Mapping India Together for free with the OpenStreetMap Project

[PlaneMad]

from the openstreetmap project

Im sure all of us in SSC are development freaks who like to know the latest on whats happening when and where. Maps and diagrams undoubtedly play a huge part in all this because of all the information it can provide and im sure a lot of you guys already play around a lot with google maps, google earth, wikimapia etc. And one thing that all of you would hav also realised is the limitations of these services to provide accurate updated maps for India.

Wikimapia, overcame this limitation by allowing users to add their local knowledge on top of the existing map. But its now become nothing more than an unorganised storehouse of a huge amount of information. The problem is that the underlying map itself isnt updated with these changes, so we're still stuck with crappy maps. And if we do want quality map data, we are made to pay through our nose for it, and these maps again are slow to reflect the changes of our quickly developing country.

Thats why the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project was started. Its basically a free and opensource version of googlemaps. A map which anyone can contribute to and anyone can use for any purpose. In short its an atlas form of wikipedia (wikimapia has got nothing to do with wikipedia and is a commercial service that makes money off ads). You can read more details about it here in their FAQ.

OSM is the rage in Europe and has become a social phoenomenon there, with people coming together to map every inch of their country to create a free and complete map. Its still to catch up in other countries and is still in its infancy here in India mostly because people do not realise the importance of free geographic data and are just too lazy to be bothered to help the community. A year back, entire India was BLANK, and i was the first person to map the first road in the country, Mount Road in Chennai. As a supporter of free and opensource projects like wikipedia and linux, i realised the huge potential that the osm project had in India, a country with millions of kms of road, mostly inaccessible by car, different languages and no proper maps.

I have been spreading the word every chance i get and i finally see the community waking up. The Hindu ran a national article on the OSM project which gave the project much needed publicity, and now most major cities are seeing tremendous progress, lead by Chennai(Compare in OSM and GoogleMaps). The power of OSM lies in the freedom it gives to map almost any feature.

This makes it useful for a lot of us to mark project sites and location of new developments that is not updated on any othe map. Changes happen so fast and so often nowadays that only an approach like this to map our surrounding will succeed (An example of a flyover in OSM vs Google)

And since the source vector data itself is accessible by anyone a lot of fancy stuff can be done with it, like display the same maps in different styles. See mainmap,topomap, alternate.

I'll leave the rest for you to explore i could go on and on about this. the more contributors, the better the map. so lets free ourselves from google and the other commercial map providers, lets make our own maps
you could check the osm india wiki also for some more details http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/India

[Umformer]

Originally Posted by PlaneMad

from the openstreetmap project

Im sure all of us in SSC are development freaks who like to know the latest on whats happening when and where. Maps and diagrams undoubtedly play a huge part in all this because of all the information it can provide and im sure a lot of you guys already play around a lot with google maps, google earth, wikimapia etc. And one thing that all of you would hav also realised is the limitations of these services to provide accurate updated maps for India.

Wikimapia, overcame this limitation by allowing users to add their local knowledge on top of the existing map. But its now become nothing more than an unorganised storehouse of a huge amount of information. The problem is that the underlying map itself isnt updated with these changes, so we're still stuck with crappy maps. And if we do want quality map data, we are made to pay through our nose for it, and these maps again are slow to reflect the changes of our quickly developing country.

Thats why the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project was started. Its basically a free and opensource version of googlemaps. A map which anyone can contribute to and anyone can use for any purpose. In short its an atlas form of wikipedia (wikimapia has got nothing to do with wikipedia and is a commercial service that makes money off ads). You can read more details about it here in their FAQ.

OSM is the rage in Europe and has become a social phoenomenon there, with people coming together to map every inch of their country to create a free and complete map. Its still to catch up in other countries and is still in its infancy here in India mostly because people do not realise the importance of free geographic data and are just too lazy to be bothered to help the community. A year back, entire India was BLANK, and i was the first person to map the first road in the country, Mount Road in Chennai. As a supporter of free and opensource projects like wikipedia and linux, i realised the huge potential that the osm project had in India, a country with millions of kms of road, mostly inaccessible by car, different languages and no proper maps.

I have been spreading the word every chance i get and i finally see the community waking up. The Hindu ran a national article on the OSM project which gave the project much needed publicity, and now most major cities are seeing tremendous progress, lead by Chennai(Compare in OSM and GoogleMaps). The power of OSM lies in the freedom it gives to map almost any feature.

This makes it useful for a lot of us to mark project sites and location of new developments that is not updated on any othe map. Changes happen so fast and so often nowadays that only an approach like this to map our surrounding will succeed (An example of a flyover in OSM vs Google)

And since the source vector data itself is accessible by anyone a lot of fancy stuff can be done with it, like display the same maps in different styles. See mainmap,topomap, alternate.

I'll leave the rest for you to explore i could go on and on about this. the more contributors, the better the map. so lets free ourselves from google and the other commercial map providers, lets make our own maps
you could check the osm india wiki also for some more details http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/India

del

[doc.aneesh]

I had been looking for an OSM Forum for India..

I have already sparked interest in my cousins and friends to put places on OSM..

And Chennai and Bangalore are the best mapped (and improving by the day) in our country
I'm glad I can be a part of this with my contributions

[PlaneMad]

Chennai region atlas i made yesterday using osm data:

Full Size

[doc.aneesh]

Originally Posted by PlaneMad

Chennai region atlas i made yesterday using osm data:

Full Size

Nice.

BTW, what's the correct tag for u/c bridges (ROB)



I used
Highway = construction
Construction = motorway
Bridge - yes


It would be nice if everyone maps using the same tags..
Or else most of the free time we make ends up in correcting wrong tags..
Can you post some for standardizing?

And also, what tags do we use for auto stands, 2 wheeler parking?

[doc.aneesh]

Source - Prajavani e-paper (Kannada)

Glad to see newspapers using openstreetmap (Transport map) data in India.

[doc.aneesh]

http://m.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2...le-accusation/

Google accused of tampering with OSM

[doc.aneesh]

Bangalore - OSM Timelapse

[wlbkng]

Originally Posted by doc.aneesh

Source - Prajavani e-paper (Kannada)

Glad to see newspapers using openstreetmap (Transport map) data in India.

Please do translate.

Thanks.

[nandan_ks]

Content is not important wrt this thread. Aneesh, is just pointing to the use of OSM in the newspapers.
The news is about the Phase 2 of the namma metro.

[doc.aneesh]

Originally Posted by nandan_ks

Content is not important wrt this thread. Aneesh, is just pointing to the use of OSM in the newspapers.
The news is about the Phase 2 of the namma metro.

Exactly! :-)

[anujkb]

I just appreciated the work of the person who has marked each and every enclave, exclave, counter exclave, counter-counter exclave of Bangladesh-India; south of Maynaguri/ coochbehar in West Bengal!

[doc.aneesh]

[wO_Ow]

Ok guys got a question regarding name tag for city names in local languages.Can we use name:pa (Punjabi) and int_name,so that the City name is rendered in both English and Punjabi ?

[doc.aneesh]

Originally Posted by wO_Ow

Ok guys got a question regarding name tag for city names in local languages.Can we use name:pa (Punjabi) and int_name,so that the City name is rendered in both English and Punjabi ?

What is generally accepted is the tag name for English and name:pa for Punjabi

[wO_Ow]

Thanks.I tried using name and name:pa tags but the name is rendered only in english.

[doc.aneesh]

It will render in English only.. Apparently you can use the data to make custom maps showing the other languages, for that to happen, the tag should be as I said.. I don't know how to..