Microgrants/Microgrants 2020/Proposal/Road Completion project
About your Mapping Community
Tell us a little bit about your mapping community at the moment, some examples of details to include are below, but please provide us with any information you think is relevant. Please write 100-200 words
I’m a board member of OpenStreetMap Belgium. We started as a tiny group of mappers doing meetups. Over the years more and more people started showing up and with the increasing usage and visibility of OpenStreetMap it was time to start organizing ourselves better. We joined Open Knowledge Belgium as a working group. We are also a Local Chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The community works on several smaller but also longer term projects.
What do you need the grant money for?
We want to understand what you plan to buy, how much you plan to buy, and why this will help you to scale your community mapping efforts. There are two tables for you to fill in your response, and you may add more rows as needed. Some examples are in the table for your reference. You are welcome to use a different format in your response, but please make sure to include these details.
The idea goes back several years: we can use government open data (in this case the official road network) to improve the OpenStreetMap road network in Belgium, and improve quality of OpenStreetMap data as well as provide feedback to the government. Meanwhile, we prove that OpenStreetMap is at least as good as any open alternative.
We started developing independently. In 2018, we submitted the Road Completion project as one of the project of Open Summer of Code (see project page). Brussels Mobility (the administration of the Brussels-Capital Region responsible for equipment, infrastructure, and mobility issues) was the partner for this project. A proof of concept for the Road Completion project was developed by students using the official road network data for the Brussels Region.
Unfortunately meanwhile, we don’t have time or money to invest to make the tool production ready and extend the data process to whole Belgium (each of the 3 regions have their own road network dataset with 3 different formats).
The grant money will be used to hire a developer to build the missing pieces, improve the data process, and make the tool production ready. We would like to build a backend and a frontend and run the data comparison between the 3 official datasets and OpenStreetMap on a regular basis.
If you want to know more, you can check:
- Ben Abelshausen talk about it during State of the Map 2018
- OpenStreetMap Belgium Road Completion project page
Budget breakdown
Give your budget breakdown here. If you would like to present your budget in a tabular format, you can use this tool to convert your spreadsheet into a wikitable and paste the code below here
| Item | What do you plan to spend the money on? | Expected cost per unit (in Euros) | Quantity you plan to buy / subscription length | Expected total cost (in Euros) | Why is it needed? (Please give as much detail as possible.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working day | Hire a developer | 500 EUR | 10 | 5000 EUR | (see "What do you need the grant money for?") |
If you receive a grant, what do you aim to achieve?
It is recommended that this supports mission of the OSM Foundation and your local community. Please provide us with any information you think is relevant including the metrics you expect to achieve. Please write 100-200 words.
The main goal is to make the Road Completion project production ready for Belgium : process automatically the 3 road networks regional datasets and display the comparison in a way that will help the mappers to add or fix the road network in OpenStreetMap.
Since the tool will already be built to handle 3 different datasets, it should be easy to replicate the process and build/use the tool anywhere in the World.
Building that tool, we want to 99.99% complete road network in OpenStreetMap for Belgium.
Note that the tool is built in such a way that it is easily scalable for larger areas (using vector tiles to do the comparison) and to make it relatively easy to extend the algorithms for more advanced comparisons.
In the future, we would also like to extend with dashboards showing off the derived completeness statistics.
Do you receive funding from any other sources at the moment?
If you receive funding from other organisations currently, please state how much this is, whether the donations are regular or one off, and how these funds have been raised. Please write no more than 300 words. If you have any sources of co-funding for this grant application, please provide details. Examples of this might be if you have any partners who would be willing to match grant funding if you receive it, or if your project has existing funding. Please provide as much detail as possible.
We do have a donation page. Unfortunately, that’s only enough to buy some merchendising or food/drinks for our events. You can find the details of our finances here : https://github.com/osmbe/working-group-bylaws/tree/master/financial
Is there anything you would like OSMF to support you with?
If there is anything which you would like OSMF to support you with in order to strengthen your project, please let us know. For example, this could include building relationships with OSM communities, sourcing updated imagery for mapping projects, or guidance on how to use some of the tools we have created. We want to do our best to support OSM communities, so please let us know what you need. Please write no more than 150 words.
The main goal of our Road Completion project is of course to make sure the whole belgian road network is complete and accurate in OpenStreetMap but the tool will be build so anyone can replicate it “easily” anywhere in the World. OSMF could support the project by promoting it in the international community.
Declaration
By submitting this form to the OpenStreetMap Foundation, you certify the information contained in this application is correct, and that if you are awarded a grant, you will use it only for the purposes described above. You will provide written documentation and receipts for all of your expenses to the OSM Foundation to demonstrate this. You understand that the decisions made by the OSM Foundation Microgrants committee are final.
I, Jonathan Beliën (jbelien), agree to follow the above declaration, on behalf of OpenStreetMap Belgium
Endorsements
Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!
- I endorse this proposal. based on previous dedication of the OSM BE team members and also because I believe it is an important project worth supporting.
- I endorse this proposal. – I support the development of systems to improve OSM delivery - Craig Allan