GeoHacking and promoting Open Mapping Technologies

For two years I helped evangelize OpenStreetMap(OSM) and open mapping technologies with my friends at GeoHackers in India. The group is subject of the article 'Geohackers show the way in open mapping', it feels that all the efforts bears fruit.

When I first met Geohackers, they were bunch of guys who loved to make maps. Very soon I developed a strategy for GeoHackers, combining promotion of grassroots open mapping technology adoption with events and providing consultancy services for companies, governmental and research organizations who want to take advantage open mapping technologies.

Geohackers organized mapping parties at technical events in educational institutions like OpenStreetMap Mapping Party at NIT Calicut and mapping parties that concentrated on heritage sites in Fort Cochin and Trivandrum.

These events helped me create a blueprint that can be used for organizing such mapping parties everywhere in the world. The document How To Organize A Mapping Party was the initial draft of this process. Fine tuning the process and documenting it helped in the capacity building of open mapping enthusiasts in India. More students and young people joined and contributed to OpenStreeMap project during these mapping parties.

With my intense energy I pushed the GeoHackers group to explore new ways of using open mapping technologies. We had a break when Mapping for Social Change invited us to participate and provide help to Information activists use open mapping technologies. Maps play a pivotal role for social activists along with social media.

The Mapping For Social Change workshop gave me an insight into the problems and short coming of Open Mapping technologies. On the two hour flight back from the workshop I designed a project with Sajjad. We spent the next two nights designing and building HeritageWalks.in. We presented the project to show how effectively open mapping technology used at the Maps For Social Change exhibition .

‘Geohackers’ shows the way in open mapping

About two years ago, in an open map party held in Hyderabad, some geeks sowed the idea of forming an open technology mapping consultancy team. Now, the idea has grown into a full-fledged, non-profit, open technology mapping consultancy team called Geohackers. 

The team, which consists of seven active members and several contributors, gives consultancy services on open mapping for different organisations and projects, free of cost. The team is also contributing to the Open Street Map, a project to make free and open maps.

“With the belief in the ideology that information has to be free, we undertake consultancy works and training for students on cartography,” said Sajjad Anwar, a coordinator of the open map team and a student of the MES College of Engineering, Kozhikode. The contributors include several technology freelancers and techies, working in different parts of the world, he said.

Explaining that the Geohackers might be the first consultancy service on open mapping in the country, he said, “We thought about starting an open mapping consultancy team to impart the ideology of open mapping to the people, as the need of such a consultancy is high in the country.”

The team is involved in several open mapping projects such as Assistance for Maps for Making a Social Change project and Heritage Walks.in project.  “The first project was sponsored by two NGOs- Centre for Internet and Society and Tactical Tech and we have conducted several workshops and training classes for the social workers on how to use open maps. The training and workshops were held in New Delhi and Ahmedabad,” he explained.

“Heritage Walks.in is a unique project to help tourists. People can download maps from the website www.heritagewalks.in for free,” he said.

At present, the mapping of heritage sites in Ahmedabad, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram has been completed. “The project is aimed to cover the whole India. More heritage sites will be added to the website shortly,” he said.

For mapping purpose, we use GPS devices and free satellite images. The open mapping foundation has contributed two such devices for the purpose, he said.

You will find various blog posts related to events mentioned in the article.

• Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party
• Trivandrum Mapping Party 12 December 2009
• How To Organize A Mapping Party
• OpenStreetMap Mapping Party at NIT Calicut

Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party

Sajjad blogs about yesterday's Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party in Cochin. We had to wind up the two day mapping party on the first day itself. We had to leave the city immediately, a political hartal (strike) was due to begin the next day. The city transport system would grind to a halt leaving us stranded in the city.

Living on the fort cochin island itself was too expensive, the cost of rooms skyrocket around the fort cochin carnival time. Perhaps we hope return to the Fort Cochin soon to continue mapping the whole island. Perhaps better prepared next time guys! .

Fort Cochin is marked for one of the earliest establishments of foreign trade in Kerala. The heritage walk is an awesome 6 KM journey on foot, which takes us back to the 1700’s when the Dutch, the Portuguese and the English was busy trading the wealth. The island provided them a very wonderful place to trade and refresh. The heritage walk meets us at different monuments which reminds us of these historical landmarks. I met Arky at the Ernakulam Boat Jetty, from where we collected few maps and other resources.

Read more about the Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party

Trivandrum Mapping Party 12 December 2009

After the first Open Street Map (OSM) mapping party in Calicut few months ago, we decided to organize more such parties. I suggested to have another one during the Scipy 2009. We are going meetup on sidelines of the conference and have a mapping party. Please join us here in Trivandrum (Kerala) on 12 December 2009.

More information about the event is available on the Trivandrum Mapping Party wiki page

How To Organize A Mapping Party

We had a mapping party at NIT Calicut recently. After the first day of the event I shared some ideas to make such mapping parties better with GeoHackers team.

Sajjad Anwar created this 'How to organize a mapping party' guide based on those ideas. After few corrections over the weekend I felt it is ready to be shared with everyone. Perhaps we turn this into neat mini howto. If you are interested please leave a comment or get in touch with me.

