Data Gardeners Wanted

Taking care of your little corner of the map

Overview

• What do we mean?
• Why should we care?
• How do we even?

A Whatnow?

“Data Gardener”

Comes from a paper:

A Quantitative Approach to Identifying Emergent Editor Roles in Open Street Map

Edits existing mapping features, ensuring accuracy and completeness of OSM data in local regions.

• Geographically limited
• Topically unrestricted
• Repeated through time

Yes, but Me?

What OSM Needs

Information that is

• timely
• accurate
• authoritative

Who better?

Local governments are working with this kind of data all the time already! And we are often the source to say what’s what about map features. We are not asking that you go whole-hog and start using OSM internally, but we do believe it’s important to be aware of the data in your area, and be a part of the discussion.

I still need a “why”

Consider OSM’s reach

52,180 verified companies using OSM data¹

• Amazon
• Apple
• Facebook
• Microsoft
• Esri

• Pokémon Go
• Uber
• Mapbox
• Garmin
• Walmart

And lots more.

What are the odds that you have a resident who uses one of these companies’ products or services?

Anyone get an Amazon package in the mail? Use Apple Maps for directions? Anything like that?

I don’t have firm numbers here, but it’s probably a safe bet that some of your residents are being impacted by OSM data!

1. https://data.landbase.com/technology/openstreetmap/

Direct Impact

Trail Data

1. Enthusiastic outdoorsperson maps a new climbing, biking, equestrian route
2. Mapper gets some key details wrong
3. Other outdoorsperson sees route, goes for it
4. Trouble

CTV News (via Internet Archive)

Blindly following a web map into trouble is not a phenomena unique to OSM. But it is something that literally anyone could fix!

You see some sites, like AllTrails, visually distinguish “verified trails” from OSM trails and add warnings and stuff. But outdoors apps using OSM data are many, and not all of them follow suit. A person may be just trying to have a nice time in good faith, but the data lead them to a situation that was unsafe, or which degraded the trail / natural space for other users, or trespassed, etc.

I don’t know that such a thing has happened in Kendall, but

Indirect Impact

Now, this next example is a bit sneakier. And to be clear, I can’t 100% prove this, but the timing is awfully suspicious.

Van Buren Street

Six years ago, every major dataset, map, etc., had this entire stretch as a continuation of Van Buren Street. The entire circled portion is pretty distinct from the other roads in the area, but the north portion is legitimately a public roadway. The darker pavement here is a private driveway.

Delivery trucks were barreling through here at all hours, ignoring any signs or barriers put up by the owner.

Be the change

Not our data, not our problem

We can at least make sure OSM is correct

Lady came to us, asked if we could help. Our data was correct. It would be very tempting to say “not our data, not our problem”. We put the right stuff out there, and if the big companies didn’t want to use it, that’s on them.

Except that’s kind of a jerk answer. Aren’t we public servants? Shouldn’t we try to do something?

So, we edit it in OSM, hope for the best.

Within a year, that edit cascaded down to everywhere else.

See the change

Google’s route! Notice in the map that the driveway is still labeled as “S Van Buren St”, but this section is fainter. Odd! The route not only avoids the driveway, but goes all the way to East St. Not sure why that is.

See the change

Bing doesn’t change the visual display of the driveway at all, but routes us over to Union Street.

See the change

Apple, interestingly, removes this part of the road from the map entirely. Even though the north portion of it is actually a public road, a detail none of the maps got right.

What’s going on here? If you look at the data, it’s very clear they’re not just copying stuff; doesn’t match OSM. My intuition is that these other organizations use OSM to validate their internal data. My edit likely raised a little flag in some other systems, got human eyes on the location, which led to a correction.

There are lots of other examples I could give you with similar timing: adding footpaths to my college campus, seeing them in Google Maps within a month. And so on. The data is never exact, so I know it’s not copy and paste. But the odds of me and lone mappers like be being one step ahead of tech giants by chance just feels ridiculous.

Once more for good measure

Your residents are being impacted

You can help

It would be invisible and thankless, but OSM is a means of truly serving our communities.

How: OpenStreetMap Changeset Analyzer

OSMCHA

Questions?

Be in Touch!

josh@jcarlson.page

https://jcarlson.page

@jcarlson@mapstodon.space