Things never seem to go as smoothly as you plan.

Shortly after I announced the "TopOSM US West Coast" map here, my web host decided that they had to move my files to a different server. Although I had a fairly large number of files on that account, this should be a pretty straightforward operation. Or so I thought.

Instead of first copying the files, and then change the DNS records to point toposm.com to the new server, they apparently thought it was a good idea to do it the other way around. After a week (and several support calls/emails) many of the files still weren't there. Closer to two weeks now, I've given up on them ever fixing it and I've started to manually find and upload the missing data (which may take a while - we're talking *many* gigabytes of map tiles).

Anyway, with that rant, I can happily say that things are now mostly working on toposm.com, including the (experimental) US West coast, at:

http://toposm.com/usw/

Check it out! More things are coming...

Good news for the people on the US west coast - especially fans of topographic maps: I just released TopOSM for Washington, Oregon, California and most of Nevada.

http://toposm.com/usw/

It's still somewhat experimental. A few map sections are missing or incomplete, there are issues with hydrography (lakes, rivers etc) in some areas, and there are other minor graphical issues. And my hosting provider still seems to block you temporarily if you zoom/pan around too much too quickly (presumably because all those map tiles create a lot of requests in a very short time). All in all, however, I think it's good enough to be useful.

The US west coast map is mostly a proof-of-concept test rendering to try out my work on creating arbitrarily-sized TopOSM maps using topography data from the USGS NED and hydrography from the NHD. With the exception of the minor issues mentioned above, it appears to be working. This is an important step toward the long-term goal of providing a complete TopOSM map for the United States (and perhaps eventually the rest of the world).

I also updated the TopOSM page on the OSM wiki with a better description of the project and examples of the TopOSM map style and features, at:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TopOSM

EDIT: Of course, shortly after posting this, toposm.com goes down. As it turns out, my hosting provider decided to "migrate my account to a different server". Apparently this means that my domain "will be down for up to 72 hours". As if I didn't have enough reasons already to look for better hosting...

While work on TopOSM (http://toposm.com) has been somewhat slow recently for various reasons, there has been some important progress that I wanted to share.

Currently I'm attempting to create a TopOSM-style map for the entire United States. While that may seem almost trivial, since two states are already finished, I can assure you that it is not.

The first step, which is, hopefully, complete, has been to gather all of the required data. In addition to OSM data for most map features, I've been using the USGS National Elevation Dataset to generate hillshading and contour lines. I recently received the approximately 600 GB large 1 and 1/3 arc-second NED data for the entire United States, plus several other interesting datasets. Additionally, I have received the National Hydrography Dataset - a detailed dataset containing rivers, lakes, wetlands and other hydrographic features - for the entire United States. The latter is (slowly) being imported into OSM, by the way. I really owe the helpful people at the USGS a big thanks for providing me with these!

The fact that these data sets are very large make them at least an order of magnitude more difficult to work with than what I've previously encountered. Things that should work just don't. There are countless cases where large data files have to be split and processed sequentially because of memory limitations, disk space or just plain bugs or limitations in the software. Once everything works, the project will require a massive amount of CPU time and disk space to render. That's a later problem, however, and it's a job that can be distributed if necessary.

At this point, I have an almost working set of scripts to process all of these different data sources and finally render map tiles. There are plenty of bugs left to work out and many needed improvements, but at least it's moving forward. I'll post further updates and examples here as the work progresses.

While I've had less time than usual to spend on TopOSM lately (due to me, and my servers, moving), I just finished re-rendering Colorado with new, fresh data from planet.osm, as well as a few bugfixes thrown in. Among the latter are that ski lifts, aerial tramways and other "aerialways" are now rendered on the map, and that I fixed the bug with disappearing unpaved roads/tracks. As usual, you can check the update at http://toposm.com/co/ Enjoy!

It took longer than I thought, but I've finally released TopOSM (my OSM-based topographic map project) for the state of Colorado.

TopOSM-CO has a few differences from the previous TopOSM-MA, such as:

* Color-by-elevation in base layer.

* Contour lines and hillshading generated from the National Elevation Dataset.

* Hydrography (lakes, rivers, wetlands etc) from National Hydrography Dataset.

* The hillshading, contour lines and map features are on separate layers. Use the layer switcher (top right "+") to toggle.

You'll find it at:

http://toposm.com/co/

It's been a while since I posted anything new here... but that doesn't mean I've been resting. Today I updated TopOSM - my OSM-based topo map project - with a few nice new features:

I created a Python script to generate map legend HTML snippets - complete with images - from mapnik description files and a short description file that specify what features to include. You can see the result at http://toposm.com/ma clicking on the "Show/Hide Legend" at the bottom right. Legends are specific to the current zoom level, so they will refresh when zooming in and out.

I also added elevation labels for contour lines. The only issue is that the data from MassGIS (where the contours come from) is in meters (3 meter interval) and my map is entirely in ft, so the values look a bit funky sometimes. Not much I can do about that, though...

Lots of minor other improvements too. There's a full changelog http://toposm.com/changelog.html

As always, the map is at http://toposm.com/

As part of my project to ensure that all commuter rail in Massachusetts is in OpenStreetMap, I've now finished the first part: All lines originating from Boston's South Station are now there. These include the Greenbush line, Plymouth line, Kingston line, Middleborough/Lakeville line, Providence line, Stoughton line, Franklin line, Needham line, Framingham/Worcester line as well as some related Amtrak.

