Firstly I want to thank mappers who had put their deliberate effort in creating and improving the data in Visakhapatnam. The road network in the most of the areas is almost mapped and there are few missing roads. As Bing aerial Imagery, Esri world imagery, DigitalGlobe Imagery looks solid, we picked them as resources for the mapping according to the updated imagery. I appreciate Martha Leena, Chanda Teresa, Naga Bhavana and Iqhra Aiman for teaming up with me for this Mapping campaign. As an initial phase we’d like to concentrate on the Visakhapatnam division

Pic credits: Deccan Chronicle

We made a plan to map the features in the following order, so that we can concentrate on particular feature and improve that.

• Align the roads and create the complete road network according to updated imagery.
• Improve the building coverage all over the Visakhapatnam.
• Do Mapillary drives with the help of local community in the Visakhapatnam and try to achieve a - complete Mapillary coverage.
• Adding road names,Point of interests,amenities and other map features using Mapillary resource we collected.

Changeset comment: #Improving the roads and buildings in the Visakhapatnam
Source: Bing aerial Imagery, Esri world imagery, DigitalGlobe Imagery

Note: The above plan is just for our team to maintain consistency in our campaign, so that we can track the features we are adding and for smooth journey of mapping.

I request all the community members to join us. Looking forward for the suggestions and improvements. We would like to continue this and try to make OpenStreetMap better in Visakhapatnam.

On the occasion of World Malaria Day today, lets join to celebrate the successful efforts of mappers worldwide who have traced nearly 1.7 million buildings and 200k Kms of roads into OpenStreetMap that will help health workers eradicate malaria in various developing nations. The visualization of the project created by Mapbox is here. This vast amount of data was added in under 9 months by thousands of volunteer contributors of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) in collaboration with Zambia’s Ministry of Health, PATH, Tableau foundation, Digital Globe and Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Progress

Stats from OSM analytics

• The Campaign under Zambia’s ministry of health successfully mapped buildings in Zambia. Total 78 projects have been completed regarding Malaria mapping in Zambia.

• The elimination Malaria campaign under Clinton health access initiative is still in progress.

• The community has been passionate and active in knocking off the tasks by mapping the buildings in Zimbabwe.

Project comparison from Missing maps

Mapbox

• Mapbox along with community contributed to Visualize No Malaria by validating the HOT tasks.

• We are also working closely with community in mapping buildings in Zimbabwe under Malaria elimination program.

• Katelyn and Laura from Clinton health access initiate kindly gave us all the information we needed about the Malaria elimination program. The link for the presentation from them can be found here

How can you contribute?

A lot more projects are going to come under eliminate Malaria program and mappers are welcomed to give their valuable contribution through mapping. You can check the status of the projects here.

Let’s join hands to eradicate Malaria through mapping!

ఓపెన్ స్ట్రీట్ మ్యాప్ జియోవీక్ భాగంగా ఈ బాలల దినోత్సవముకి మా మ్యాప్ బాక్స్ తరపున పాఠశాలకి వెళ్లి 6వ తరగతి విద్యార్థులకి జియోగ్రఫీ నేర్పించాలనుకున్నాం. నాగశెట్టి హళ్లి కన్నడ గవర్నమెంట్ పాఠశాలలో ఈ కార్యక్రమం చేపట్టాలని నిశ్చయించుకున్నాం. నవంబర్ 12వ తేదీన ఆ పాఠశాల యాజమాన్య అనుమతితో మూడు గంటల సేపు పిల్లలకి జియోగ్రఫీ గురుంచి ఆసక్తికరమైన విషయాలు నేర్పించాం.

ఖండాలు, మహా సముద్రాల పేర్లు , ప్రపంచ మరియు దేశ పటాలను చూపించి, వాటిలో నగరాలను గుర్తించడం వంటివి నేర్పించాం. పిల్లల చలాకీతనం, చురుకుతనం మమ్మల్ని ఎంతగానో అబ్బురపరిచింది. గ్లోబ్ యొక్క ప్రాముఖ్యతను, దిక్కులు వల్ల ఉపయోగాలను వివరించాం. వారికి ఇష్టమైన ప్రదేశాలను అడిగి వాటిని బోర్డు పై అతికించిన ప్రపంచం మరియు దేశ పటిమలో గుర్తించమని చెప్పాము.

ప్రతి ఒక్క విద్యార్థిని వారి ఇంటి నుంచి పాఠశాలకి గల దారి, దారిలో ఉండే పరిసరాలు కాగితం మీద బొమ్మగా వేయమన్నాం. అందరు చక్కని ప్రతిభ కనబర్చారు. ఆ తర్వాత విద్యార్థి గీసిన బొమ్మను వాళ్ళతోనే తరగతి అందరికి వివరంగా చెప్పించాం. దీని ద్వారా వాళ్ళ ఆత్మ విశ్వాసం ఎంతో పెరిగింది. అలాగే మ్యాప్ యొక్క లాభాలు కూడా తెలుసుకున్నారు. కార్యక్రమంలో భాగంగా నిర్వహించబడ్డ పోటీలలో విద్యార్థులకు బహుమతులు బహుకరించాము.

