Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi Kevin,

On 05/22/2016 11:26 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
Alas, I'm not going to SOTM, but put me down as someone who's 
interested in the project, with some 'skin in the game' already.


As I already posted privately to Clifford:

I picked up TopOSM's code for my own purposes and added quite a few 
twists of my own. I use the result as a basemap for several of my own 
projects. You can see what it looks like at 
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html.


You've done some great work on the topo maps! I've been following it for 
quite some time. It would fantastic if you're interested in closer 
collaboration.



Clearly, I am NOT tooled up to serve it up on a large scale.

It depends on a good many publicly-available data layers with 
ODBL-incompatible terms. Life is full of tradeoffs. I think that a 
'sanitized' version with only ODBL and US Government data wouldn't be 
too difficult to put together.


I'm more than willing to share the code, but it would be a bit of a 
nightmare to set up. I think that the best approach would be to share 
it with a willing apprentice (if you will) in pieces, reworking as we 
go to make sure that each shared piece runs for more than just me and 
the setup is better documented than it is now. I'm willing to put in 
the effort to make such a project succeed, but would find it immensely 
difficult without a guinea pig to try stuff out and provide ongoing 
feedback.


Sounds like a good plan. I guess we should take further details off 
list, but I think this is well worth giving a try.


Significant public layers that I include that I believe TopOSM does 
not include:


(1) NLCD [...]

(2) A fair number of FCODES from NHD [...]

(3) The USFWS National Wetlands Inventory. [...]


I did (1) and (2) in TopOSM2 (and some related projects I've been 
working on since) but, of course, that was never finished so I guess 
that's moot. Either way, it's probably good that we've been heading in 
the same direction.


- Lars


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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 05/21/2016 01:54 PM, Clifford Snow wrote:
TopOSM looks like a good candidate for a hack session at SOTM-US. Let 
me know if you are interested so I can find a room for people to meet 
on July 25th.


That's not a bad idea. Sounds like there's some interest in the OSM 
community, and I'd be happy to take a look at it again. I'd say go ahead!


- Lars


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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 05/20/2016 10:58 PM, Richard Welty wrote:

On 5/20/16 9:24 PM, Clifford Snow wrote:

I was just on TopOSM [1] which appears to be very outdated. Does
anyone know who maintains this site?

[1] http://toposm.ahlzen.com/

lars ahlzen maintains it. not sure if he's still monitoring this list
closely or not.


I do. It's pretty out of date indeed.

TopOSM was never rendered on-the-fly. It's just a (very large) set of 
static tiles (currently hosted by Stamen). To update it I'd have to 
either re-render and upload the entire set, or improve it until it can 
be rendered in real time. I was working on the latter [1] but never 
quite finished it.


There's already the OSM cycle map which has a lot of the same features, 
though with a slightly different focus. I guess one advantage of 
something like toposm is that it can use higher-resolution data from 
sources like USGS, and uses US conventions for things like units, 
symbols and other cartographic details.


Would it be would be worth picking it up again?

- Lars

[1] https://github.com/Ahlzen/TopOSM2

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Re: [Talk-us] Where to find airport information?

[Lars Ahlzen]

Ian is right that not all private airports are recognized by the FAA. 
The two examples you gave appear to be examples of that.


The second example *is* shown on FAA's VFR Sectional Chart (that pilots 
use to navigate in visual conditions) as an "unverified" airport 
(circled U) but with no additional info:


https://skyvector.com/?ll=45.524630359,-109.5904083&chart=301&zoom=3

As far as I know, FAA's "Airport/Facility Directory" is the official 
list of airports in the United States, and it has a lot of useful 
information. Of course, that doesn't help in this case since these 
airports are not in it.


https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/digital_products/dafd/search/

- Lars


On 3/7/2016 10:53 AM, Ian Dees wrote:
Keep in mind that it's perfectly acceptable to set up a private 
runway/airfield that isn't listed on any FAA or official source. The 
two examples you give are pretty clearly airfields with runways (you 
can see where the runway lights are, they have support buildings, and 
the first link has a turnaround on the far end of the runway to let 
planes taxi back to the hangar).


On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 7:32 AM, Wolfgang Zenker 
mailto:wolfg...@lyxys.ka.sub.org>> wrote:


Hello everyone,

I have recently come across a few runways in Montana that I could not
find any information about except the imagery. I tried to search for
these airfields on the FAA website, but without success (maybe I did
it wrong).
Any idea where to find out more?

Two examples would be here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/45.4301/-109.8209&layers=N
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/45.5226/-109.5370&layers=N

Wolfgang

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Re: [Talk-us] Elevation in local units

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 03/25/2015 01:43 AM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:


  * I feel that osm convention should encourage all mappers to specify
units (e.g. 22 m).
  * That whitespace should be allowed (e.g. 22m, 22 m, or even 22 meters).
  * And that local units should be encouraged (e.g. 22 feet, or 22' 0").

