Racha Mapping Party

Racha Mapping Party – the first online mapping party in Georgia. We're mapping the city of Ambrolauri, the biggest settlement of Racha, and its surroundings for a week from July 27 till August 9 (pronolonged for a week).

For the first time, we selected the city of Ambrolauri in Racha. The city is located on both banks of the Rioni River, at an elevation of 550 m above sea level. The city serves as the seat of the Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti regional administration and of the Ambrolauri Municipality and has a population of around 2000.

This area was selected because it's covered by relatively up-to-date and high-quality orthophoto imagery of 2025 by National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR), and the region of Racha is getting more popular for tourists recently, but it doesn't have good maps. Also, the city isn't so big, which is an advantage for the first try.

For any questions, join the chat of the Georgian OSM community in Telegram. Feel free to use Georgian, English, or Russian language.

Dates

July 27 – August 9, 2026 (pronolonged for a week)

Coordination

To avoid edit conflicts, we use Mapping Party Tracker. The so-called "pie" of the Ambrolauri and surroundings is by the link: https://mpt.osmz.ee/map/4

Claim one piece, draw all you can within its borders, and release it once you don't want to continue.

Results

The figures below compare historical OpenStreetMap snapshots at 00:00 local time (Asia/Tbilisi, UTC+4) immediately before the mapping party and immediately after it. The analysis uses the bounding box enclosing all 151 Mapping Party Tracker pieces, rather than the exact polygon union, so it may include a small amount of unrelated activity outside the pieces.

The Mapping Party Tracker showed all 151 of 151 pieces completed.

Metric	Start 27 July 2026, 00:00	End 10 August 2026, 00:00	Net change	Growth
Building ways (`building=*`)	5,864	18,119	+12,255	+209.0%
Objects with `addr:housenumber=*`	300	10,027	+9,727	+3,242.3%
Addressed building ways	288	9,979	+9,691	+3,364.9%
Highway ways (`highway=*`)	4,348	6,559	+2,211	+50.9%
Total highway length	2,204.8 km	2,500.2 km	+295.4 km	+13.4%
Named highway ways (`name=*`)	802	2,270	+1,468	+183.0%
Highway ways with `name:ka=*`	702	2,174	+1,472	+209.7%
Highway ways with `name:en=*`	694	2,154	+1,460	+210.4%
Highway ways with `name:ru=*`	258	1,932	+1,674	+648.8%
Objects with `addr:street=*`	313	10,216	+9,903	+3,163.9%

The share of mapped building ways carrying a house number rose from 4.9% to 55.1%. The number of highway way segments carrying name=* rose from 802 to 2,270. These are segment counts, not counts of unique streets.

Participation and activity

At the end snapshot, 16 OSM accounts had at least one extant element whose own latest-version timestamp fell inside the event window; 14 of those accounts had at least 10 such elements. Together these current versions comprised 135,797 OSM elements: 114,241 nodes, 21,460 ways, and 96 relations.

The one-week extension was material: it produced 6,346 of the 12,255 net additional building ways (51.8%), 4,423 of the 9,727 net additional address objects (45.5%), and 91.6 km of the 295.4 km net increase in highway length (31.0%).

Methodological notes

Historical snapshots were queried with Overpass QL at 2026-07-26T20:00:00Z and 2026-08-09T20:00:00Z, which correspond to local midnight before 27 July and after 9 August in Georgia.
The analysis bounding box is 42.344082,42.870154,42.675116,43.338060 in Overpass south–west–north–east order.
A way is included when it intersects the bounding box; length figures therefore sum the full geometry of intersecting ways, including any short portions extending outside the box.
Net snapshot differences do not measure every editing operation. Geometry corrections, retagging, splits/merges, deletions, and repeated edits may leave little or no net change.
Account-level figures are not changeset counts. Each surviving element is attributed only to the user who made its latest version within the event window, so collaborative work on the same element is not fully represented.
Data source: OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0; statistics retrieved 17 August 2026.

Local mapping conventions

This mapping party follows the conventions documented by the Georgian OpenStreetMap community at WikiProject_Georgia_Abkhazia_South-Ossetia.

Participants should review at least:

The instructions on this page summarize the rules most relevant to the Racha Mapping Party. If this page does not cover a particular case, follow the Georgian community conventions and ask in the Georgian OSM community chat.

Troubleshooting

Mapping Party Tracker does not open JOSM

If clicking the JOSM button in Mapping Party Tracker does nothing, first make sure that JOSM is already running.

Mapping Party Tracker communicates with JOSM through the Remote Control interface on the local computer, normally at http://127.0.0.1:8111/. Remote Control is disabled by default in JOSM and must be enabled manually.

To enable it:

Open Edit → Preferences in JOSM (F12).

Select the Remote Control settings section.

Enable remote control.

Apply the changes and try opening the mapping-party piece again.

To check whether Remote Control is working, open http://127.0.0.1:8111/version in a browser while JOSM is running. A working installation should return a small JSON response identifying itself as JOSM RemoteControl.

