'OSM Mapper' for OpenStreetMap Contributors

I am just back from the amazing second State of the Map Conference in Limerick at the weekend where we showed our new free product, OSM Mapper, that allows contributors to OpenStreetMap to monitor and improve the quality of data in their areas. We got the conference delegates to try it out and they seemed to be pleased. The few initial snags are now resolved and the servers are holding up well so it is time to open it up more widely.

Since the conference we have expanded the area available from the UK to the whole of Europe, and have moved from a weekly to a daily update. The next challenge is worldwide coverage which we will do as soon as we are confident with Europe. Btw, the new version of Potlatch that went live today means that it is now possible to click on the 'Potlatch' link from ITO Mapper and enter Potlatch with the relevant feature already selected.

Using this product you can set up one or more areas to monitor and analyse in a variety of ways. You can even establish RSS feeds to get alerts when other people make changes within areas of interest. You can also generate beautiful images to download and post anywhere as (CC-by-SA).

You can show the main contributors to the map using a view colour-coded by contributor. This image shows the top contributors in the Paris area.



You can also see how long it has been since different parts of an area have been modified over various time frames. The next image shows changes in Berlin in the past month.



You can focus on a particular aspect of the data, eg railways, waterways, schools etc. This map shows the various railway systems in London.



You can subscribe to an RSS feed for recent changes to railways in London. As the feed contains GeoRSS data, you can also view the feed in an appropriate viewer like Google Maps.

With filters, you can select features that are missing data. For example, this image shows a breakdown of unnamed residential roads in North London.



You can check for changes in an area by other people. This image below shows edits made in Ipswich by people other than PeterIto.



An RSS feed is also available to monitor the area above for changes by people other than PeterIto.

This image shows where we currently offer coverage (and also shows recent edits in the area).



Why not subscribe to our product, check out a tutorial slide presentation, or look at various images on Flickr?

There are a number of current limitations that will removed in due course: The coverage is Europe only. There is an size limit when selecting areas; this is large enough to cover most European cities - however the ability to generate images of very large areas, such as whole countries, is restricted due to the high processing times involved. Updates are normally daily and are unlikely to become more frequent just yet. It doesn't pay any attention to point features, only ways, so it is good for analysing roads and parks etc but not letter boxes and bicycle parks. We intend to offer functionality to allow people to share areas; you can do that now by sharing URLs, but we will implement a more formal approach in due course. Finally, deleted features are not picked up in the RSS feeds so you won't be warned if someone has deleted a feature, however big it is! Stay tuned to this blog for information about future enhancements.

Please give us feedback by commenting on this post, using the comment link at the bottom of each page in the product, or emailing support 'at' itoworld.com.

NaPTAN Management Product - Major Upgrade

At ITO, we have just added a lot of new functionality to our on-line NaPTAN management service.

Firstly we have added a 'product' bar at the top of the page which allows you to access your profile, to log out and to change which product you are accessing in preparation for the release of new products soon. In the near future we will be adding additional products and users will be able to switch between different products by clicking on the appropriate one on the left of the title bar.

Within NaPTAN we have added the ability for regional managers to add additional tests to the ones being tracked (warnings) from the list of observations. Regional managers will be enabling appropriate ones for their region after discussion with individual areas in the coming weeks.

We have opened up access to any person with a legitimate reason to use the NaPTAN product. To invite someone go to the 'NaPTAN' main page (by clicking on naptan in the left menu, or by clicking on NaPTAN in the product bar) and click on 'invite users'. Then just type in the user's email address and a brief introductory message. Legitimate users include council officers, contractors and volunteers who have a role to play improving NaPTAN data.

You can also now subscribe to a region or area summary page now using an RSS reader and we have added a 'watch' facility; click on the watch link at the top of locality, stop and other pages and it will create a link to the page from your main NaPTAN page.

We have also made some adjustments to some of the newer tests in response to feedback.

The Story So Far

ITO has been busy for the past 18 months building a high quality on-line model of the UK's transport system, and has been working with data providers and data standards to improve the source data.

We are contracted to provide on-line data quality improvement services to the UK Department for Transport (DfT), every local transport authority in the UK and Traveline. We perform a range of consistency checks on a daily basis, and are currently implementing a whole raft of new tests on the UK's scheduled transport data, including tests on stop naming (there are nearly 400,000 bus stops in the UK and their names should conform to consistent conventions - they don't!), tests that all stops are correctly allocated into a hierarchy of places, and on the transport schedules themselves it highlight potential problems (missing stops, incorrect date ranges, conflicting descriptions and physically impossible timings).

We use Navteq road data, actively contribute to OpenStreetMap project and are in a research partnership with Ordnance Survey Research Labs.

We have worked on a number of key CEN data standards for the exchange of public transport data, including IFOPT (for the exchange of transport interchange data), SIRI (for the exchange of real time scheduled transport data), and we are on a DfT working party to define a data standard for cycling related infrastructure.

If you think that all sounds like hard work, then you would be right, but we now have access to a transport model for the UK with nearly every road and scheduled transport service (bus, rail metro, tram and ferry), and we also have increasing coverage of cycling facilities and have good working relationships with nearly all the UK transport data providers.

We are now in a strong position to provide analysis services to transport authorities and government to guide policy decisions and implementation, and to support effective two-way communication between authorities and the general public on transport matters.