The wiki templates, if spruced up, could define the rules uniformly 
for all keys that take a measurement unit

(e.g. height, width, ele, max_height, etc).
--
Parsers are cheap.  Any parser worth using can convert 22m, 22 m, 22 
feet or a variety of reasonable variants.

Humans are messy.  Forcing them into boxes generally goes badly.


+1

As much as wish meters were used everywhere, I'd rather make it easier 
for contributors by letting them use whatever make sense to them, and 
worry about unit conversion later. Especially in this case, where 
mechanical conversion is so easy. If the elevation was surveyed in feet, 
entering it in m will almost always result in loss of precision.


For my own maps, such as [1], I use a simple osm2pgsql lua script [2] 
that does various preprocessing, including converting all ele and width 
tags to feet. It's fairly liberal in the formats it accepts for values.


By the way, I thought that the wiki page for ele *used* to say that 
other units than m were acceptable (if explicitly specified) but I may 
be confusing it with something else, like width?


[1] http://toposm.ahlzen.com/hikemap.html
[2] https://github.com/Ahlzen/Hikemap/blob/master/hikemap_tagtransform.lua

- Lars


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Re: [Talk-us] Get your early bird ticket to State of the Map US!

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 01/28/2015 02:39 PM, Alex Barth wrote:

Hello everyone!

Early bird ticket sales for State of the Map US are open, find out all 
the details on our web site:


http://openstreetmap.us/2014/12/early-bird/


Looking forward to the conference!

A minor detail, but is there a reason why "Company/Organization" is 
mandatory on the registration page? I'm sure plenty of people are 
planning to participate as a private individuals.


- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Should this be a dual carriageway?

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 01/11/2015 07:32 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:

However, north of the rotary for quite a while, it should just be
primary.  There are intersections and lights all over the place, nothing
better than an ordinary US highwway that happens to have two lanes each
way.  It's posted "40 and we really mean it", for what that's worth,
which is kind of like being posted 30 :-)


I agree.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Should this be a dual carriageway?

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 01/08/2015 06:02 PM, Richard Welty wrote:

On 1/8/15 5:57 PM, Mike N wrote:

On 1/8/2015 5:51 PM, Richard Welty wrote:
i don't think this photo is relevant to the section that Chris is 
talking

about; it's a different section of US 6. i think this road is in dire
need of a ground survey.


  Oops - I forgot to mention that it was the middle photo.  I think 
this one will work http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/mid-cape/img10.gif

i think the plastic bollards might be enough to justify dual carriageway,
but it's a judgement call. since the photo is 2006, i still think
a ground survey would be best. i haven't seen this road personally since
the 90s, so my recollections are vague and very much out of date.


That's what I remember that section looking like last summer.

Since there's no (real) median, my vote is for keeping it as a single 
way. Reclassifying it as trunk may be appropriate, though.


- Lars



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Re: [Talk-us] OSM Boston Meetup group

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 04/16/2014 10:24 AM, Martijn van Exel wrote:

Thanks for starting this up! And it was good seeing you again at SOTM US.


You too Martijn!

Let me know if there's any way I can help out. I am just in the middle 
of 're-imagining' my SLC group around the Maptime concept, to get a 
broader audience than the group of ~6 core mappers I have been hanging 
out with a lot. I will report on the list on how that goes.


Maptime sounds very interesting indeed. Looking forward to hearing how 
that works out.


- Lars

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[Talk-us] OSM Boston Meetup group

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi all!

For those of you who haven't seen it already, we're (finally) starting 
up a proper OSM Meetup group in the Greater Boston area:


http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Boston/

Jason Remillard and myself will initially try to head up the group. 
Anyone is of course more than welcome to suggest events. We'll start off 
with the spring 2014 #editathon in a couple of weeks.


A big thanks to Telenav for both helping out with a venue and for 
sponsoring the Meetup dues.


- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Fall Editathon Seattle Edition

[Lars Ahlzen]

We had no less than two successful Editathon events here in the greater 
Boston area: One by Mike Foster at MIT (Cambridge), and the other one at 
Telenav's offices.


With the recent MA building imports, missing roads at new residental 
developments now stand out very visibly on the map, and - with 
up-to-date Bing imagery and Tiger2012 - mapping those turned out to be a 
good task for participants.


By the way, I've helped hosting a few mapping parties/editathons in the 
past, and one of the things I noticed this time was how much easier iD 
is for beginners to pick up than Potlatch. Kudos to the iD team for 
making a great editor!!


