New Thailand sub-project: town surveys

I am currently travelling through Thailand for a longer time and sometimes take the time to do thorough surveys of the city / area I am visiting. However, on my travels, I only have a tiny netbook with me, so I want to avoid inputting the data myself but only supply the survey data for other openstreetmappers (in or interested in Thailand) to process.

Based on the answers I got here, the way to go seems to be to create a new sub-project of the Thailand mapping project and keep track of the status of the surveyed traces there.

Before I do this however, I would like to hear from you, the Thai mappers active in this forum, what you think of this idea and whether you would be interested in helping the project, specifically of course the part of processing the data into the map.

On the wiki page for this project we could also create a section for survey-requests. I might not stay the only one who will use this page to make survey data public to be processed by other mappers (just an idea).

Edit: Actually the only thing that keeps me from creating the project in the wiki right now is the question whether it should be created as a sub-project of Thailand at all and not as a global project.

Hi,

I appreciate you offer to supply more details to improve the OSM map of Thailand.

You could certainly upload the GPX tracks to OSM so we can trace roads from them (in areas where only landsat imagery exists) or use it to align aerial images in other places.

For your POI I have a bit mixed feelings. They don’t provide that much level of detail.
Have you thought of georeferenced pictures instead? It should save you from having to write down everything.
And it looks like you’re having problems to write Thai script. At least I have not seen anything on your example.

Based on your domain I guess you understand German. You can read a bit about Photo-Mapping here:
http://www.technologyblog.de/2012/01/geosetter-positionskorrektur-beim-photomapping-mit-openstreetmap/

Then just provide the pictures along with your GPS track. The picture should give enough information to identify what’s on it and to tag it. If needed take more than one picture.
I have thousands of such pictures. They are great to get details and also get the Thai script right.
Just make sure position if accurate and best use a camera which also saves compass information. You might check your smartphone. Maybe that’s already included. A dedicated camera like the Sony I’m using is certainly providing a higher picture quality making it easier to get clear images.

Here you see an example. Having the picture with direction it’s easy to read the sign and tag the road accordingly.

You could store the photos for example in a google drive and just list folder names. So work load split could be done on a folder level. My experience says that processing GPX tracks and pictures takes minimum 2 minutes per picture. You ususally map some surrounding things from aerials as well. Don’t make each workpackage too big. I would say 50 images each is fine.

Stephan

I normally write down the Thai script names as well directly on the survey. I got quite fast with the smartphone keyboard now. Of course a photo would be easier (for me though, someone else will still have to type it), I might try this out as well.
It works with my smartphone but doesn’t work together with OruxMaps record track as well as it could.

So, I will start a wiki page with links to my previous tracks on this today. Feedback is appreciated :slight_smile:

P.S: My preference so far for Text-POIs comes from the thought that I want to make it as easy for the openstreetmapper who processes the data as possible because I really don’t know yet if anybody will volunteer at all. Having to type Thai letters from a photo is certainly not as easy, copying it from the text data on the other hand is. Also, keep in mind that Bing imagery (and internet/wikipedia) is available for the mapper, so for example a POI-waypoint stating “krungthai bank (with atm)” will be enough to derive the Thai name from it quite fast (copy&paste from wikipedia), faster than from a photo.

Okay, I opened the project now, linked on the Thailand project site but written generally. Check it out, I already uploaded 4 surveys :sunglasses:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Remote_Surveys

If you can type Thai Script, please include it in your GPX. It will enable more people to process it. Especially helpful for Street names where you can’t get the Thai writing that easy.

Any comments on the project page or the (quality of the) surveys?

I’d meant to comment earlier, but forgot. I looked at some of the surveys, but found that without having seen the places it’s quite difficult to edit with confidence. I think such notes would be much more useful as a reminder to the surveyor him/herself (probably to come back to later) than as instructions for other mappers who haven’t actually been there.