Avid building mapper in Britain.Keen to discover and use tools for easier mapping.

Maps and Mapping

I’ve always enjoyed looking at maps. I enjoy the way they provide clear and concise information.

Getting into OSM

I started using OSM after using the map for research purposes. The accessibility of the map and equality of information was very useful to quickly and easily obtain geographical data about particular regions. In particular, the Streetmap plugin for taking OSM data into the Unreal game engine.

Understanding what the OSM data was, and how easy it was to enhance the map, quickly led to me getting actively involved in mapping within OSM

About my mapping

There are a lot of different things that can be mapped in OSM, and therefore this section will change as my interests wax and wane.

I enjoy mapping buildings. While JOSM has a useful workflow for mapping buildings, especially with the Buildings tool, I feel there are additional tools that can be leveraged to increase the efficacy of building mappers.

I utilize Microsoft’s collection of Global Building Footprints, a database of building layouts. If you have used Facebook’s Rapid mapping system, you have used the same database. I like to manually check each building in the Global Footprint Database in an area and ensure it looks like it fits the underlying aerial imagery before adding it to the OSM database. I find this workflow to be much less tedious for mapping buildings while still maintaining the high quality I want from my mapping.