Most of these lines were not in the OSM database at all, and had to be added, along with stations, road bridges etc. Existing lines still had to be cleaned up significantly. Additionally, I fixed some of the issues around Boston's North and South stations.

Next up are the lines from Boston's North Station.

As if I didn't have enough other things to do, I started adding missing/broken commuter rail lines in Massachusetts.

Today, I was able to finish the trunk commuter rail corridor between Boston's South Station and Braintree, as well as the full length of the (relatively new) Greenbush line. I also cleaned up the worst railroad mess at Boston's North Station.

While waiting for a long TopOSM map tile rendering to finish, I decided to finish part 1 of my project of cleaning up the airports in Massachusetts: Ensuring that all airports large enough to have a non-numerical FAA designator are complete and tagged according to conventions.

Beyond memory (I've flown into many of them), I use primarily the Yahoo imagery, the FAA Airport/Facility Directory and, on occasion, FAA airport diagrams to ensure that they are correct.

Airports finished so far are: Barre - Tanner/Hiller (8B5), Bedford/Hanscom Field (BED), Beverly Municipal (BVD), Boston Logan (BOS), Chatham Municipal (CQX), Falmouth/Cape Cod (FMH), Falmouth Airpark (5B6), Fitchburg Municipal (FIT), Gardner Municipal (GDM), Great Barrington/Koladza (GBR), Hyannis (HYA), Lawrence Municipal (LWM), Marshfield/Harlow Field (GHG), Nantucket (ACK), New Bedford (EWB), North Adams (AQW), Norwood Memorial (OWD), Orange Municipal (ORE), Pittsfield Municipal (PSF), Plymouth Municipal (PYM), Provincetown Municipal (PVC), Springfield/Westover (CEF), Taunton/King (TAN), Martha's Vineyard (MVY), Westfield/Springfield Barnes (BAF) and Worcester (ORH).

Many of these did not have runways, taxiways and ramp area, and some were duplicated - probably due to some large data import. This should improve the situation somewhat.

Next round will be the minor airports. Stay tuned...

The OSM based topo map project ("TopOSM") that I've been working on for a while was recently announced on the talk-us mailing list, and I got some good feedback.

The map can be found at http://toposm.com/

It was also picked up by some blogs and news, such as:

http://vector1media.com/spatialsustain/developer-creates-beautiful-massachusetts-map.html

Additionally, I created a wiki page with a description of how the map was created, including the scripts and style definitions used:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TopOSM

It's still work in progress, so I'll keep improving it until I'm either satisfied or bored to death. :)

Working on Massachusetts airports tonight, I added and/or fixed some more airports near me, including New Bedford (EWB), Falmouth Airpark (5B6) and Cape Cod Marston Mills (2B1).

I hope that eventually someone will perform a much-needed import of water features from a suitable US or state-level data source (such as TIGER or, in my case, MassGIS).

For my personal OSM data based projects, I usually add the MassGIS 1:25,000 Hydrography line and polygon data sets, which are fairly good and could probably be used as basis for an import of Massachusetts water features.

For now, lacking the patience of waiting, I traced all lakes and reservoirs in Wompatuck State Park (Massachusetts, US) from the Yahoo imagery.

On a side note, this was my first time using multipolygon relations in OSM (for the islands). They seem to work fine in JOSM.

Bare Cove is making progress: I traced the rest of the roads in the park today, added the new ones to OSM and fixed some miscellaneous issues. There's been a lot of new development in and around the park lately, so the MassGIS/TIGER based data is often out of date.

What's left is mainly adding the names of the park roads that are named and, probably later this summer, adding the park trails.

I started fixing Bare Cove Park, Hingham, MA, US today - primarily ensuring that the park roads are correct, parking lots and other features are included and barriers (gates etc) are in place.

I only had time to do the northern part of the park, so this has to be continued another day.

I noticed that many of the smaller airports in eastern Massachusetts (and probably elsewhere - I didn't check) are missing. Equipped with the Yahoo! imagery and a recent A/FD (Airport/Facility Directory), I started adding some of the ones I frequent most: Marshfield and Plymouth. This project is to be continued...

I'm almost done adding/correcting all the park roads and trails in Wompatuck State Park, MA, US, based on the large amount of GPS data I collected during the summer of 2008.

Like many other recreational areas, Wompy was split into several pieces from the MassGIS/TIGER import, with the only tags differing being TIGER-related ID numbers and the like. To top it off, all of the common nodes were duplicated or, in some cases, triple. With some JOSM trickery, I fixed all these issues and could also update the park border to its current extent in one of the corners.

Today's project on my way home from work: Tracing the paved roads in Great Esker Park, Weymouth, MA, US, since they were missing altogether in the OSM db. Everything went well, and it should show up on the slippy map in a few days or so.

I uploaded a large batch of GPS data from my survey of Wompatuck State Park (Massachusetts, US) during the summer of 2008. This data contains multiple high-density traces from all paved roads and all trails in the park, except closed areas.

I'm planning to use this data for some well-needed cleanup of the park. OSM (probably based on TIGER data) is wildly inaccurate in this area at this point (just like, it seems, all other online mapping services).

http://openstreetmap.org/user/Ahlzen/traces/315939