Also, Mele, thanks for posting those great resources! We're hoping to 
start having more regular OSM meetups around here and that will 
definitely come in handy then.


- Lars

On 10/19/2013 09:23 PM, Melelani Sax-Barnett wrote:
Things went well in PDX too-- we had about 14 people who came and went 
throughout the day. Lots of newbies too! I did forget to take pictures 
though-- oops.


Feel free to use/fork our resources page and slides here: 
http://pdxmele.com/editathon

Repo: https://github.com/pdxmele/editathon

Good luck to the other meetups this weekend!

My best,
Mele


On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 5:51 PM, Martijn van Exel <mailto:m...@rtijn.org>> wrote:


Good to hear you've been having a good time! Re: battlegrid: you're
most welcome! I've shown it to the folks present at the SLC Editathon
today, and everyone found it useful. Please don't hesitate to send any
feedback or suggestions this way.

We had a really good time here in Salt Lake. The turnout was good by
our standards (5 people, 2 new). We did not accomplish a lot of
mapping but we did discuss a potential Utah address points import
extensively. Also, because we all agreed this is a pleasant way to
spend a Saturday afternoon, we are introducing a new monthly event,
the Saturday Mapternoon! If you're in the area, check us out:
    http://www.meetup.com/osmutah/



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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM 2

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 02/25/2013 03:06 PM, Rick Marshall wrote:

Serge is right though, the blue text with the white halo for the water
features is difficult to read.  Sometimes it appears a little blurry.
I am not sure a black halo will do the trick either.  What about
changing the color of the text; maybe making it a darker shade of
blue?


I completely agree. This is far from the finished map and it needs a lot 
more work. In addition to hard-to-read labels and layering issues, there 
are many basic features still missing from the map.


Most importantly, the demo uses all pre-rendered tiles. That works for a 
small area like this, but becomes impractical for a nationwide map. The 
biggest challenge may be to get acceptable rendering performance so that 
tiles can be rendered as they are requested. Nevertheless, I'm hopeful 
it can be done without too many compromises.


- Lars


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[Talk-us] TopOSM 2

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi all!

Since Ian Dees recently brought up the OSM-US servers, I thought I'd 
mention that I'm reviving my old TopOSM project which - for those who 
haven't seen it - is a US-wide topo map using OSM data [1]. This time 
it's updated with carto styling, tilestache compositing and support for 
on-the-fly rendering.


Ian already helped me set up a small demo:

http://www.openstreetmap.us/~lahlzen/toposm2.html 



It's a little rough around the edges and still missing many features, 
but I think it could become useful. I was playing with the idea of 
eventually offering this as a US-specific map layer on the OSM-US 
server. Does this sound like a good idea?


Besides the cartography, a fair amount of performance work will be 
needed to make this render fast enough. If anyone is up for a challenge, 
feel free to join in!


The code is on github:

https://github.com/Ahlzen/TopOSM2

- Lars


[1] Mostly, anyway. It's using NED to generate hillshading and contours, 
and NHD for most hydrographic features (though the latter may eventually 
switch back to OSM).



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Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 10/02/2011 02:41 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:

On Sun, 2011-10-02 at 10:20 -0400, Lars Ahlzen wrote:

On 09/30/2011 10:25 AM, Richard Weait wrote:

1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do?

When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners,
brochures, stickers, loaner GPS units and similar things. I'm not sure
GPS units are needed these days (with a smartphone in everyone's
pocket), but advertising material - like the tall OSM banners - really
make an event look a little more professional.

Never overestimate the accuracy of phone GPS.  Google Maps does well
with positioning because they're using wifi and cell networks as
secondary location sources, the GPS alone is usually off by several city
blocks.


Let me clarify: I'm not sure dedicated GPS units are needed *for mapping 
parties* these days. The concepts can be taught with pretty basic 
equipment. Besides, in many areas, what's left to map are details that 
are better recorded with a notebook than a GPS.


I completely agree with you, though. The trace from my cellphone is 
horrifically bad compared to that of my GPSMap60, so I still use the 
latter a lot for mapping.


- Lars


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Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 09/30/2011 10:25 AM, Richard Weait wrote:

1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do?


When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, 
brochures, stickers, loaner GPS units and similar things. I'm not sure 
GPS units are needed these days (with a smartphone in everyone's 
pocket), but advertising material - like the tall OSM banners - really 
make an event look a little more professional.


Maybe the OSMFUS should explain OSM as a project a bit better to 
newcomers? Especially from a US perspective, where we've been spoiled by 
online maps and free government geodata for a long time.


Finally, having a server and development infrastructure for US-specific 
projects - such as the US-style slippy map mentioned elsewhere - would 
probably make OSM more attractive to both mappers and developers in the US.