Introduction

Map-making or Cartography aided mankind from the time when lived in caves, the geographic knowledge and the compass guided the progress of our civilization. Today such wealth is only available to those who can pay huge royalties or license fees. OpenStreetMap project (OSM) takes its inspiration from Free Culture philosophy and aims to provide geographic information of the entire planet to one and all.

Mapping parties are organized to teach map making skills and contribute to OpenStreetMap project. With the advent of GPS technology anyone with such a device and computer can build high quality maps. This document explains how one can organize a mapping party in their school or workplace.

The Tools

Lets look the tools that are needed for making maps, we need a GPS device, a personal computer to edit the mapping data and an account on OpenStreetMap servers to upload your data.

The GPS device

GPS is Global Positioning System. The earth is surrounded by 31 satellites, which provide us sufficient information to identify where we are on the planet. This tracking is processed with the help of geographic coordinates called Latitudes and Longitudes. There are lot of stand alone GPS receivers available in the market. Now most of the smart phones are equipped with GPS receivers. GPS devices are the primary data collection tool for mapping. The data collected in the GPS devices are used in the GPX format. This is the most easy and efficient method for fetching the data from the device. The GPX file is the collection of traces and waypoints. Map images in formats like .jpg, .png etc are also used. The OSM data subsets are available in the .osm format.

The Map Editor

Map editors are the workplace were we use the data collected from GPS to create the map. Creating the map involves proper tagging of the data. Many editors are available, like Java OpenStreetMap editor (JOSM),Potlatch ,merkaartor. Among these, JOSM is the heavy duty offline editor.

Getting an OSM account

We need to have a proper OSM account to validate and upload the map we created. You can create a new account here.

Lets start mapping !

The next important step is creating teams. The entire party is divided into small teams based on how many GPS devices you have at your disposal and size of mapping area. Each team should have at least one person with good sense of direction. Each team can be given a name or colored arm band (optional). Each team is equipped with a terrain map with landmarks that show the borders of their sector. Various services like google, yahoo. walking-papers.org provide terrain maps that can be printed before hand. A person can act as a control center co-ordinator. He is responsible to staying in touch with team in the field with mobile phone or portable 2 way radio (optional).

Data Collection and Downloading

Maps are created at this stage. The data we have mined are ordered, analyzed, and tagged. We need to make sure that all the team follows a naming convention or comment. The coordinator should watch for over marking / mis-marking of the same location. Once the data is properly tagged, it is time to upload it to the OSM server.

Feedback

Each team would be provided with a feedback form, which they are intended to provide sincere information regarding their experience in the workshop. This step is a sort of improvement and corrective measures for future mapping parties.

Introduction to Open Street Map

Presentation slides of GeoHacker Sajjad Anwar talk on Open Street Map (OSM) Project.

OpenStreetMap Mapping Party at NIT Calicut

This weekend I travelled overnight for the first Open Street Map (OSM) mapping party in Calicut. The event was part of NIT Calicut's Tathva fest. When I reached Calicut I found Sajjad, Praveen and other geo hackers had been hacking late into night preparing for the party. Took a headdive by first fixing Sajjad's laptop and later helping out with few late minute tasks.

Getting the devices to work was a major pain. The Ubuntu Karmic laptop I had with me managed to detect the Openmoko Neo Freerunner and Android based G1, we could do upload GPS clients to the devices. But only one of OpenMoko's ending up being used at the party while others started rebooting whenever we launch GPS client. Bummer !

After a quick Kerala style breakfast we headed to NIT Calicut campus some 20 kms from the city. Dressed up in white mapping party tshirts with 'Our Streets, Our Map' printed in bold letters in the back. We found the FLOSS Hall inside the campus already setup, the overhead projector was running endless Linux Foundation videos. :) But there very few people around. On the other side of the room, several laptops were setup showcasing several Linux applications. Found that laptops running Linux games were most engaged through out the day. We quickly hooked up our Wifi access point to the wired network so that we could get online for uploading out geo mapping data.

Sajjad, Praveen and others gave a quick introduction to Open Street Map project and the idea behind a mapping party. The tools needed for mapping are a GPS device or a phone with GPS feature, a computer running JOSM - OpenStreetMap editor and a account on OSM servers to upload the your geo mapping data.

Later we divided into different groups, each with a GPS device and a different area of campus to map. I managed to get a sector with ladies hotel :P but failed to get someone with mapping experience into my team. We heading out under the hot sun to start mapping.

Assigning different area's to teams Tools for Mapping: Computer and GPS device Walking and mapping with a GPS device Garmin GPS Device Download, edit and upload to OSM servers Late Dinner Give me a pillow, I'll sleep right here

Overall the event was a great learning experience for me. Later in the evening I interacted with team to see what worked and what didn't work at the party. I managed to share some ideas on creating a blueprint for such mapping parties or workshops around India before I left the city.

Open Street Map Workshops In India

Guess, I need to attend this workshop series next month. Is anyone conducting one in Hyderabad?

Schuyler Erle and Mikel Maron will hold a series of multi-day workshops in several India universities. The final locations are still under discussion. But they are likely to be Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkatta, Trivandrum, and Hyderabad(really?).

Free Map India: A Series of Workshops in February 2008 http://wiki.freemap.in/moin.cgi/FreeMapIndia2008

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. It allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

OpenStreetMap