I teach computer science at a university about half way between
Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne. I would love to have someone show us how to
get involved mapping precise data locally and submitting it to various
online data sets, or working on software that is helpful to OSM and
others. We have students who need senior projects, and also run the
occasional special topics class.
Hi Stefan,
The best solution for a project like this would be to get involved with a
local mapper. I checked the area around Taylor U, and can't find evidence
of any activity. There also doesn't seem to be a strong mapping community
in Indianapolis yet. But, lacking that, there are many things that can be
done to improve the map in your area.
First, you might have a project to map the University buildings, streets,
driveways, walkways, and parking lots. This is often the easiest because
students will be very familiar with large areas without even needing a
separate survey. That information can often be created directly from the
Yahoo satellite imagery in Potlatch or JOSM editor. Some places may
require them to take a GPS trace - they may already own Smartphones capable
of this http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Smartphones#PDAs , although
this is often not as good as a dedicated GPS device. For example, I use
MotionX GPS for the iPhone, and while it has a superb user interface, it
usually doesn't produce as good a trace as a dedicated data logger GPS (I
may not have figured out all the options yet, either).
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Smartphones#PDAs
Another project would be to verify the street names against the existing
street names, which were mass-imported from TIGER. Less urban areas are
frequently based on inaccurate data, and the streets could be aligned
better; current satellite imagery is often better than the original TIGER
data. Also survey streets of any recent subdivisions and add street names
to the map based on the GPS trace or satellite imagery.
Here are some more tips to get started, but don't hesitate to ask on the
beginner's list -
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_Guide
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