I think some of this is already being worked on (Thea, Ian, ...). When 
ready, make sure that it's clearly documented on the website how these 
resources are available to users.


- Lars


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Re: [Talk-us] Brainstorm: What should a US map of OSM data look like

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 09/16/2011 03:37 PM, Ian Dees wrote:
I'd like to figure out a way to start working collaboratively on 
getting a style started. Has anyone tried to collaboratively work on a 
style file before? Is there anyone interested in working with on it 
with me? I was thinking about firing up a publicly-accessible Tilemill 
instance on a representative set of US data and going from there.


I'd be happy to help working on it - especially since I'm already doing 
some of the things that were mentioned on TopOSM.


Tilemill is nice for trying out new ideas, though it might be some work 
converting existing styles to carto.


Git might work well, too.

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l...@ahlzen.com


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Re: [Talk-us] Boston Mapping Party on Sunday, Nov 7

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 11/03/2010 05:35 PM, Katie Filbert wrote:
> Not sure if this has been announced, but want to make sure you know
> there is an OpenStreetMap mapping party on Sunday afternoon, November 7
> in Boston (err... Cambridge at MIT).
> 
> http://osmbos1.eventbrite.com/
> 
> It looks like a great event and hope that you can attend if you are in
> the Boston area!

Ah, yes!

The weather is supposed to be good, we'll have brief presentations,
tutorials, plenty of hand-on mapping (for all levels) and refreshments.
There's still space left, so please join us!

We're hoping that this will be the beginning of more regular OSM meetups
and events in the greater Boston area - something we haven't had for a
while.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Reminder: Geobus call tomorrow

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 09/03/2010 10:38 AM, Jim McAndrew wrote:
> Did anybody make the call last night?

D'oh. I thought Friday night for some reason. Note to self: When subject
says "geobus call tomorrow", check date of email.

Thanks Kate for taking notes!

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Reminder: Geobus call tomorrow

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 9/2/2010 10:50 AM, Jim McAndrew wrote:

Hey,

I am out of the country today and will not be able to attend the call
this week either.


Sorry, I can't make it either. Being Friday night before Labor day 
weekend, I have a feeling the attendance may be thinner than usual... :)


- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] [Tagging] Aeroway=Aerodrome Modifier Tags?

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 6/14/2010 11:57 PM, Zeke Farwell wrote:
> [...] Either the US has a much greater density of
> airfields/airports than other parts of the world, many
> airfields/airports have yet to be mapped in other areas of the world, or
> the GNIS import brought in a bunch of airfields that are no longer in
> operation.

I recall reading that the US does indeed have a much higher density of 
airfields than most countries.

That said, there's no doubt that the imports brought in some airfields 
that are no longer in use or don't exist. Sometimes this is obvious by 
just looking at aerial imagery or a quick survey from the air, but 
sometimes it's hard to say whether a field is being used as a private 
airstrip. AFAIK the FAA doesn't keep track of such private airstrips, 
or, at least, many are not on the charts or in publications like the FAA 
Airport/Facilities Directory.

Anyway, I've been trying to clean up the airports a bit in my state, and 
I would very much like to see some form of classification like what you 
originally suggested.

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Re: [Talk-us] MassGIS source/attribution tags

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 06/13/2010 07:39 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> So if you are considering writing a bot that does
> 
>   for each node in mass
> 
> if the node has only massgis attribution tags, and no others, delete
> the tags (because surely it's either pointless and should be garbage
> collected, or is a member of a way)
> 
> then I'd say that sounds good.

Yep, that was precisely what I had in mind.

Alright, it's a simple algorithm, so hopefully I'll have time to write a
bot that does this.

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[Talk-us] MassGIS source/attribution tags

[Lars Ahlzen]

This has been bugging me for a while...

Linear features imported from MassGIS data have the appropriate source=
and attribution= tags. That makes sense. However, each individual node
has these identical tags as well, including nodes that have no other tags.

For such nodes with no other tags, this seems redundant. It's a bit
similar to TLIDs on nodes from the TIGER import (which were removed), i.e:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup/node_tags

Not only does this take extra space, but it complicates editing. JOSM
(and probably other editors) highlights nodes that have attributes,
nodes don't get deleted with the parent way, etc.

Is there a good reason to keep such tags around, other than "it takes
effort to change it"?

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Re: [Talk-us] USGS National Map aerial imagery

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 06/05/2010 08:51 PM, Anthony wrote:
> Yes, another program to try is Merkaartor.  You only have to give it the
> server URL (in my case
> http://imsortho.cr.usgs.gov:80/wmsconnector/com.esri.wms.Esrimap/USGS_EDC_Ortho_Florida?)
> and it downloads the capabilities file and presents you with a list of
> layers.

