When exploring on creating maps in Tamil using OpenSteetMaps [
https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/let-us-create-maps-in-tamil/ ;]
found that the current data available on OSM is not equivalent with Google
Maps.
We can not copy data from Google Maps and import to OSM as it is a big
copyright violation. Yes. We dont have control over the data for the area
where we live.
We can do the following.
1. Look for the data sources who may have the data about the streets,
villages, cities. I think think the government departments like Postal,
Revenue,Rural development, Public Works may have these data. How can we ask
them to share the data in public? Will a RTI help on this? Do you have
contacts with the leads of these dept? Please help to get map data from
them.
2. Add the data manually. Edit OSM just like how we are adding content to
wikipedia. Drawing roads, marking important places is easy. Watch the below
video for a demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q7ypL0Osqc
By this way, we can add any data manually, edit, improve the existing data.
But editing on the browser is not possible for many.
It will be nice if we have a mobile app to add data to OSM. When I had a
smartphone, few years ago, searched for a OSM mobile app. Cant find any
app, which helped to edit OSM.
I dont use smartphone nowadays.
If you have a smartphoe, can you search for the apps, which can help to
edit the OSM easily?
The app should be very simple. The user should should open the app. It
should capture the latitude, longitude from its GPS or mobile tower. Then
it should ask for the name of the building, building number, type of the
place, street name, area name,city name, if required a photo, etc. Once the
user entered these data, it should be synced on OSM. Contribution should
very simple as filling few forms only.
If we have such app, we can create communities/volunteers to add data to
OSM with their smartphones. Just open app, fill data. They are done.
If there is no such easy editing app for OSM, it is high time to create
such one. If you are a mobile developer, please create such app and help to
build the Openstreetmaps as content rich.
Wondering how the Google, Apple, Bing maps collected data. What kind of
mobile app they used, what ate the data they collected. If you have worked
for these maps, please share more details about them. It will help a lot.
There may be other easier, better ways to add data to OSM. Please share the
details or connect with the communities.
Let us build content rich Open Street Maps.
--
Regards,
T.Shrinivasan
My Life with GNU/Linux : http://goinggnu.wordpress.com
Free E-Magazine on Free Open Source Software in Tamil : http://kaniyam.com
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