Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing To OpenStreetMap (theodi.org)

At the recently concluded State of the Map conference in Milan, teams from Microsoft, Apple and Facebook presented their projects, describing how they are working with communities. From a report: The Microsoft Open Maps team has recently released open data on building footprints in the US. Microsoft was among the first to release satellite imagery for use by OpenStreetMap and the images are now integrated into the default editor. It also has a community of mappers directly contributing to OpenStreetMap in Australia. Apple has an internal volunteer programme that has around 5,000 staff contributing to Missing Maps, they've released building data for France and Denmark, and are engaged with data improvement projects around the world. Facebook is exploring how artificial intelligence-assisted tracing can help to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap data in Thailand.

DigitalGlobe has made its satellite imagery available under a licence that will allow it to be used by the OpenStreetMap community to improve their mapping efforts. Telenav launched OpenStreetCam to help collect openly-licensed street imagery and has now released open data and code to explore how machine learning can enable the images to be used to improve OpenStreetMap with stop signs and turn directions.

Comments

Re: Hopefully OSM can get it correct?

[dead_user]

My neighborhood only has one entrance and exit. There USED to be a road that ran behind a few businesses and cut through to the mall. Hundreds of cars a day streamed through back of the otherwise quiet neighborhood to use the secret shortcut to the mall that only they knew about.

The City placed a gate on the road, blocking it off. 18 years ago.

It is effectively rusted shut at this point. I reported this to both Google Maps and Waze through the app numerous times. After several years, I and all the delivery guys in my neighborhood still have to ignore the directions on the GPS until we are on city streets again. It's irritating as fuck but so is repeatedly submitting an edit request that is completely ignored.

Re: Hopefully OSM can get it correct?

[tlhIngan]

You know you can submit a correction by yourself to google to fix this issue. If no one ever reports it, it can't be magically fixed.

And as someone who does map corrections from time to time, Google can be very erratic. I can submit a correction, get a nice email saying it's been accepted, and the map still reflects the un-corrected view.

Note that these emails didn't say they were considering the change, but that the change was made.

One change took me a number of tries until it finally updated (I tried for a year and a half to fix the error, getting the "your change is approved" email every time) and everyone else was happy the change finally occurs.

And yet, other times, I submit one change and it's updated instantly right then and there. Go figure.