Merkaartor is nice in many ways. It also loads the USGS GeoTIFFs
directly AFAIK. Unfortunately it's not stable on my machine...

> I'm sure it's just me not getting the URL right or something, but I've
> found Merkaartor acceptable so I never bothered.  Biggest problem is
> that WMS is slw compared to TMS.

I just had some success with JOSM/WMS. This URL seems to work:

http://imsortho.cr.usgs.gov:80/wmsconnector/com.esri.wms.Esrimap/USGS_EDC_Ortho_Massachusetts?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&STYLES=&SRS=EPSG:4326&FORMAT=image/png&BGCOLOR=0x00&TRANSPARENT=true&LAYERS=BostonMA_0.15m_Color_Apr_2008_02&REQUEST=map&;

That's the Boston 15cm layer, Area #2.

(example area with coverage:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=42.17644&lon=-70.95512&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF)

The WMS plugin doesn't seem to download at full resolution, though. It's
not bad, but I wonder if there's a way to convince it to do better...

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] USGS National Map aerial imagery

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 06/05/2010 07:07 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> I think the 15cm and 30m imagery is not from MassGIS, but was paid for
> by USGS, and massgis has been hosting it.  But I'm not sure.

You may be right. It's not clear (IMO) from the metadata. Fortunately,
it shouldn't matter.

> Do you have JOSM WMS urls to put in a josm config file for these?

Well, not really... The example was from a dl:ed GeoTIFF.

There's a link to the WMS capabilities description on this page:

http://gisdata.usgs.gov/edc_catalog/fetch_layer_docs.php?LayerName=Boston,%20MA%200.15m%20%28Apr%202008%29

That has four Boston 15cm layers plus the "Footprint" layer. The latter
works fine in JOSM/WMS, but the actual image layers don't. The image
layers are specified as queryable="0", which I suspect may be why. They
seem to load in QGis, though, which confuses me. Any ideas to get this
working?

Otherwise, perhaps we can download the GeoTIFFs and serve them with
MapServer or something...

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[Talk-us] USGS National Map aerial imagery

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi!

(I apologize if this belongs in legal, but I got the impression that the
latter primarily deals with the use of OSM data.)

The USGS National Map [0] has hi-res, up-to-date aerial imagery for many
urban areas. Here's an example from the "Boston, MA 0.15m (Apr 2008)"
layer (15 cm resolution!):

http://lars.ahlzen.com/misc/97338973.png

My question is, naturally, whether this imagery can be used for tracing
OSM data.

According to the NM/Seamless Server FAQ:

"Q. Are there any restrictions to the data or use of the data?
A. The data from The National Map Seamless Server is public domain.
There are no restrictions on data downloaded We request that the
following statement be used when citing, copying, or reprinting data:
"Data available from U.S. Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux
Falls, SD."  [1]

and

"Q. Why are some areas "View Only"?
A. The areas listed as "VIEW ONLY" are under license restrictions
agreements through the contractor or source of the data." [2]

This layer is NOT listed as "VIEW ONLY", and is available for download.
I also cannot see any contradicting statements in the metadata for this
specific layer [3]. Furthermore, this layer appears to originate from
MassGIS, who considers its geodata public domain (though they too ask
for attribution).

Does anyone see a reason why this data couldn't be used for tracing, as
long as proper attribution (USGS and MassGIS, to be safe) is given? It
certainly beats Yahoo!

- Lars


[0] http://seamless.usgs.gov/
[1] http://seamless.usgs.gov/faq/general_faq.php#six
[2] http://seamless.usgs.gov/faq/highres_faq.php#six
[3]
http://extract.cr.usgs.gov/distmeta/servlet/gov.usgs.edc.MetaBuilder?TYPE=HTML&DATASET=UA_233_07

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Re: [Talk-us] Tagging of county roads

[Lars Ahlzen]

On 5/28/2010 11:04 AM, Phil! Gold wrote:
> * Nathan Edgars II  [2010-05-28 01:31 -0400]:
>> I don't know why there hasn't been any work on rendering U.S. Highway
>> and Interstate shields with a simple pattern match of "US *" and "I *";
>> it doesn't need to be perfect, just a reasonable outline.
>
> [...]
>
> I've seen that the TopOSM people are rendering US Highway and Interstate
> shields, but I haven't looked to see how they're doing it yet.

For TopOSM, there's some preprocessing when importing the planet dump to 
extract the actual digits. It might be possible to do this directly in 
the query, but there are a lot of special cases.

Otherwise, it's basically just some pattern matching in the query for 
the mapnik layer. For example:


 ...
 
 ...
  
