Mapping of bicycle racks and importing of collected data

Help and support Tagging help & support
1

Good morning, I am in Italy and we have just finished mapping the location, type and number of spaces available for each bicycle rack in the municipality of Pisa.

The data was collected using Ushahidi

Now we just need to update the OSM data by importing the data onto the map.

For the sake of completeness, I have already sent an email to imports@openstreetmap.org as reported in the wiki, but I have not yet received a reply.

Can you help me with this? Thank you.

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@mods-italy Should we move this topic to Communities > Italia (Italy) or is it fine here? :slight_smile:

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Since it’s about an import, I think it’s fine in the general category, no need to move it.

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For start, what is your plan for handling already present data in OSM?

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To add to what @Mateusz_Konieczny said, in case you haven’t seen them before, here are the OpenStreetMap Import Guidelines.

Where are you looking for help? In getting community input on your import plans? Or in the technical steps needed to undertake an import? Or both?

In general, the key considerations are:

  • Ensuring the imported data is license compatible with OpenStreetMap. If it’s just data you and your friends have collected together, then this part is probably fine?
  • Ensuring the imported data is high quality, and that you’re tagging the bike racks in a similar way to how most people in your area would do it. Usually a big part of this is just documenting how you’re going to convert your data into OSM tags (e.g. “Tipo di parcheggio=Scolapiatti” → “bicycle_parking=wall_loops”).
  • Respect existing contributions to OSM - this relates to Mateusz’s question. You can check out the bike racks already mapped in Pisa here. For bike racks that are already in the data, you could add additional detail (or even just a check_date tag), but would want to avoid deleting previous data or importing points that duplicate what’s already there.

Also, you have a lot of great photos, but it doesn’t look like Ushahidi has a way to permalink to them (e.g. to use in an image tag). Is there another place you can upload them so you can link them to your imported data? (e.g. Flickr, Panoramax, Mapillary)

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Good morning, regarding the guide, I read it and contacted the section that deals with the import procedure, but without success.
I also tried to contact the Italian community, but the only help I received was a link to the guide.
So, after extensive research, I ended up here.

@Mateusz_Konieczny, as for filtering data that has been mapped but is already present on OSM, we are carefully rechecking everything through QGIS, from which we can then save a CSV file to export to OSM.

The types of bike racks are correct; we have double-checked them, as we have double-checked all the other fields, such as the number of spaces, whether they are covered or not, whether they are under video surveillance, etc.

@tallcoleman, so, what I am asking, since this is my first time doing this, is to be guided through the import procedure to avoid causing any damage.

Is the CSV file suitable for import? Any comments on how to export data from QGIS?

Thank you very much

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There isn’t really a “section that deals with the import procedure”. If you are referring to imports@openstreetmap.org, that is just a mailing list, and as far as I know is not used any more. Where did you come across that - maybe there is some documentation that needs to be updated? I don’t think the current import guidelines mention it.

Have you prepared documentation (step 3 of the Guidelines, which links to a suggested plan/outline)? Or are you not yet at that stage, and that is what you are asking for help with? E.g. it’s hard to comment on whether the CSV file is suitable for import without a link to the file, or at least a sample from the file.

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Hello @alan_gr, you are correct. There is no reference to the mailing list in the English guide. However, it is present in the Italian version. I can report this to the Italian community. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

However, I have not yet prepared the documentation, and I need assistance with that as well. Perhaps I need to have the data ready before writing the documentation?

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have you shared it with us and Italian community for review? It is impossible to answer without seeing data quality

maybe I missed it but I see no mention of which tags you plan to use

I would advise you to do some regular mapping if you have not done it and to not start from import

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I’ve just read the new Import guidelines and noticed that imports should be discussed with the local community (I thought they should be discussed generally). Maybe moving it to Italian Community it’s a good idea.

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@theTractor a couple resources from an import I did last year that you might find helpful.

The best tool to bring in external data and properly match it with the existing OSM data is JOSM with a couple key plugins:

  • The Conflation plugin helps you find where people might have already mapped a bike rack in your dataset
  • The OpenData plugin will help you import your data from the CSV format (if you have it installed, when you drag and drop data into JOSM, it should read it correctly - it mostly works in the background)

The Conflation plugin is a bit complicated, but I have a video here giving an example of how to use it: YouTube - Toronto Washroom import workflow with JOSM (there are bookmarks in the description to jump between sections).

The context for the video and an example of the import workplan can be found here: Import/Toronto Public Washroom Import - OpenStreetMap Wiki . Since your data is just high quality user-submitted data in a different format, I don’t think the plan needs to be very detailed, as long as it covers the key points.

If you have any questions, let me know!

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Also if you need an example to point to re: removing the mailing list instructions from the wiki and replacing with a community post instead, feel free to link to: Proposal:Move mailing list from "required" to "recommended" for new proposals - OpenStreetMap Wiki

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I’ve updated some parts of the Italian page according to the English one; now the imports mailing list is only mentioned in the final part.