Hi, we are TomTom - let's exchange ideas

I can’t say that I see how a low resolution heat map of GPS traces — i.e., all GPS traffic from your data source compounded into a single image corresponding to your cells, similar to what Strava had — is a privacy concern for anyone as long as you exclude conflict zones (of which we obviously have none within our national borders). Could you explain this? Perhaps you need to talk to your privacy officer about this to obtain permission? You can reach them via privacy@tomtom.com.

We’re not asking for raw data linked to user accounts, we want to see the compound data to compare it with the mapped ways in order to help you pinpoint the issues with your analytical algorithm. As it stands we see a bunch of red cells, but no obvious clues as to what exactly is causing its error rating.

For reference, an example of what I mean by compound GPS heat map:

It matters how the data were collected, i.e. its legal conditions.

You basically sign away any and all rights to the positional data you generate to TomTom, so not much of a problem there. There’s a provision in their privacy policy that explicitly enables the above use. The data generated by TomTom users is a huge asset for TomTom, so they’ll make sure they own it.

If TomTom doesn’t want to show their source data, then Steve is either lying about this being about privacy (I don’t think he would do that though), or he’s just not up to speed with the exact legal conditions (i.e., someone erroneously told him that this was not possible due to privacy issues).

In either case, I would prefer a straight answer. If TomTom is not willing to share their data for the betterment of OpenStreetMap where TomTom benefits from the resulting free high quality map data, then that is fine, but please be upfront about your motives and limitations.

Still on Overschie Rotterdam, https://mapmetrics-world.innovation.tomtom-global.com/#?mapSource=OSM&metric=median_count&z=18&lat=51.939092&lon=4.429593&ds=OSM202107&ds2=None&mapSource2=OSM

On the possible mopeds on the Kleinpolderkade: Did you see the tracks going from the A13 to the Lagebrug and vice-versa? I think the would not make sense because it is not really a through route (especially in the middle) and taking a parallel route via de Lugt will be faster.

On the one way streets in OSM on the West side of the A13 don’t agree with google and tomtom, I do not see a mismatch, can you give one? Is the problem not that people drive against the allow direction?

For Leeuwarden, Nobelweg, https://mapmetrics-world.innovation.tomtom-global.com/#?mapSource=OSM&metric=median_count&z=18&lat=53.182382&lon=5.758265&ds=OSM202107&ds2=None&mapSource2=OSM

That building(?) at the SE corner of the roundabout, is not a building (yet), it was grass and is now a construction area for a geothermal plant. It being full of vehicle traces does not make sense apart from construction traffic, but the you should see the track stop/start here. If that is not the case, where do these tracks typically start.stop?

For the G13 Hylaerderpaed, https://mapmetrics-world.innovation.tomtom-global.com/#?mapSource=OSM&metric=median_count&z=18&lat=53.169840&lon=5.724118&ds=OSM202107&ds2=None&mapSource2=OSM

I am not sure where you got the access gate from, but I see a cattle gird, see also barrier=cattle_grid. Cars are not possible on this G13 “optional bicycle path”, the cycle-way is on 1,5 meters wide and the bridge, apart from not being wide enough can very likely not carry the weight of car. Notice that mopeds are not allowed on a G13 so whatever you see on the cycle-path is there illegal. Question: What type of speeds do you see there?

For the military vliegbasis Leeuwarden, https://mapmetrics-world.innovation.tomtom-global.com/#?mapSource=OSM&metric=median_count&z=18&lat=53.222452&lon=5.766744&ds=OSM202107&ds2=None&mapSource2=OSM

The PDOK Luchtfoto Actueel Ortho HR (7,5 cm) Beeldmateriaal.nl shows there is a construction area here, so like for Leeuwarden, Nobelweg, is this just construction traffic?

I added that piece of road, it is 118 meters, is that the reason for a big error?

That is good feedback, I see the road has been meanwhile added.

Construction traffic once more?

Nothing puzzling, this is a 0.6 meter wide G13 cycle path, moped’s and mofa’s not allowed. So what you see is once more illegal traffic.
I think that for filtering out moped’s you better check if the traces go over OSM cycleways and if so it are very likely bicycles/mofa’s or mopeds.

Yes, good discussion. I hope you see that for the moment MapMetrics is not useful to update OSM.

Hi everyone,

We’re excited about your interest in MapMetrics. If you have any further related questions but cannot reach Steve through this forum, you can send your inquiries directly to his team at innovationteam@groups.tomtom.com.

Coming back to the projects that we originally proposed, I see that your community has already solved many of the issues in the non-closed polygon and charging station tag challenges. Thank you for that! We are happy to be working on the map together with you, and look forward to possible future collaborations.

Kind regards,

Marjan

Without giving my opinion on some alternatives mentioned, and without wanting to start a discussion on this either, I do understand why sharing the private GPS traces publicly is avoided. Imagine seeing a GPS trace starting at your married neighbors house and ending at the parking lot of a brothel ;). Sharing with(in) a company vs. the big public is a big difference.

Oh it goes without saying that we don’t want those. All data should be anonymized and stripped of identifying attributes. With heat maps it’s still possible that in areas with not quite as much traffic you can see that there is exactly one line repeatedly going from the house of a well-known vegan influencer to the butcher shop a block over, but it doesn’t tell you more than that, and as a user of TomTom’s services you’ve already opted in to agreeing to exactly that level of disclosure — i.e., you’ve signed away your expectation of privacy via their terms of use and the privacy policy.