  (select * from us_osm_line where (highway = 'motorway' or 
highway = 'trunk') and (ref like 'I %' or ref like 'I-%') order by 
z_order) as interstateshields
  
 


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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map (02-10-2010) update

[Lars Ahlzen]

Apollinaris Schoell wrote:
> On 18 Feb 2010, at 5:36 , Lars Ahlzen wrote:
> 
>> Apollinaris Schoell wrote:
>>> Anyone knows where to get NED data for large areas? The seamless 
>>> server is such a pain and it will take forever just for a single 
>>> state. or we could start a crowd source effort to download and
>>> share them.
>> They don't exactly advertise it, but USGS will actually take an
>> external hard drive that you provide, fill it with NED data and
>> ship it back to you.
>> 
>> We're trying to find a place to host this massive data set, though,
>> so hopefully downloading will get a lot easier soon.
>> 
> 
> thats cool do you have the data already? What about providing it as a
> set of torrent files? Torrent is the perfect protocol to distribute
> such a huge set of data. btw how big is it?

Yes, I do have it. Bittorrent would be nice, but it's over 600 GB, so 
just seeding it once would probably put me over my ISP's bw quota 
(and/or clog my intertubes for weeks!). :(

The lower resolution (1 arc-second) version isn't _as_ huge, so that 
could possibly work. Then again, that isn't much improvement over SRTM.

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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map (02-10-2010) update

[Lars Ahlzen]

Apollinaris Schoell wrote:
> Anyone knows where to get NED data for large areas? The seamless
> server is such a pain and it will take forever just for a single
> state. or we could start a crowd source effort to download and share
> them.

They don't exactly advertise it, but USGS will actually take an external 
hard drive that you provide, fill it with NED data and ship it back to you.

We're trying to find a place to host this massive data set, though, so 
hopefully downloading will get a lot easier soon.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] hillshade

[Lars Ahlzen]

Don Lambert wrote:
> The problem seems to be with the "color relief" tiles between 106.6 long 
> and 107.3 long at the approx 1:34,285 and 1:17,142 scale levels.

Indeed. I've started rendering the missing tiles, so they should be up 
within a few days.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] hillshade

[Lars Ahlzen]

Ian Dees wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Don Lambert 
> mailto:dlamb...@frontiersurveying.net>> 
> wrote:
> 
> Hello group & Lars,
>  
> I notice when zooming into some of the mountainous regions in
> Colorado that the hillshade is not there. Why is that and how could
> we fix it?
> Also, is there any interest or possibility of getting the TopOSM
> Colorado running on a faster server? Possibly an EC2. I would be
> willing to contribute to this effort.
> 
> 
> I'll let Lars comment on the TopOSM specific question, but I am working 
> with some colo facilities to get a server or two specifically for the US 
> set up. TopOSM for the entirety of the US is one of the first things on 
> my list.

Don,

I remember seeing some area with missing base layer tiles at some point, 
but then I couldn't find it again and assumed that some re-rendering had 
taken care of the problem. I guess I was wrong.

Do you remember a specific location where the base tiles are missing? If 
not, I'll start a new render (and upload) of the entire base layer 
tiles. That takes a while, though.

I agree that a faster web server would be nice. Ian, I very much 
appreciate your work on this, and I hope something good comes out of it.

And, yes, a TopOSM for the entire US would be very cool. It's near the 
top of my list as well.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Lars Ahlzen wrote:
> Either way, I guess the thing for me to do would be to clean things up 
> just enough to be readable and then put the code and instructions up on 
> the wiki. Then we can all play with it. :)

If you want to try it out, I put the scripts and other files up at 
http://toposm.com/src

There are some very brief instructions at 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TopOSM_howto

It's still pretty unpolished, but should be enough for the adventurous. :)

Let me know if I forgot anything.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Jason R. Surratt wrote:
> If you're entertaining the world you may want to look at the Aster GDEM 
> dataset too (http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gdem.asp). It provides 1arcsec 
> (~30m) post spacing for nearly the entire globe (83N/S) and is freely 
> available. Unfortunately downloading the entire data set from their 
> website would be difficult at best and there are reports of some 
> spurious artifacts. 

That may indeed be the best option for areas outside of the US.

IIRC, there were some questions about licensing, and their servers were 
more or less down at the time, so I haven't tried it. I tried STRM data, 
which has at least comparable resolution/quality, with good results, so 
using Aster should be fairly straightforward.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Ian Dees wrote:
> The hi-res NHD data set fits on 4.5 DVDs. They sent me a set of NHD data 
> last year around this time for free (they're very nice folks!). I was 
> considering asking nicely for another set, but I was going to try and 
> build a faster computer to handle it, first.

Nice. That would save a lot of time. I hope they can do me the same favor.

> I don't know about the NED data, but I imagine it would be a similar 
> size for the US continental area.

