See you in Detroit!

By Marc Farra

Today we’re headed to Detroit for State of the Map — SOTM is one of our favorite communities to engage with. Much of the work we do is centered around building out the ecosystem of tools for OpenStreetMap and advancing the community, and we’re excited to share some of our recent tools that use OpenStreetMap to detect where city maps are out-of-date, how we empower human mappers with machines, and new improvements to our work that uses OSM-as-a-platform.

Over the course of the conference, we’ll be presenting our work, attending talks and side events, and available to chat over a coffee or beer.

• Derek will present Urchn, an urban change detection tool that uses persistent change monitoring to tell us where cities are changing, and where OpenStreetMap is out-of-date. By overlaying this data over high-res imagery and analyzing it against a minutely updating OpenStreetMap replication, we can detect, in fine detail, where a city has changed, and where that change requires a mapper’s attention. Urchn Tells You Where Cities Change, and Where OSM is Out-of-date is Saturday, October 6, at 4:30pm — 4:50pm in Room A.
• We aim is to develop “AI-Assist” tools that will empower existing mappers rather than replace them. Drew will discuss the AI-Assist toolbox we proposed last year at SotMUS 2017, and share the new plugin we built for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s Tasking Manager, which uses AI to help mappers visualize where infrastructure is most under-mapped. The tool works by autonomously detecting building and road infrastructure from satellite imagery, subtracting the known infrastructure stored in OpenStreetMap, and presenting the difference to mappers to help prioritize their efforts. Building AI-Assisted Mapping Tools: Progress And Lessons Learned is Saturday, October 6, at 1:00pm — 1:20pm in Room B.
• OpenStreetMap’s goal has always focused on maintaining an accurate map but hasn’t prioritized date accuracy for when features are added/removed. Development Seed’s solution to mapping changes over time in OpenStreetMap was to create our very own OSM instance. I’ll present osm-seed, a new approach to quickly set up the OpenStreetMap ecosystem on your own infrastructure. Historical Change Mapping Using OSM as a Platform is Friday, October 5, at 4:00pm — 4:20pm in Room B.

Hope to catch you at the conference this weekend! Hit up Drew, Derek, or me on Twitter.