If the browser reports connection refused, JOSM is not listening on port 8111. The most likely reasons are:

JOSM is not running;
Remote Control is disabled;
a browser extension, security application, or firewall is blocking access to localhost.

Note that 127.0.0.1 refers to your own computer; the request is not sent to an external server.

To Do

Draw missing buildings and roads
Adjust existing buildings and roads to the orthophoto imagery (most of them were drawn with low-quality imagery)
Name streets, see #Street Name Convention
Add addresses to buildings

Completing the four points above allows marking a piece as completed. Of course, you can add other features as well.

Basic road classification

Classify roads primarily by their function, not by whether they are paved.

highway=tertiary — an important local route connecting several settlements or forming part of the wider road network;
highway=unclassified — a minor public road connecting local places but not primarily serving only the properties along it;
highway=residential — a street whose main function is access to residential properties;
highway=service + service=driveway — an access road to an individual house or property;
highway=track — primarily an agricultural or forestry track, not an ordinary residential street merely because it is unpaved.

Use surface=*, smoothness=*, and, for tracks, tracktype=* to describe physical condition.

See Street Network and Key:highway for details.

Street Name Convention

Follow the Georgian community names conventions.

Mandatory tags:

name=* — the current official Georgian name;
name:ka=* — the same Georgian name.

Recommended when the correct form can be determined reliably:

name:en=*;
name:ru=*.

Do not invent translations merely to fill the language tags. Apply the English and Russian naming rules described on the Georgian WikiProject page.

Write street names and street types in full. Do not abbreviate words such as ქუჩა, Street, Avenue, улица, or проспект.

For Georgian-to-Latin romanization, the local convention uses the BGN/PCGN system without apostrophes unless an established English-language name exists.

The majority of streets in rural areas do not have unique names and are identified by numbers. To generate the Georgian, English, and Russian forms, use https://openstreetmap.ge/numbered-streets/ and review the result before uploading it.

Sources

The main source for online party is aerial and cadastral data by NAPR. All data is available at the https://maps.gov.ge/ website. You can add some of those layers to both JOSM and iD editors.

Layer content	Link to add	Layer type (matters for JOSM)
Orthophoto 2025 (recommended first)	https://mp.napr.gov.ge/ORTHO_2025_BLK4/wmts/ORTHO_2025_BLK4/GLOBAL_MERCATOR/{z}/{x}/{y}.png	TMS
Orthophoto 2016–2017	https://nt0.napr.gov.ge/NGCache?x={x}&y={y}&z={z}&l=ORTHO_GEORGIA_4	TMS
Land parcels	http://nv.napr.gov.ge/geoserver/ows?FORMAT=image/png&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=cite:LR_PARCELS_transparent&STYLES=&CRS={proj}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&BBOX={bbox}	WMS
Building footprints	http://nv.napr.gov.ge/geoserver/ows?FORMAT=image/png&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=cite:LR_BUILDINGS&STYLES=&CRS={proj}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&BBOX={bbox}	WMS
House numbers and street names	http://nv.napr.gov.ge/geoserver/NGDB/ows?FORMAT=image/png&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=ADR_STREETS&STYLES=&CRS={proj}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&BBOX={bbox}	WMS

Imagery alignment and source cross-checking

All imagery and reference layers should be checked for positional offset before tracing. This also applies to orthophotos: high image resolution does not guarantee accurate georeferencing, and imagery from different years may be shifted by several metres relative to each other.

Do not move existing OSM objects merely to make them match the currently visible imagery layer. First determine whether the imagery itself is offset.

Whenever possible, compare imagery with several independent reference sources:

raw GPS traces downloaded from OpenStreetMap;
the Strava Global Heatmap where sufficient coverage is available;
NAPR land parcels;
NAPR building footprints;
the NAPR House numbers and street names layer;
clearly identifiable objects that agree across several independent sources.

A single GPS trace should not normally be treated as an exact reference because individual GPS recordings may themselves be inaccurate. Prefer a group of traces that follow approximately the same line.

The Strava heatmap can be useful because it aggregates tracks recorded by multiple users and devices. However, as of July 2026, Strava coverage in Ambrolauri is very sparse, apart from a few isolated locations. It should therefore be treated as an additional reference rather than the primary alignment source for this mapping party.

NAPR cadastral and address layers are useful for cross-checking, but they should not automatically be treated as exact ground control. A cadastral boundary, building outline, address label, and orthophoto may each have their own positional offset. Look for agreement between several sources before changing geometry.

In mountainous terrain, imagery offset may vary across the same layer. Recheck alignment when moving to another part of a Mapping Party Tracker piece.

How to Use

iD

You can use only one layer at a time

1. Open the Background Settings item in the right toolbar

2. Press the three-dot button next to the Custom option

3. Insert one of the links from the list above into the textarea and press OK

JOSM

You can use multiple layers simultaneously.

