Remote Surveys

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Through this project, mappers get access to survey data for OpenStreetMap surveyed by others. This way, you are not dependent solely on (Bing) satellite imagery when mapping a region far away from your home and can map first-hand survey data. Surveyors on the other hand can publish their surveys here for others to process if they can't or don't want to input the data themselves, for example when on travel and with limited access to the internet.

So, the only purpose of this project is to enable that the surveyor doesn't necessarily need to be the mapper as well. (And the other way round, that the mapper doesn't need to be the surveyor.)

Background

The OSM website allows to upload GPX traces. However, the waypoints with the POIs surveyed will not be shown when the GPS traces are queried from the server in a bulk but only when the GPX track is downloaded directly. This makes it necessary to create a platform on which we can share the POI survey data and collaborate in adding the data to the map. This project shall be that platform.

Guidelines

A good collaboration between the mapper and the surveyor is very important. Thus, the surveyor should note down their contact info on their wiki page in case the mapper finds ambiguities in the GPS survey and needs to contact the surveyor for clarification.

Surveyor

The quality of the GPS survey is also important. Some guidelines for surveyors:

  • the text of POIs must be clearly understandable for a mapper with no local knowledge
  • always use cardinal points and not left/right when describing directions
  • The position of POIs must be set accurately, for example a waypoint stating the name of the street placed on a crossroads is ambiguous.
  • If any special knowledge is required to process the track (for example read & write Thai script) it should be noted in the comments

Mapper

Guidelines for the mapper:

  • contact the surveyor in case of ambiguities
  • respect the surveyors work, you should map everything (mappable) the surveyor surveyed. If you left something out, make a comment in the table.

Available Surveys

Want to assign a survey to you to map? Go ahead! Don't forget to put in your wiki username and change the status to In Progress. Also, of course, you can post your new surveys here.

Status Surveyor Surveyor comments Track download Mapper Mapper comments

Example for table usage

Status Surveyor Surveyor comments Track download Mapper Mapper comments
In Progress Beavis Don't forget to map the surveyed gully covers GPX Butthead All done, except the gully covers
Complete Alice Central park, wifi survey GPX Bob Done. Added some WEP passwords from own survey