Collateral damage on Estrela/RS from remote "humanitarian mapping" on data already used by local emergency services

Hello. I’m trying, without success, to contact whoever is organizing this remote activity AND is able to both find and fix collateral damage on Estrela/RS. I’m also posting here because most people involved seems to not be from Brazil at all. Please respond on https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/urgente-necessidade-de-reversao-edicoes-delecoes-sem-discussao-em-dados-do-projeto-gps-rural-em-estrela-rs/114994, preferable Portuguese since interested people in the region don’t know English

As quick context of why urgent in the title: the armchair activity (while claiming be some sort of disaster response mapping) changed/deleted data without prior consultation with local community about this city nor at least attempted to contact the uploader, which already was adding data to OpenStreetMap as part of “Projeto GPS Rural” (already used local emergency response, and even is also backed by law LEI Nº 7.752, de 08 de fevereiro de 2023 of municipality of Estrela/RS). Codes used to find places such as ES175 have a physical sign that is visible for people to put in front of their houses, and firefighters/ambulances, etc use OSMAnd or similar app, which really helps when roads may be unnamed nor addr:housenumber don’t exist.

Add to this that even the names listed in the Wiki for this activity are saying not to be part of the organization on Estrela/RS.

hotosm project listed on the link you provided ( tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16923 ) indicates it was coordinated by EvertonBortolini from HOT Open Mapping Hub - Latin America and the Caribbean. You can contact him via his osm messagery. If new changesets added, you can comment on the OSM changeset. You can also comment directly on the HOTOSM tasking manager project tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16923#questionsAndComments). If no reaction, then mail to board@hotosm.org

@PierZen The local community is aware of a small number of specific issues which have been resolved and, for now, there seems to be no need for any further action.

As context, the HOT Global Validadors admit there’s no check at all even on deletion of amenities, which may also happens not by element deletion, but change on tagging .And, to be very clear, I can understand these are good human reviewers, but the procedure does not cover it. This means it is not merely “human error”, but perfectly file a correct 100% validation (e.g buildings) while something such as a hospital with a long history be deleted.

I’m giving this context because armchair activity on a high populated area, even if 100% reviewed and accusing few geometry warnings nor have unresolved automated OSMCha detections is insufficient to prove collateral damage. And it is very, very time consuming to review this for huge amounts of data and lack of proper tools, however the problem is there.

Did you make a comprehensive check before the activity and the status quo to affirm it is resolved, or simply resolved the examples?

Regarding accidentally deleted farms, one of the organizers elaborated two comparative maps, one for deleted points of interest and another for deleted farms them with the local Telegram group, in which you participate, on June 17th and June 23rd respectively. In revisiting this issue, I shared an Overpass query yesterday in that same group that only found 1 deleted farm that has since been restored by one organizer. I have no reason to believe there are other new issues until they are detected and adequately reported.

I also restored the accidentally deleted doctor’s offices building and service way pointed out in the discussion there, the latter being a relatively minor issue which may have been caused by misinterpretation of unclear imagery. There are no other reports of accidentally excluded amenities or ways at the moment that I’m aware of.

1 Like

The aforementioned Rural GPS Project (Projeto GPS Rural) is currently an undocumented organized editing activity that, as the local community is now learning, may have legal and quality issues that we have only begun to seek to clarify.

I opened the following discussion with the local community to help clarify the legal details.

GPS Rural: fonte e licença dos dados