ఏళ్ళ క్రితం నాటిన విత్తనం ఎలా మహా వృక్షం అయ్యి మానవాళికి ఉపయోగపడుతుందో, పిల్లలో కూడా చిన్నతనంలో మనం పెంచిన సామాజిక విలువలే వాళ్ళని ఒక గొప్ప వ్యక్తులుగా తీర్చిదిద్దుతాయి. చిన్నతనం నుండే జియోగ్రఫీ మీద ఆసక్తి, మక్కువ పెంచగలిగితే భవిష్యత్తులో ఓపెన్ స్ట్రీట్ మ్యాప్ని మరింత ఉన్నత స్థాయికి తీసుకెళ్తారని మా ప్రగాఢ నమ్మకం. ఆంధ్ర ప్రదేశ్ విద్యార్ధులకు కూడా ఓపెన్ స్ట్రీట్ మ్యాప్ మీద అవగాహనా పెంచి ఇలాంటి కార్యక్రమాలు చేపట్టి మన దేశ అభివృద్ధి లో భాగం అవ్వాలని కమ్యూనిటీని కోరుకుంటున్నాము.

Visakhapatnam is my hometown, it is the largest city (in area) in Andhra Pradesh. It is called the City of Destiny.

View of the sunrise in the beach makes my city pretty special from many other cities. One must experience the panoramic sea view from Kailasagiri Hills ropeway. It’s really awesome and will be your most memorable moment. This city always stands among top in natural scenery. Recently, India signed agreements for developing smart cities and I’m glad that my hometown was one among them.

Sunrise over Bay of Bengal at Ramakrishna beach in Visakhapatnam. Photo by Srichakra Pranav.

People enjoy a cable car ride at Kailasagiri Rope Way in Visakhapatnam. Photo from Deccan Chronicle.

When I came to know about OpenStreetMap and it’s crowdsourcing, I feel that I should contribute being a citizen of this city. An updated map will help anybody who want to know more about my city and I am happy that I am part of it. I mapped the region around the Ramnagar. Though it was well mapped, I concentrated on adding point of interests (POIs), missing buildings, streets. I also spotted some errors which I fixed. This made my hometown in OpenStreetMap better.

Before mapping:

By following mapping guides using JOSM the mapping journey was effortless and thrilling.

These are what I added: - missing POIs, - buildings and streets, - amenities.

After mapping:

During the mapping I learned the following:

• Ensure that the correct tag was used. There are lot of tags in OpenStreetMap and we should always verify if we used the correct.

• Maintain consistency of coverage. As much as possible, we should trace each and every building in a particular area (if visible in imagery). This ensures that the data doesn’t have gaps.

• Maintain quality of tracing. In the case of buildings, we should make sure that the outline location is at the base of the building according to the guidelines in the wiki.

Being a gourmand I always search for tasty and delicious food. Definitely that experience helped me to mark more restaurants, where they were not mapped before. I also mapped few amenities and shops which helps to explore more about my city.

It was fun and exciting to map my hometown. Apart of that, I also feel responsible to make sure the map is accurate and free of errors. I will continue mapping my hometown by adding more valuable data.

As we all are aware of that working in the open community will always give the feeling as working with family, where we can express our views , ideas and experiences. As an enthusiastic mapper, I just want to share my experience of working with OSM & JOSM. Though I have experience with mapping , but I’m green horn to this OSM. So I have started to learn everything about the OSM. Open street map is a user friendly website ,where we can contribute our mapping skills to map our home town or any place based on the knowledge of particular place. That is the basic environment, where the simple tools are designed to work and map the buildings, roads etc. These tools are more flexible in nature and bit interesting to work. There are also video tutorials and notes that helps us to get inhabit with the OSM. These tutorials helps us to understand basic techniques of mapping in the OSM. The mapping in OSM in an voluntary act where our mappings will helps some people around the world. It is directly used by the users. So every mapper should be careful while mapping. There should be no scope for errors. So I too mapped some area in my home town which is familiar to me through OSM. I am also attaching the work on my home town as well.As life is all about series of excitements, which you have to taste each and everything, I have come across the working on OSM with JOSM. Surely I can say that it’s best part of my learning career. After a long time I really felt challenging and exciting working with JOSM. It took nearly four days for understanding the each and every aspect in the software. Right from installation part to uploading process, I thoroughly enjoyed working the JOSM. It was software with great and user friendly interface. I had referred many sites and links for the working on JOSM. Gone through many videos for the procedure of mapping using JOSM. I was really fascinated by the filter option which is very interesting. Felt that there should be more snap shots and videos on the splitting process and also tagging. Really it was a great experience from working with JOSM. Its robust nature and shortcuts for many tools makes mapping more comfortable and interesting.

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