NED is significantly larger, but someone mentioned that one can ship a 
USB hard drive to USGS, they'll fill it with the data and ship it back.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Apollinaris Schoell wrote:
> 
> This sounds like an interesting experiment worth running on Amazon's
> EC2 cloud. Their x-large machines run at $1/hour, but sure would
> chomp on this data quickly!
> 
> I would be willing to try (and pay for) it if Lars went through a
> did an updated setup doc.
> 
> We could start our own distributed rendering in a similar fashion as 
> ti...@home

Both of those sound like interesting options. Something like E2C might 
be easier to set up (we'd need some more work to split the large data 
sets for a distributed rendering system).

EC2 (or something equivalent) might still be a significant cost, though. 
Looking at the EC2 x-large vm specs, it seems to be about 5-10 times the 
speed of my quad-core rendering server. Import, preprocessing and 
rendering (almost entirely CPU-bound) took just under a week, so it 
might take, let's say, 20 hours on the EC2 wm, or about $20. In that 
case 50 states (assuming approximately equal size) would be $1000. Per 
rendering.

Either way, I guess the thing for me to do would be to clean things up 
just enough to be readable and then put the code and instructions up on 
the wiki. Then we can all play with it. :) I'm right in the middle of a 
move, so it may take a bit longer than otherwise, but I'll do my best.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Bill Ricker wrote:
> What, MASSGIS doesn't cover Aspen?

Yup... too bad... :)

>> * Contour lines and hillshading generated from NED [1].
> 
> does that mean you're interpolating lines from a grid?

Yes.

>> * Hydrography (lakes, rivers, wetlands etc) from NHD [2].
> 
> which will eventually be in OSM

Yeah, and it looks like some good progress is being made. But until it's 
complete, I have to use the NHD data directly.

>> * The hillshading, contour lines and map features are on separate
>> layers. Use the layer switcher (top right "+") to toggle.
> 
> AWESOME. that's beautiful.

The main downside is that it increases the number of map tiles that have 
to be downloaded and makes scrolling choppy on slower hardware/browsers.

I think it's worth it, though.

>> Since the data is nationwide, the same technique could (theoretically)
>> be used to generate a complete TopOSM map of the US, or even the world
>> by using e.g. SRTM for elevation and OSM for hydrography.
> 
> requiring only a render farm plus some config ?

Yeah... well... for certain values of "some". It would actually require 
a fair amount of work. Here's my reply to another OSMapper asking me 
essentially the same question:

"That said, there are some obstacles to overcome before it can happen. 
For example:

A lot of manual labor is spent on downloading the data from USGS. Their 
java point-and-click interface (with lots of limitations on batch sizes 
etc) is not helpful for what I do, and nobody seem to mirror the data 
sets in a better format.

There's also the size of the data sets. The entire hi-res NHD and NED 
would probably be many, many TB. Unpacking, preparing and indexing that 
data requires plenty of additional disk space as well. One would 
probably have to re-work the scripts to work on smaller areas at a time, 
as well as invest in some sizable drives. The tiles themselves for CO 
are about 12 GB and 20 GB for MA, so I'd need a web host that's willing 
to host a TB or so of images. :)

Finally, Colorado alone took the better part of a week on my quad-core 
rendering server. And this excludes all importing and preprocessing of 
the data. Extrapolate for 48 more states..."

The above should not stop me from trying, though...


> Use any perl in ingesting or anything?

Wish I could say yes, but I'd be lying... it's all Python and Bash. :(

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Richard Weait wrote:
> What I saw was beautiful before we squashed your server! ;-)

Hmm... I too have noticed that the site occasionally stops responding
after scrolling the map around a bit. It tends to come back in 5 minutes
or so.

TopOSM is currently hosted by a hosting company on some serious
hardware, so I don't think it's getting overwhelmed. I'm thinking that
perhaps the very large number of requests in a short time looks like an
attack and they temporarily block the IP.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

- Lars

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[Talk-us] TopOSM Colorado

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi All!

It's been a while since the last TopOSM update, but I haven't been
resting. After Massachusetts, I decided to pick a state with somewhat 
more interesting topography: Colorado.

http://toposm.com/co/

There are still a few rough edges and things that are missing (like the
map legend), so consider it a "preview".

TopOSM-CO has a few important differences from TopOSM-MA:

* Color-by-elevation in base layer.

* Contour lines and hillshading generated from NED [1].

* Hydrography (lakes, rivers, wetlands etc) from NHD [2].

* The hillshading, contour lines and map features are on separate
layers. Use the layer switcher (top right "+") to toggle.

Since the data is nationwide, the same technique could (theoretically)
be used to generate a complete TopOSM map of the US, or even the world 
by using e.g. SRTM for elevation and OSM for hydrography.

