Google Summer of Code/2023/Project ideas

This page lists a number of ideas for potential Google Summer of Code 2023 projects. This page's primary purpose is to help to give potential applicants ideas that they can build on to turn into applications for the program. Members of the OSM developer community are encouraged to identify ideas for projects, and indicate whether they would be willing to act as a mentor for a GSoC contributor attempting the project, using the GSoC idea template.

Participant project ideas

GSoC contributors can base their application on one of the ideas below, but we also encourage potential GSOC contributors to come up with their own ideas for projects around OpenStreetMap software. Do you have a pet annoyance you want fixed? A feature you think should be implemented? If you believe you are capable of implementing it and it fits within the time constraints and the GSOC eligibility criteria feel free to bring the idea forward.

Please get in touch with the organizers (at gsoc-orga@openstreetmap.org) as soon as possible if you want to work on something not listed here, so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. We would suggest supplying the same information as in the templates below, if you don't have a potential mentor it may be possible for us to find one for you.

Searching

Nominatim - Category search using ID presets

Suggested By Lonvia Summary When users search places, they often like to use category words ("hotels in Berlin", "Eiffel tower bus stop", ...). Nominatim has limited support for such category searches. It defines Nominatim/Special_Phrases which are detected in the search query and then used to filter the results. The manually curated lists in the wiki are rather tedious to keep and duplicate other community-maintained lists. For this project, you should explore the tagging presets of the ID editor. The presets contain an extensive list of category names for OSM tags with many translations. The goal of this project is to make these terms searchable with Nominatim. Given that the editors and search engines have very different goals, this will not be a straightforward translation. You will have to experiment and research how category words are used in search, which may include thinking about into simple linguistic problems in a multi-lingual setting. Mandatory skills basic understanding of OSM tagging including some experience with editing OSM data, basic Python Useful skills SQL(Postgresql, Postgis) Required experience intermediate Length 175 or 350 hours Difficulty medium to advanced Possible Mentors Lonvia Notes This idea can be either done as a shorter 175h project concentrating on extracting and using simple category words from ID's presets. This would be of medium difficulty. At a length of 350h, students can dive more deeply into the search algorithms for categories and improve them to also find subcategories ("vegan restaurants"). Comments Original issue at [1]. Please also see the general hints for contributing to Nominatim for GSOC at User:Lonvia/GSoC_2021_Nominatim_Projects.

General

Improve Valhalla's Web App (ReactJS)

Suggested By Christian Beiwinkel, Nils Nolde Summary There are many open improvement suggestions, which would make this frontend a lot more usable and attractive: https://github.com/gis-ops/valhalla-app/issues. We appreciate this is not a single, tightly-knit project idea, but would very much welcome someone to improve the UX with our guidance and also bring in her/his own ideas. Mandatory skills beginner ReactJS Useful skills intermediate React/JS Required experience beginner/intermediate Length 175 hours Difficulty beginner/intermediate Possible Mentors Christian Beiwinkel Notes Further information about our process for this year's GSoC can be found here: https://github.com/gis-ops/valhalla-app/wiki/GSoC-2023, including how to contact us and express your interest. Comments This web app is officially hosted by FOSSGIS e.V. and is used by a lot of people worldwide for route planning: https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/. It also helps tremendously to communicate issues/problems on the Valhalla upstream project.

iD editor

Mapping widget for real world access restrictions

Suggested By Martin Raifer (talk) Summary Mandatory skills JavaScript Useful skills Experience with the D3.js framework, OSM tagging/mapping workflows, and iD development Length 350 hours Difficulty medium Possible Mentors Martin Raifer Notes Mapping certain attributes such as access restrictions can be quite difficult in iD. Currently, the mapping of access restrictions on roads, barriers, and similar map features can be quite difficult, especially when Conditional restrictions come into play. The goal of this project would be to implement a user interface widget which should a) provide a better visual interpretation of already mapped access restrictions (for example in the form of icons similar to road signs for various situations) and b) allow to more easily add or modify such access restriction situations. The widget should also be able to take regional differences into account, such as differences in real world road signage and/or mapping practices. Comments If feasible, this widget should be implemented in a way that can be flexibly applied to other complex mapping situations. This would need to be considered in the planning phases of the project.

JOSM editor

Support Vespucci preset extensions in JOSM

Suggested By SimonPoole Summary https://vespucci.io utilizes the JOSM preset format, however has extended the configuration to work better outside of the narrow realm of JOSM see Vespucci preset documentation. The work should add support to JOSM for these extensions (that includes utilizing them in the UI). Mandatory skills Java Useful skills Experience with OSM mapping workflows and specifically with JOSM Length 175 hours Difficulty Easy Possible Mentors SimonPoole Notes At least the deprecated attribute to indicate deprecated preset items, regions and exclude_regions for localisation, the value_type attribute to indicate the type of the value and the alternative attribute should be supported.

Routing

OSRM Python bindings

Suggested By Siarhei Fedartsou, Nils Nolde Summary Develop Python bindings to the OSRM C++ framework: https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend in a new repository under the Project-OSRM Github organization, and potentially publish them on PyPI for all platforms and supported Python versions. The bindings' API should mirror the HTTP API's interface. The main advantage of bindings is avoiding the HTTP round trip and the integration into apps as a Python library. Mandatory skills minimum beginner C++ Useful skills intermediate C++, pybind11, Python packaging Required experience beginner/intermediate Length 175 or 350 hours(This project can be done in 2 settings: 175 hours for only developing the Python bindings and make sure it can be installed from source with at least Python 3.10. 350 hours for packaging the bindings and publishing them to PyPI for all platforms & supported Python versions.) Difficulty intermediate Possible Mentors Siarhei Fedartsou, Nils Nolde Notes More information on this project can be found here: https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki/GSoC-2023-Guidelines, including a way to contact us to express your interest. Comments There are many great geospatial C++ projects which offer Python bindings (GDAL, QGIS, osmium, Valhalla) and there's lots of ways to make that happen. However, we'd prefer to use pybind11 which is possibly the easiest way in our opinion, as it purely relies on C++, not another meta-language like Cython.

Landmark-based navigation in Valhalla

Suggested By NilsNolde Summary Enable "landmark"-based navigation/narration for Valhalla's route guidance, based on OSM's POIs, such that e.g. pedestrians can be instructed to "turn right in front of Tesco supermarket", which provides a much more natural pedestrian/bike guidance than (often not readily accessible) street names. Mandatory skills intermediate C++ Useful skills OSM analysis skills Required experience intermediate Length 350 Difficulty Intermediate Possible Mentors Kevin Kreiser, Nils Nolde Notes More information on this project can be found here: https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla/wiki/GSoC-2023-Guidelines, including a way to contact us to express your interest. Comments The high level discussion of the project goals and layout can be found here: https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla/issues/4037. There's also 2017 summary paper about the topic, from the HeiGIT group: https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/6/3/64.