and Education

[Jonathan Brown]

I don’t mind reviewing the OSM education wiki for lessons learned and 
“promising practices” and seeing how it might inform the design of a mapathon 
event aligned to the K-12 curricula and postsecondary capstone project model. 
It will be messy, but that’s the nature of the beast. To use the jargon, start 
small, fail fast and apply what you learn to the next event. 

Durham Region is planning on hosting a mapathon event as early as this March. 
I’m working with the GIS Supervisor who also teaches GIS to 2nd year 
environmental science students at Durham College. I also have a teacher who is 
very good at working with students who normally would not participate in these 
kinds of events, but who have street knowledge. 

Jamie Boyd and Moses Iziomon at the Treasury Board’s Open Government branch may 
have some funding to support Alessandro’s group in helping to engage the OSM 
“crowdmappers” and citizen science practitioners. This could align to their 2 
year open government plan 
http://open.canada.ca/en/4plan/creating-canadas-4th-plan-open-government-2018-20.
 They are looking for workshop ideas for early May. 

Does anyone know of OSM expertise that we could tap into for a mapathon event 
in the Durham Region? Thanks. 


Jonathan 

From: talk-ca-requ...@openstreetmap.org
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 11:06 PM
To: talk-ca@openstreetmap.org
Subject: Talk-ca Digest, Vol 119, Issue 32

Send Talk-ca mailing list submissions to
talk-ca@openstreetmap.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
talk-ca-requ...@openstreetmap.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
talk-ca-ow...@openstreetmap.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Talk-ca digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Re: using image recognition to create building foot   prints.
  (Matthew Darwin)
   2. Re: using image recognition to create building foot   prints.
  (john whelan)
   3. Re: using image recognition to create building foot   prints.
  (Matthew Darwin)
   4. Re: using image recognition to create building foot   prints.
  (Matthew Darwin)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:11:04 -0500
From: Matthew Darwin 
To: Talk-CA OpenStreetMap 
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] using image recognition to create building foot
prints.
Message-ID: <50feb14c-0770-4e78-3363-daec8951a...@mdarwin.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

+1

Unless someone has lots of $$$ to throw at OSM work (which could then 
fund full time coordinators, trainers, lawyers, etc), the only way I 
see to coordinate is to approach it like how OSM in Canada was build 
up to now... distributed model with local groups doing what makes 
sense for their area.   There is, of course, no way to map all 
buildings in Canada by 2020 this way.  Still it is good to set 
aspirational goals...

On 2018-01-29 08:57 PM, Pierre Béland wrote:
>
> Il faut une part de réalisme. Pour bien coordonner, il ne suffit pas 
> de créer une tâche et d'inviter à participer. Nous ne sommes pas une 
> communauté structurée au niveau national.  Je comprends que diverses 
> universités s'intéressent au projet OSM et aimeraient initier leurs 
> étudiants à ce projet. La meilleure solution je pense c'est de se 
> mettre en contact avec la communauté OSM locale et s'assurer de bien 
> encadrer la formation et les premiers jours de participation à OSM.
>
> Les contributeurs sont davantage actifs dans leurs communautés 
> locales ou selon leur divers intérêts liés à leur travail ou loisir. 
> Personne n'est prêt à s'engager à coordonner un tel projet au niveau 
> national.

-- next part --
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: 


--

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:17:51 -0500
From: john whelan 
To: Matthew Darwin 
Cc: Talk-CA OpenStreetMap 
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] using image recognition to create building foot
prints.
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

 and I think I agree with Pierre the best approach would be to do it a step
at a time using experienced local resources.

We do need to engage with high schools and the Universities but it is
difficult with the resources available.  There is some material available
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Education but it would need reviewing
to see if it is relevant to what is required.

We were exceptionally fortunate in Ottawa with the pilot and the