There is always a milestone waiting for everyone, and one of them was meant for me. A voyage that taught me several tools that can be used for validation and some that would help with mapping. We also had a lot more sessions with aerial images, mobile data collection apps, and other things.

Pre-Journey of DQI:

It was a lovely sensation to be noticed and called for the intern interview. Ralph and Becky were there to guide us. I couldn’t believe it till the mail arrived informing me of my selection and subsequent processing. From a total of 1008 applications from 81 different countries, representing the country of highest peak was an incredible achievement that I could never have imagined. We had a kickoff for the internship after a week or two, and I had an amazing voyage of friendship, professionalism, passion, and future.

Journey of HOT_DQI_2022

The three months’ journey with fellows from different nations was quite interesting. A bit of their languages, their culture, tradition, their mapping career and other opinions were magical and all these were possible because of the ‘Coffee Chat Session’ we had together.

Week 1 and 2

The week included basic and advanced ID Editor and JOSM training with numerous plugins, which has actually helped me with quality mapping and a bit faster mapping. The most intriguing thing I learned was about OpenCycleMap, multipolygons, and tall building mapping. I’m still surprised at the mapping of the tall buildings. I had a hunch I was a mapper, but there were many holes in my knowledge, and now that I’ve started learning about mapping from the first week, I am feeling a bit confident about mapping. The most important session was with Samson who walked us with the effective session of Top 10 Data Quality Aspects. We were so much excited for the further weeks to come.

Week 3

We finally had an actual session for what we were supposed to be doing. We had now begun training on Validation tools and methodologies. For proper validation of the mapped tasks, an inline validation tool, building level labels, missing maps, map paint styles, and so on were employed. We had a fantastic Coordinate system session on the JOSM.

What could be better than getting to know the HOT team members and having a fantastic session with them? We also had a number of sessions with them. A very effective communication. Personally, I am grateful to them for meeting us and inspiring us to pursue future attempts in the field of mapping.

Week 4

This week was about the Quality Assurance tools OSM Inspector, Keep Right and OSMose. These tools were widely used as Quality Assurance tools. We interns were lucky enough to learn about all these tools. My personal opinion might bend towards working with OSM Inspector as it is quite easy to handle and handy in use.

Week 5

Meeting with the regional hubs for Eastern and Southern Africa, Western and Northern Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean was the main focus of this past week. The many hubs are actively involved in their projects for community development. All of the hubs were operating beautifully and had their principles followed. We were all interns, and we were having coffee discussions with teams while Becky also arranged for us to have coffee chats with DQI graduates and other HOT staff.

Week 6

This week was more about Disaster Ninja and OSMcha. Disaster Ninja uses data from the OSM for analysis purposes. The Disaster Ninja is a responsive online map that achieves the goal of our analysis and produces the best outcome. Regarding the OSMcha, it is a fantastic approach to learn about your own edits as well as those of others and get to know their work. the contribution they made, as well as the changes and deletions they made. You can acquire whatever you require from OSMcha.

Week 7

This week will always be useful, and this one is a continual learning experience. Yes, I’m referring to the QGIS program. We need to visually represent and visualize the data we produce. For this aim, we had a lesson on the fundamentals of QGIS, and the following week we gained deeper understanding of QGIS (Exports and layouts with QGIS). We interns had also participated in the discussion about the OSM Community Channels later that week.

Week 8

Having heard about the Mapillary but unknown about it was troublesome for me personally. However, I had the opportunity to learn about the Mapillary in Week 8 of the internship. The island of data is called Mapillary. It is a crowdsourced data source, and the key benefit we receive from Mapillary is the ability to filter the data in accordance with our preferences.

The hashtags, and the double hashtags, use of brackets and then another bracket for the link, well I am talking about the OSM diary. We had learned about writing the diary too and not to forget that THIS IS MY FIRST OSM DIARY. This journal is yet another product of the intern who helped me learn and shape who I am now.

Week 9

It was dedicated to Overpass, Umap, MapRoulette and Map paint. The Overpass and Umap are also connected in some way. The Overapass is used to filter and get the data, and Umap assists in visualizing the data in the map by being customized to meet our needs. These high-quality tools are highly helpful in the fields of data visualization, validation, and mapping.

Week 10

The Field data collecting tool and the Field data cleaning tool were the focus of this past week. We discovered the Openrefine and ODK tools during our tenth week of the internship. The open source mobile data gathering is known as the ODK. When online, the acquired data can be updated and delivered to the server even though it is now offline. One of the better tools for gathering data in the field is this. The Openrefine utility is particularly effective at cleaning up messed-up data and converting its format from one type to another. The Openrefine cleaning tool also allows for reversing and undoing. On further learning, we had an interesting session on RapiD.

Week 11

The internship’s final week had just passed. We held sessions on Third Pass Validation that week. Another important mass validation tool is third pass validation, which is probably utilized by those who get exhausted late at night. The third pass is a fantastic tool since it speeds up tile-to-tile confirmation. Although it is not for beginners, specialists can make considerable use of it. Using the third pass validation, projects, mapathons, and quality assurance can be evaluated. According to my personal space, the third pass is very helpful for mapping roads, rivers, and streams because the nodes need to be connected. When a large number of tiles are validated at once, the connections can be guaranteed because checking each tile individually does not verify the ending and joining of nodes. Additionally, the structures on the corners of the edge are double mapped or left, thus this may also be controlled by third pass validation. Also, Mapbox was also learned during the final week of the internship. We built the custom web maps using the Mapbox.

Realization

As I progress through the internship, from the first week to the last, I can clearly picture myself as a mapper who has learned a great deal about OSM-related technologies, however I like to believe that I still have a great deal of work to do. The changes that have occurred in me over the past three months are astounding. I balanced my college work, my internship, and my personal time. Those internship friends are amazing. We’ll never forget some of our Mentor Becky’s inspiring statements. Also, Arnalie had helped and motivated me during the internship. A heartful gratitude to her. Dinar who is really a great person has always helped me to complete the task that I have faced difficulties. Still, whenever I feel hesitated, I call out for him. Thanks to him for his lovely effort. No words could define Can, he is mentor of mine for lifetime and Geoffrey is the nicest guy who had helped me for my personal things as well. I admire all the HOT members for their selfless efforts.

Acknowledgement

Thank you HOT for providing such an immense platform for the mappers to evolve. I would also like to thank the key persons who have always been with us during the internship. This DQI journey was immense and was very valuable. Becky Candy, Ralph Aytoun, Arnalie Vicario, Can Unen, Geoffrey Kateregga, Dinar Adiatma. They deserve special recognition because they helped us develop throughout the entire internship. Attending such fantastic workshops would not have been feasible without them. A hearty thank you as well to all of my other interns. We all worked hard to get to this point, and I am grateful that we can all communicate well.