1. Open Imagery menu in the toolbar

2. Select Imagery preferences...

For TMS layers:

3. Press the +TMS button to the right of the Selected entries list

4. Insert one of the TMS layer links from the list above into the 4. Edit generated WMS URL (optional) field

5. Enter layer name into the 5. Enter name for this layer field

For WMS layers:

3. Press the +WMS button to the right of the Selected entries list

4. Insert one of the WMS layer links from the list above into the 6. Edit generated WMS URL (optional) field

5. Enter layer name into the 7. Enter name for this layer field

6. Press OK

7. It may request to restart JOSM

8. Select the added layer from the Imagery menu

Checking and adjusting imagery alignment in JOSM

To download publicly available GPS traces together with OSM data:

Open File → Download data (Ctrl+⇧ Shift+↓).
Select Download from OSM.
Enable both OpenStreetMap data and Raw GPS data.
Select the area and press Download.

The GPS traces will appear as a separate layer.

To adjust an imagery layer:

Select the imagery layer in the Layers panel.
Open Imagery → New offset.
Move the imagery with the mouse or arrow keys until ground-level features agree with the available reference data.
Enter a descriptive bookmark name if the offset should be reused.

Do not align imagery to one isolated GPS track. Prefer the approximate centre of several mutually consistent tracks.

Alignment is local. After moving to another part of the mapping-party piece, compare the imagery with the available reference layers again and adjust it if necessary.

Recommended JOSM setup

JOSM can be used for this mapping party without additional plugins. However, several plugins can significantly speed up drawing buildings and adding addresses.

To keep the installation stable and predictable, install only the plugins that are useful for the tasks you intend to perform.

Installing plugins

Open Edit → Preferences in JOSM (F12).
Select the Plugins section.
Press Download list if the list of available plugins is empty.
Search for the plugin by name and enable its checkbox.
Press OK and restart JOSM if requested.

Recommended plugins

Plugin	Status	Purpose
buildings_tools	Recommended	Speeds up drawing rectangular buildings. This is especially useful because drawing and adjusting building footprints is one of the main tasks of the mapping party.
georgian-address-helper	Recommended	Retrieves address information from NAPR and helps assign addresses to selected buildings. Always review the results and resolve any warnings shown by the JOSM validator.
continuosDownload	Recommended	Automatically downloads existing OSM data for the current map view as you pan and zoom. This is particularly useful when moving through a claimed Mapping Party Tracker piece, because nearby roads, buildings, and other existing objects remain loaded without repeatedly opening the download dialog. The plugin can be enabled or disabled from File → Download OSM data continuously. Avoid leaving it enabled while zoomed far out.
http2	Optional	Enables HTTP/2 support through the Java HTTP client and may improve imagery tile loading when the imagery server supports HTTP/2. Requires Java 11 or later and does not add any visible editing tools. The performance improvement depends on the server and network conditions. Do not use it when JOSM must connect through a SOCKS proxy, because the plugin may bypass the configured SOCKS proxy.
HouseNumberTaggingTool	Optional	Speeds up manual entry of sequential, odd, or even house numbers. It is useful when an address cannot be assigned automatically.
utilsplugin2	Optional	Adds useful selection, tagging, intersection, and geometry-editing tools.
Mapillary	Optional	Displays Mapillary street-level imagery where coverage is available. It can help verify road surfaces, signs, entrances, and other objects that cannot be identified reliably from aerial imagery.

Plugins only assist editing. They do not replace manual review, local mapping conventions, or the JOSM validator.

Address fallback

The georgian-address-helper plugin may occasionally fail to retrieve an address even when the address is present in NAPR data.

If this happens:

Enable the NAPR House numbers and street names layer.
Inspect the house-number label and the corresponding street.
Make sure that the label can be associated with the building unambiguously.
Add addr:housenumber=* and addr:street=* manually.

Do not guess an address when the label is positioned ambiguously between several buildings. Ask in the Georgian OSM community chat or leave the building without an address for later verification.

Recommended tagging presets

Tagging presets are not plugins. They add forms and predefined tagging options to the Presets menu.

To install an additional preset:

Open Edit → Preferences (F12).
Select the Tagging Presets section.
Add the desired preset to the list of active presets.
Press OK and restart JOSM if requested.

Recommended presets:

Georgia — recommended for mapping Georgian points of interest.
Name Suggestion Index — optional; useful for correctly tagging known shops, petrol stations, banks, pharmacies, and other brands.
Wikidata — optional; useful when linking notable churches, monuments, administrative objects, and other features to Wikidata.

The standard Internal Preset included with JOSM is sufficient for ordinary roads, buildings, addresses, land use, waterways, and most other features mapped during this party.

Other useful tools

Numbered street multilingual names — generates Georgian, English, and Russian names for numbered streets.

Communication

Telegram chat of Georgian OSM Community: https://t.me/osm_ge

Racha Mapping Party

Contents

Dates

Coordination