As a contributor to OpenStreetMap, one thing I’ve been wondering recently is what sort of map data should we collect for the UK, now that the coverage has already got good. Since OpenStreetMap generally has great coverage of the UK, when you’re out and about with a printed-out map and a pen, it’s very rare that you can find much significant that isn’t mapped already - sometimes a new street or a missing church. You could pour your time into mapping increasingly obscure things, whatever you’re interested in. But what would be the most useful things to map in the UK, over the coming year? Things that are not just interesting to map but could be practically useful to people? Some thoughts:

• Addresses. I kind of don’t like mentioning this, because I find it boring to map addresses, and I’d much rather that the UK address data magically appeared from some big open-data source. But addresses are obviously really useful for so many things: routing, looking up shops, etc. Coincidentally, Simon Poole (chair of OSM Foundation) also says address collection is the thing we need, for OSM in general not just UK.
• Postcodes. In the UK postcodes are really important for satnav routing etc. For some reason I suspect that collecting postcodes could be less mind-numbing as collecting addresses, but just as useful. See Jerry’s blog about UK postcodes in OSM for an analysis of where we are with postcodes… about 3% of them. As he says, we need to do better than this - so how best to collect them?
• Footpaths. Really important for planning walking routes, whether in the city or the countryside. We also need to mark when footpaths have steps or are otherwise no good for wheelchairs/prams. (It’s also handy to know when footpaths are full-blown rights of way, or just “permissive” access.) In his speech at State Of The Map 2013, Peter Eastern mentioned that they estimated UK footpath data was still pretty incomplete. I often use OSM for planning walking routes - it has loads of footpaths that no other services have, but I do still often go walking somewhere and find new footpaths that aren’t in there yet. I don’t know how we could specifically push for more footpath mapping - all I will say is please help us and map walking routes :)

Some notes on other things which I’m not sure how vital they are:

• Buildings. I know when we’ve been doing London mapping meet-ups, Harry Wood has mentioned that OSM’s buildings coverage for London is rather patchy. You can see it on the map - there are pockets full of buildings mapped, and large pockets with none. But… is this a bad thing? What would we want buildings mapped for? I know they’re useful in fancy 3D map renderings, but for more practical purposes…? I’m guessing it’s not that crucial, though it might relate a bit to the address mapping.
• Shops. It’s great to have shops, restaurants, pubs and other local businesses in OSM. Once you start mapping these, though, you notice there’s quite a rapid turnover - your high street probably gains/loses a shop every 3 months or so, at a wild guess. So this data is useful, but it’s less permanent than all the other stuff I’ve mentioned so far. I’d suggest there’s no point having a big push to map every shop in every high street, we just need to let the momentum build to a point where that happens under its own steam.
• Postboxes. Again Jerry has a detailed breakdown, and says we need to map them more. Plus Robert Whittaker has some data mining tools about postbox completeness. On the other hand, is it really that urgent to map postboxes? It doesn’t feel anywhere near as critical as mapping addresses, walking routes, etc. The only use case I can think of is “where’s the nearest postbox?” which is rarely a critical matter.
• GPX traces. After MapBox published their beautiful rainbow GPS map tiles which provide a lovely way to see the GPS traces contributed by the community, I noticed at least two villages where there were basically zero traces uploaded. Are GPS traces important to UK mapping? The coverage of the aerial imagery is good, and generally quite well GPS-aligned, so… do we need more GPS traces around the UK? I genuinely don’t know, and would be interested to find out either way.
• Grit bins. Something I noticed a couple of winters ago - it would be really handy to have every grit bin mapped: one day, when it’s freezing cold outside, all the grit bins are hidden under a foot of snow, and you need to clear a driveway, it could be really handy. That’s just one little thing that I don’t think anyone has particularly focussed on, so a little call out - please map amenity=grit_bin when you see them!

I’d be grateful for any feedback on the thoughts above, including other things that could be priorities. Just one UK mapper’s perspective.

Originally posted on my own blog