New Year – Different posts.
I love Listservs – I’ve resigned from all the OSM listservs though. It takes the stress level way down. Of course I still edit. Chattanooga from an OSM standpoint is pretty decent. Three things I usually tackle are buildings, parking lots, and Fire Hydrants. Why parking lots? If you ever wondered how much space we devote to parking cars….try outlining them. I want to fully map parking spots this year with number of spaces, handicap access, etc.
Two things are problematic in my OSM mapping around here:
- I don’t have a drone – hence I don’t have updated imagery. I have several tricks which gives me nearly current imagery. That and some field work and it’s mostly all good.
- Now vs 10 years ago has brought more editors. I’m always curious who – is it local or someone armchair mapping. I really don’t care as long as the map is updated correctly.
My mapping isn’t continuous and considering how much free time I had in 2020, I decided not to map and instead go canoeing. When I finally did jump back in someone had been adding a lot of service roads and parking isles. I check and it’s Amazon Logistics.
The screenshot below shows nothing more than lines – BUT you will notice some small gate-like symbology. Apparently the drivers are relaying info back to the editors. If you look at the page for the editors and reviewers there is a LOT of them also. I welcome my new Amazon Overlords. I’m the guy putting in the parking lots.
Anyway – it did strike me that you have yet another giant corporation harvesting out of OSM. I guess that speaks to the overall quality of what they are getting. I do wonder how much the map changes from these editors. It’s a complicated mapping life out here at the moment. You may have an entire delivery infrastructure relying on this data. That I am contributing to…..
With that I decided to join OSM US for the low low price of whatever it was. That breaks several years long standing of “Join nothing” but it is a New Year.
