The past 10 weeks were an awesome learning experience as three of our community members--Akintola Mercy, Olanrewaju Michael and Ademoyero Victor were opportune to participate in the 2020 HOT Data Quality Internship program. A programme organized for passionate and enthusiastic OSM (OpenStreetMap) contributors who are willing to acquire skills and provide quality data for disaster management and data availability for future use. The timeline was from August to October 2020. The Zoom app was used for the webinar sessions and the slack app for communication purposes. They worked and mingled with 67 other amazing people from 24 different countries, and gathered together online exploring how to ensure quality data in OSM- by learning about different mapping and validation procedures on HOT Tasking Manager Projects, using different specific mapping/validating tools.
In their first week, they focused mainly on mapping buildings and highway features in Jamaica and Mozambique on OSM, contributing to solving causes related to public health and disaster preparedness. These first activities were results of the training on JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap) editor on both basic and advanced use of JOSM to help detect mapping issues, such as overlapping buildings with highways, tagging errors and warnings, etc. to further help to improve quality data on OSM, using filters and selections, and solving conflicts.
In the fourth week, they had a “Validation with JOSM” webinar with Ralph Aytoun a guest to inform them on certain requirements for a HOTOSM validator and how to apply. The webinar session was aimed to prepare them for validating roles on new projects in South Sudan and Mozambique in addition to previous mapped projects in the last few weeks.
In the following weeks, they learned how to use data quality assurance tools such as OSMCha, Maproulette, OSM Inspector, OSMose and OverpassTurbo to review errors and mistakes automatically detected by these tools and make appropriate corrections.
Furthermore, they also gained experience working on QGIS, exploring its interfaces and basic tools, classifying vector data and creating maps. In particular, using the data extracted from OSM - with HOT Export Tool, QuickOSM or Geofabrik. Also, the potential of web visualization has been explored with the UMap tools used for showing OSM features useful for specific applications in an interactive and user-friendly way.
Additionally, the statistics from the off-boarding call reveals that our members coupled with interns from other countries, mapped and contributed a total of 132,192 Buildings, 12,437km Highways, 362km Waterways, 514 natural features, and 527 land-use features were mapped and validated. Totaling in the mapping of 5,974 tasks and validation of 11,603 tasks.
During this internship, the major challenges faced included lack of efficient power supply and enough internet access, which disturbed their consistent learning and mapping sessions during the weeks. In spite of these challenges, our members Akintola Mercy Onapemipo (Mercy14846) and Olanrewaju Michael (Teemi_classic) came out as part of the top 10 contributors in both mapping and validating, then Ademoyero Victor(Vickystickz) as one of the top 5 active contributors on the Slack channel.
Lastly, the three participants plan to organize training with the YouthMappers FUTA community to transfer their acquired knowledge and encourage members to always use these skills to contribute quality data to OSM.
Authors:
Emmanuel Jolaiya- YouthMappers FUTA erstwhile President at Federal University of Technology, Akure. A GIS/Python Developer with a solid background in Remote Sensing and GIS. He loves to volunteer, drive communities and do cool stuff with technology. He also flourishes in a multidisciplinary team. He's majoring in Remote Sensing and Geoscience Information System B.Tech (Finals). Reach him at @jeafreezy.
Akintola Mercy Onaopemipo- YouthMappers FUTA President at Federal University of Technology, Akure. He's majoring in Remote Sensing and Geoscience Information System B.Tech (300 level).
Ademoyero Victor Ayomide- YouthMappers FUTA Vice President at Federal University of Technology, Akure. He's majoring in Remote Sensing and Geoscience Information System B.Tech (300 level).
Olanrewaju Michael Timilehin- YouthMappers FUTA Project Manager at Federal University of Technology, Akure. He's majoring in Remote Sensing and Geoscience Information System B.Tech (300 level).