Data Improvements in Belarus

[awisemanapple]

Task Description

This task outlines work to improve map data in Belarus. We plan to update and correct water features as we find them, and correct and improve land use and land cover polygons where needed, such as airports, national parks, forests, colleges and universities, and so on -- remove duplicates, correct the boundaries, fix incorrect tags and other similar things. We also plan to continue road network improvements.

Improvements that will be addressed include the following:

• Correcting road connectivity issues and network issues such as missing roads and alignment according to local and OSM guidelines
• Improving road classification consistency according to global and local policy
• Adding missing roads
• Correcting and updating water features
• Adding or correcting land use
• Other one-off fixes

Mapping Guidelines

The team will follow OSM and local policy, along with any other guidelines as appropriate. We also posted on the OSM Forum for Belarus to get feedback and suggestions.

For water features, the team will follow OSM coastline guidelines, waterways policy such as water and natural=water and local policy along with any other policy as appropriate.

Some water features are connected to lower level subnational administrative boundaries. In that case we will adjust the boundary with the coastline. These are not country boundaries, but things like place, district and county.

The team will use the imagery and data sources specified below for mapping in Belarus.

When in doubt, the team will use the existing tags and data which are used locally. The history in JOSM (ctrl-H) identifies what previous mappers added and their notes and/or explanations regarding changes made. This history can also show if a previous mapper has visited that area or has expert knowledge or sources.

Our team uses the hashtag #adt (for Apple Data Team) for our edits.

Area of Focus

Throughout the country.

Tools

The team will use JOSM for completing the task. JOSM has validation warnings for road networks and other possible issues that are important to prevent improper changes.

Sources

The team will use the imagery and data sources as available including:

• Maxar/DigitalGlobe Standard/Premium
• Bing imagery
• Mapbox imagery
• ESRI imagery
• HOT task imagery, if available
• Mapillary
• OpenStreetCam
• Pic4Carto
• Telenav's MissingRoads plugin and ImproveOSM
• Strava and OSM GPS traces
• OpenAerialMap around Minsk (as noted by @Komzpa )

The team will apply image offsets as needed.

Changeset Comments

The team will provide changeset comments that are in compliance with OSM changeset guidelines.

Error Detection

The team will check for errors visually and using JOSM validation warnings prior to committing the changeset.

In addition, the team will review its work in accordance with validation guidelines such as the OSM Wiki and LearnOSM.

How can you help

We have posted a number of MapRoulette challenges related to issues with the road network.

Contributors

• Data Team

MapRoulette

We have also posted MapRoulette challenges related to the road network: https://maproulette.org/browse/projects/38978

For more information

Our community lead is Teddy Ahlvin and our editing leads are Jon Westlake and Erica Olson.
To get in touch with Teddy, you can email or contact him via OSM. (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/LessThan3Nodes)
All of our leads can be reached via email.

OSM Wiki

[Komzpa]

For imagery, some spots in Minsk and around are on OpenAerialMap.

Please don't hesitate to join local chat, https://t.me/byosm - we're able to communicate in English too.

[tohaklim]

Mapillary has some coverage of the country as well, as you might've seen (not all of it useful though). Pic4Carto is great in theory, but rarely works for me, you could try Flickr as well.
The main issues are with OSM data itself being incomplete (hence rendering your import incomplete). Biggest gaps would be newer neighbourhoods/suburbs (usually already mapped in large cities) and rural areas (usually either crudely traced, not mapped or, being erroneously classified, not imported/updated.
PS: Some of the Apple Maps imagery (certainly in Hrodna) is quite fresh (July-August, DigitalGlobe?), but unfortunately is probably copyrighted.

[awisemanapple]

Hi @Komzpa @tohaklim, thanks for the suggestions! That's very helpful.

[awisemanapple]

@EUSkyDive thanks for the request! Sure, let me get started on that. It might take a little bit of time.

[BelarusianNerd]

Maps are getting worse and worse from version to version.

Here is the list of major issues:

1. Building numbers are missing across the country.
2. Duplicated labels for inhabited localities.
3. Incorrect mapping of the Minsk (city) and Minskaja voblasć (region). Minsk (city) is not a part of Minskaja voblasć (region).
4. Labels of these localities are displayed in different languages at the same time. Some of them in Belarusian, some in Russian, some use proper international names (Rules accepted by the local authorities and the UN) and also romanized names from Russian (which is not correct). Based on the local regulations names of the geographical objects are defined in the Belarusian language and Belarusian Latin alphabet (link to the instruction provided earlier).
5. For motorways, highways and roads an incorrect signs design is used.
6. Public transport stops are mostly missing even being available on the OSM.

[tohaklim]

1. I don't think this data comes from OSM in Apple Maps.
2. This is a result of internal AM issues, not OSM - don't think this is in scope of this repository, you might be better off using the Apple feedback website.
3. ditto
4. @awisemanapple this may become an issue down the line, as the local OSM community is expected to vote on changing the default name=* tag language to Belarusian. This will apply to most toponymics, so might impact your import workflow.
5. Again, this is internal to AM.
6. Public transport is also an internal database where OSM is not used

[awisemanapple]

@BelarusianNerd @tohaklim Thanks for the feedback! On 1., do you mean addresses or something else? For the others, providing feedback from in the Maps app would be helpful so we can route it to the right place. I can do the same thing if you can provide some examples. Via email might be easier, I am andrew_wiseman@apple.com

[BelarusianNerd]

@awisemanapple, yes I meant addresses. As for now address for the building contains almost everything (street, postal/ZIP code, city/town/village, region and country) except the number.
Sure, I or another person we discussed these issues with will send you more detailed information. We tried to reach Apple Maps team via the Feedback Assistant and In-App reporting, but unfortunately, haven't seen any progress or feedback.