Strava

Strava (Strava on Wikipedia) is a website and mobile app (for Android and for iOS) used to track athletic activity via GPS. Its headquarters are located in San Francisco, California, USA.

Most popular activities tracked are cycling, running and hiking. The Strava dataset contains 3 trillion latitude/longitude points from 1 billion activities with a total distance of 27 billion km.

Use of OpenStreetMap

Strava is introducing use of OpenStreetMap gradually, replacing google maps. They are using a "terrain" style rendered and hosted by Mapbox.

• Static maps (the small thumbnail map images) both on the web and within the mobile apps have used OpenStreetMap since early 2014
• Slippy maps on the web have switched from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap mid 2015. Slippy maps in the android and iPhone apps may not be switched yet.
• Routing, and the "route builder" is based off OSM data.

Global Heatmap

Zoomed in on Nottingham cycle paths. from a blog post comparing the data

This shows the new Strava heatmap layer in JOSM in the Gbamgbama area, Sierra Leone. Red lines are already existing mapped in roads, green "lines" are from Strava heatmap data.

Strava's website of it: http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/

Data Permission - Allowed for tracing!

OpenStreetMap users can use Strava heatmap data for tracing into OSM only. ^{[ citation needed ]} For all other non-personal uses, including tracing into other datasets, please contact maps -at- strava.com.

The data is available on a purchasable license basis, so it is great that Strava allows the data to be used free of charge for the purposes of improving OpenStreetMap (similar agreements exist with aerial imagery providers).

Inside editors:

• The Strava heatmap has been added to the JOSM imagery list, and can be activated through the preferences. (Imagery) . The strava entries on JOSM's internal list for reference.
• Strava Slide iD fork gives access to these GPS tracks and provides a clever tool (Slide add-on) to iteratively refine a way geometry and optimize its alignment with the GPS heat data.

• For osm.org's iD: You could paste the URLs into the "custom" entry (only one possible at a time) of the background settings. To find out the correct URLs: see the part between <url> and </url> on the JOSM list and append ?px=256 at the end. Example: https://heatmap-external-{switch:a,b,c}.strava.com/tiles/ride/bluered/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png?px=256

Further ideas: There might also be some possibility to use That Shouldnt Be Possible to find missing roads or cycle tracks, and add the missing tracks as challenges on MapRoulette.

If you havea question regarding editing with the heatmap, please ask at for example help.openstreetmap.org (search for old, similar questions before). If you run into technical issues with these addresses (e.g. server/DNS error), please mail maps -at- strava.com.

Routing Error Reports

Routing errors reported by Strava users can be viewed on a slippy map that has OpenStreetMap as a base layer. This could be used as a "check list" for mappers to investigate potential problems and correct them based on usual sources (like checking the location on-the-ground). http://labs.strava.com/routing-errors/

API

Strava have an API. Most of the information available relates to a specific user or their friends and so requires login through a Strava account. http://strava.github.io/api/

High-res Global Heatmap in JOSM

The high resolution, aggregated Global Heatmap is no longer available for anonymous users, and now requires a user account.

To utilize this heatmap in JOSM, user Davide_sd posted this TMS layer entry to add in your imagery presets: tms[3,15]:https://heatmap-external-{switch:a,b,c}.strava.com/tiles-auth/both/bluered/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png?Key-Pair-Id=MYVALUE&Signature=MYVALUE&Policy=MYVALUE

After signing in using a browser, retrieve and replace the MYVALUE items with appropriate cookie values for the following:

• CloudFront-Key-Pair-Id
• CloudFront-Policy
• CloudFront-Signature

To get these values: On Firefox, press Shift+F9. On Chrome, paste this your URL bar: chrome://settings/cookies/detail?site=strava.com

See also

• Gpslib.ru - active since 2007; more functional counterpart, allows you to download traces with timestamps
• http://labs.strava.com/
• http://labs.strava.com/slide/slide-SOTM-2014.pdf
• http://stateofthemap.us/session/slide/
• Tool to check heatmap by year http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/2014-2015.html