Open Street Map for Overlanders

[Jan van Bekkum]

Navigation for Overlanders
We just completed a one-year overland trip from the Netherlands via the Middle East to South Africa. We intend to continue the trip in a few months. For almost the entire trip we had at least five map sources: a country and a region paper map and three digital maps: Open Street Map (OSM), Google Maps and Tracks for Africa (T4A). None of them was perfect and the relative quality differed a lot per country, but overall Open Street Map has been the most valuable for us. We use an Android tablet that is mounted on an overhead rack above the windscreen for navigation (see pictures). Because so many people work on OSM I expect that it eventually will replace many specialized maps.

Open Street Map
OSM can be compared with Wikipedia. It is an open global map database that is filled by volunteers with aid of satellite images (Bing), aerial photographs, GPS uploads and local knowledge. A number of free apps are available for navigation with OSM, for Android a.o. OsmAnd+, MapsWithMe, Navigator and OruxMaps.

In some countries in Africa, for example parts of Rwanda, maps are available up to building level while in rural parts of other countries, for example Uganda, only the main roads have been mapped. However, OSM is expanding very quickly. HOT (Humanitarian Open Street Map Team) coordinates African mapping projects in which people from anywhere can participate. Objective is to create maps for local support organizations such as the Red Cross and Médecins sans Frontières. Amongst the many projects that are presently in progress is mapping in ebola infected countries in West Africa, completing the Lesotho OSM and mapping Africa's National Parks. Such maps are of course very useful for overlanders too.

Camping
Apart from mapping roads and rivers also points-of-interest (POI) are defined in OSM. For overlanders campings are amongst the most interesting POIs. Like all overlanders during our trip we maintained lists of potential accommodation, retrieved from various internet sites and blogs of other travellers, but it would be much easier if there were one database holding most of the sites. Unfortunately in OSM the camping "keys" (defining characteristics of a camping) are more geared towards campings in western countries than to camping possibilities in developing countries where camping can be at full facility campsites, but also at the courtyard of a hotel (with a room key for shower and toilet), a beach with public toilet and beach shower or a bush camp with no facilities at all.

A few years ago a German group has worked on a proposal for the OSM camping definition, but mainly with European campings in mind.

OSM by overlanders

Uploading GPS tracks
Almost all overlanders store GPS tracks. Because for many roads few local people collect tracks these tracks are valuable to improve the OSM roads, mainly to validate against satellite data. For many of the road sections that we drove our track was the only one in OSM, especially in East Africa and the Middle East. Overlanders can help by uploading their tracks and POIs. Uploading POIs can be done easily with OsmAnd+ or with OsmTracker.

Map creation
I am currently making our trip again on OSM, checking roads and POIs against the GPS data we collected and the things we have seen. In this way I want to improve OSM. The more overlanders do the same the better OSM will be for all of us. See the Beginners Guide to get started.

POI definition
If other overlanders are involved in map creation I would like to get in contact to make a joint camping definition that is suitable for overlanders to propose to OSM.

Please contact me if you are interested in any of these topics.

 

[Scott Brady]

Nice work Jan. We have a few new projects that will dovetail into this project nicely.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

Thanks Scott,

I look forward to more details about them.

 

[dlh62c]

Great write up!

I would like to add that OSM maps can be used with Garmin's Basecamp software for offline route planning. Add an Internet connection and you can view your tracks, routes and waypoints in Goggle Earth from Basecamp.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

Hi,

I achieve most of what you look for with OsmAnd+ for offline calculating and recording the route and waypoints and with OSM with Bing Imagery for online viewing the recorded data.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

Android tool for simple upload of overlander info to OSM

I made the prototype of a tool for simple upload of overlander information to Open Street Map. Please have a look here.

Some sample screenshots:

 

[ajitkommini]

Great write up!

I would like to add that OSM maps can be used with Garmin's Basecamp software for offline route planning. Add an Internet connection and you can view your tracks, routes and waypoints in Goggle Earth from Basecamp.