I'll update the TopOSM wiki page [3] with the changes in this version as
soon as I can.

- Lars



[1] National Elevation Dataset. Available for the entire US.
http://ned.usgs.gov/

[2] National Hydrography Dataset. Available for the entire US. There is
some effort to import this into OSM, but we're not there yet.
http://nhd.usgs.gov/

[3] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TopOSM

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Re: [Talk-us] talk-us-ma: Duplicate nodes in mass

[Lars Ahlzen]

Bill Ricker wrote:
> I thought Chris had the beginings of a script that would do this.
> 
> It is possible that  if Lars, Shankar and I spent some tuits looking at
> Frederik's script we could mutate it to do this.  It would be a nice
> example for the Boston.PM presentation next month. I think he said it
> was uploaded to a git host or somewhere?

I'd love to help out with that. I have many commitments and not a lot of
time during the next month or two, though, so I can't promise much
before the Boston PM talk.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] TopOSM update

[Lars Ahlzen]

Dale Puch wrote:
> I'm not sure which is better, but consider rendering borders on top of
> water.  County and state at least.  There were a few places I think it
> would be more informative that way.

I agree. For some reason, I missed that in the last rendering.

Btw, state and county borders in Massachusetts are a bit of a mess, so
some cleanup of the actual OSM data might be necessary for these to be
useful.

- Lars

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[Talk-us] TopOSM update

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi!

It took a while (I've been busy), but I put an updated version of the
TopOSM map online:

http://toposm.com/ma/

Most of the improvements are minor, but many of them came from you on
this list, so thanks everyone for your suggestions! There's a brief
changelog at http://toposm.com/changelog.html

It still has plenty of issues, and I'm (slowly) working on them...

- Lars

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[Talk-us] TopOSM wiki page

[Lars Ahlzen]

Since several people asked for the details of how it was created, I
added a wiki page for TopOSM (the Mass topo map). It's a draft, and
probably full of errors, but at least it's a start.

I included some illustrations of the techniques used, as well as (I
think) all of the scripts and other details required to actually
generate it, in case someone feels adventurous... :)

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TopOSM

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Massachusetts topo map

[Lars Ahlzen]

Dale Puch wrote:
> Beautiful!
> 
> A cosmetic suggestion is the airport runways seem too wide on pretty
> much all but the highest zoom.

I agree. I'll make them thinner, and adjust the width properly for all
zoom levels.

One problem is that the current width may be somewhat accurate for large
airports like Boston Logan, whose runways are between 100 and 150 ft
wide, but way too wide for smaller airports whose runways are often 75
ft wide or less. And even if the OSM data *had* the width for all
runways (which I'm sure it doesn't), hacking the mapnik style files to
create different cases based on width tends to quickly make them very
complicated.

I copied the runway style from the standard OSM mapnik style file, btw.

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Massachusetts topo map

[Lars Ahlzen]

Chris Lawrence wrote:
> Hey, Lars!  The map looks really nice.  One minor suggestion: you may
> want to consider using the outline-style U.S. highway shield like most
> commercial maps use instead of the black-background U.S. highway
> shield, which works well for separate road signs to bring out the sign
> contrast from the surroundings but not so well on a map.

Good point. I've added this to my (long) todo list... :)

- Lars

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Re: [Talk-us] Massachusetts topo map

[Lars Ahlzen]

Bill Ricker wrote:
> will need permalinks, I know a page that should link your render of
> Fourth Cliff.

Done.

> Day Blvd Beach in South Boston is rendering as a Swamp, as is Malibu Beach?

I guess so. These areas are classified as "FLATS" (i.e. tidal flats) in
the MassGIS hydrography dataset, where that data comes from. I don't
know if the "swamp" pattern makes sense, but in most cases those are
marshes or muddy areas.

There seems to be few actual beaches in Mass in the OSM database.

> nice look over all, and in detail too. i like it

Thanks!

- Lars

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[Talk-us] Massachusetts topo map

[Lars Ahlzen]

Hi OSMappers!

I've been working on a topographic map based on OSM data, somewhat
similar in style to the National Geographic topo maps. It's very much
work in progress, but I thought someone here might be interested.
Feedback is welcome!

It's (currently) limited to the state of Massachusetts - partly because
that's where I live and partly because high-resolution contours and
elevation data (significantly higher resolution than e.g. SRTM) is
freely available through MassGIS. If similar data is available
for other regions, the same type of map could most likely be generated
there.

When I have time I'll fix some of the issues with the map and include
the steps (and scripts) used to generate it. Meanwhile, have a look:

http://toposm.com/

- Lars


PS. I'm looking for hosting. It's a fair amount of data (several GB),
but if anyone has the space and bandwidth...

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