OpenStreetMap Mapathon

[David Emory]

I received the following email about a "mapathon" this weekend for the OpenStreetMap project and wanted to pass it along to the Bike Geeks list. Is anyone from the bike community aware of this and/or planning to participate? I haven't signed up but could conceivably take part on Saturday.

Also, I'm curious to see if people have any thoughts about OSM in general, and what role it could play in local bike mapping efforts. In particular, we could use some sort of central repository for all the bike-related geospatial data being produced by various projects around the region -- might OSM be the best mechanism for that? And if it isn't, what is?

If anyone wants to the see the current state of OSM in Atlanta, see http://bit.ly/33g4pC. As for bike facilities, it has some of the major offstreet trails (Silver Comet, Freedom Park) mapped, but doesn't appear to have much more than that (i.e. no bike lane information as far as I can tell).

Dave

--
David D. Emory
david...@gmail.com
(404) 433-4914

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: AYAN , DANIELLE M <DANIEL...@coa.gatech.edu>
Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:55 PM
Subject: Weekend Mapathon in 4 days .. bring family/friends
To:
Cc: th...@cloudmade.com

Atlanta: the Most Digitally Mapped City in the World!?!

 

Get your neighborhood planning unit together to map your area;

Get your students involved in learning to map features; supplement your classroom studies with real-world experience (heck - offer xtra credit);

Get your sorority/fraternity involved in social service;

Get your business involved in inventorying/mapping local amenities and features important for you and your clients;

Get involved in developing our digital world!

 

Register now:

http://community.cloudmade.com/event/custom/generic/show/226

 

 

For more information, please contact

Thea Clay

th...@cloudmade.com

(512) 775-6553

The media will be covering this event before and while it's happening. Listen to your local radio stations Friday morning, the New York Times and the AJC for more information!

[Jett Marks (Home)]

Dave,

 

I was wondering how Atlanta's map got so much better since I last took a look a few months ago.  This explains the sudden surge in detail and accuracy.

 

I'll be signing up so I can contribute my substantial database of cycling routes: (http://routes.cycling.jettmarks.com/ is a sample of commuting routes; http://routes.cycling.jettmarks.com/?tag=vahivelo shows some rec routes).  Just this week I had planned to enter Lyuba Zuyeva's survey of bike facilities into this database as well.  (The http://routes.cycling.jettmarks.com/ website is the viewing end of a "Visual Catalog" that I've written using Google Web Toolkit.)

 

I'm interested to hear if others are participating and in what way.

 

I've been looking at OSM.  I wrote the tool (described above) so I could easily capture information entered into bikely.com (or other websites), classify it (according to tags like 'commute' or 'facility'), and then export it (into a repository like OSM).  I'm just beginning to learn how to make use of OSM.

 

Thanks so much for forwarding this.  I was completely unaware of this.  I'll also check out some of the groups that are participating.

 

Jett