You can also use BaseCamp to download OSM maps to a Garmin GPS device. On a recent trip to Germany I took my GPS along and used it in a rental car with OSM maps. Saves you quite a bit compared with renting a navigation system or buying maps from Garmin. That said, quality varies from country to country. Here in India I prefer to use Garmin maps.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

I have added an overview of camping needs for overlanders in the OSM campsite wiki here. Useful for people who want to do their own camping uploads.

 

[itshanney]

Nice work Jan. We have a few new projects that will dovetail into this project nicely.

Would you accept volunteer software engineer efforts for such projects? I'm currently actively developing my own project that is basically "Yelp for overlanders" that is intended to solve almost all of the problems Jan has mentioned. The goal was to set it up as a non-profit and the GPS data and POI database would be funneled back to OSM on a regular basis.

 

[itshanney]

I made the prototype of a tool for simple upload of overlander information to Open Street Map. Please have a look here.

Some sample screenshots:

Jan, this looks great. Are you willing to place the source code on Github, or equivalent, for others to see?

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

It is a configuration file for the existing app OsmTracker, it is not an app development. This is the configuration file.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

It is only a configuration file for OsmTracker. This is the file.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

Hi itshanney,

The Yelp for overlanders sounds great. I can see two developments that would be valuable.

OsmTracker that generates OSM nodes rather than markups
The core functionality of OsmTracker as shown earlier in this thread is to generate markups that can be imported in OSM. A manual OSM editing effort is needed to convert those markups to tagged nodes for every node. On the other hand the OsmAnd app has a plugin to generate tagged nodes that it uploads to OSM. However, you have to enter the tags literally. For someone not familiar with OSM editing that may be too big a hurdle. Therefore a combination of the two would be nice: nodes that are generated and uploaded by the app (like OsmAnd does) of which the tags are determined by the app's pushbuttons (like OsmTracker does).

An extension of the search function as offered by OsmAnd
OsmAnd offers the possibility to search for POI's within an increasing radius from a given location. If the POI is represented as a node in OSM it is (in a rather indirect way) possible to see all tags of that node. This is not possible if it is a polygon.

Therefore I am looking for a tool that allows me to search for specific tags (may be an OR relation of different tags like OSMAnd does - accomodation = hotel OR motel OR hostel) that shows all tags for all nodes, polygons and relations with the searched tag. This especially helpful to show unapproved tags. Furthermore it would be helpful to show other POI's within a specific radius from the found POI as well.

For example I look for all campings within 25 km of my current position. I get all campings within that radius with all tags. So if one camping has a tag "dryer=yes" I know that a laundry dryer is provided, although dryer is not yet an approved key in OSM. This is helpful as the OSM approval process can be quite slow and practice is that people create and use tags that apply to the need of their group. However, more generic renderers will not show such tags. Therefore I would be looking for a tool that shows all tags, allowing me to interpret myself. A dedicated app for overlanders could perhaps even do some interpretation itself.

If the camping has been mapped correctly it is set up as a site relation with other objects (toilets, showers, restaurant, shop) linked to the same relation. If a node or area "Camping" is member of a relation or if the camping is a relation itself I want to see all other members of the relation. If the camp_site and a restaurant are both members of the same relation I can see that the camping has a restaurant.

However, often instead of creating a relation of objects mappers create different independent nodes closely together (one for camping, one for shower, etc.) If I look for one type of object such as a camping and get a shower in its direct vicinity I know that the shower belongs to the camping, although they are not related in OSM due to incomplete mapping.

Because all of this happens on the road without internet access the information must be generated from an offline database. Unfortunately not all apps using OSM have the same offline database format. As memory space on android devices is limited and downloads of OSM data cam be slow and expensive one wants to work with a single downloaded database. Because of its close link to OSM I would propose to use the format of OsmAnd.

I hope this comment is helpful.

 

[Jan van Bekkum]

Comments on the OSM tagging proposal have resulted in a substantial update of the proposal.