TomTom pretending that this is about privacy is a bit of a red flag for me, because they explicitly tell their users upfront not to expect that level of privacy. This is more likely than not about preventing competitors from gaining access to such data. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

Besides, there are all sorts of tricks that could be employed by Steve’s team; like limiting the traces exposed to areas that lack ways on OSM, or only showing traces for red tiles. Both would enable mappers to improve those areas while limiting the exposure of TomTom’s corporate assets.

If I write anything close to that it is immediately removed from this forum. :smiley:

If you look on the “DKK Kadastralegrens V2” (enable layer OSM OK)
Then you see yellow “DKK Kadastralegrens” lines, these are recently changed ownership.
The railway levelcrossing is going to be changed. New path to the left then under the raillwaybridge.
http://mijndev.openstreetmap.nl/~allroads/NLOSMOK/OSMOKNL.html#map=18.60/53.1732/5.6001/0
yellow: wfs tag “typeGrensWaarde = Voorlopig” (provisory) after measured in “definitief” definitive.
This tag is a indication for changes.
Probably, likely, planning people or builders investigate this situation are going to that spot.

wfs https://data.overheid.nl/en/dataset/6593-kadastrale-kaart-v4
A map with these location is a indication, where data is changing. It is obvious that there is a new path to be created.

But this is only one red tile, speeding moped on cycleway past the building then across railwaycrossing? There are no red tiles futher on, the traces should be ongoing. Then I thought that is not the case.
Are these planning/construction people taking the farmers track left of the ditch to be more close the railway to do there job?
Or a planning/construction quad to some point.

The people who live in the house can use a moped, daily and likely they have a permit to use the cycleway G13, for them “not illegal”, then not past the building.

A partly trace would be handsome to make more reliable assumption.
Is the trace ongoing or a turn around at some point?

It is only one red tile.
Looks like it is not a ongoing activity on the cycleway.
Not ongoing speeding mopeds, speed pedelecs.

Good research, so again construction traffic and/or mopeds.

cyclists are likely not the problem, as MapMetrics is filtering on speed it are mopeds that are the problem.

I know some numbers for a straight solitary cyclepath and there the average speed of mopeds is ~45 km/h with 63 km/h being the V85, speed is not the way to filter out two-wheelers.

I had a look at OSM202110 and apart from mopeds, also water is a problem:

What is the problem here? The only road in this tile is a private service road

Summarizing, based on what I see, there are problems with:

  1. Cyclepaths

  2. Construction traffic

  3. Water

  4. People driving routes that are not allowed

  1. Cyclepaths could perhaps be solved by using two routers, one for cars and one for cyclists. As Steve said, “we route right now for cars” hence if you try to match a bike GPS trace to a graph maintained by a router for cars, you will get a red tile since highly probable transitions for cars are not as probable for bikes and vice versa. If a GPS trace has a higher confidence match with the bicycle router, discard the trace and do not publish it to MapMetrics.
  2. The impact of construction traffic could be reduced by looking at the amount of time covered by the trace. TomTom also has traffic data so knows what the average length of a traffic jam is in a certain area, if the trace exceeds this amount it is likely construction traffic working a day shift on a construction site.
  3. Water can be solved by excluding traces that are (partly) contained by water polygons.
  4. Could be solved by implementing another router that relaxes certain constraints. Some emergency services in NL use TomTom devices and will obviously break the law if needed. If the trace matches the graph maintained by a relaxed-constraint-car-router, the trace does at least not cover a missing road → perhaps such traces could be given a yellow tile, while missing roads can be assigned a red tile in MapMetrics?

Hi Marian/Steve/team,

I would like to see an open discussion so others can chime in and double work is prevented.

That said, could Steve/his team react on the questions/remarks earlier in this thread?

We agree that an open discussion is ideal and are looking into providing a centralized MapMetrics forum within OSM so that editors in all of the countries that MapMetrics covers can benefit from Q&A. We will be sure to keep you posted.

Could you ping Steve to answer the questions we’ve raised regarding access to the (anonymized and aggregated) data (i.e., heatmaps) that backs the tile analysis? You and Steve appear to be avoiding giving straight (or any) answers to some issues.

We understand, but unfortunately at the moment there is no capacity on the innovation team to follow up on this forum. We will let you know once there’s a platform facilitating open discussion on these MapMetrics-related topics, but in the meantime we advise you to send these questions to innovationteam@groups.tomtom.com.

What makes that email “works” but at the same time there is no capacity on the innovation team to follow up on this forum? That does not sound logical to me.

Not too many people are going to email them so that’s a time saver. Here on the forum there is question after question to be answered, which is not too unexpected as they are very limited on sharing any information that would turn this into something beneficial for both our use cases.
Strange that TomTom is reaching out to us and then kind of pull back…

TomTom was hoping for more enthousiasm? But this is what you get when you present an immature product to potential users/customers, hoping to sell. I’ve been there before in my geo IT job.

MarjanVan/Steve: if you’re not willing to engage with(in) the rest of(!) the OSM community here and be transparent/open regarding the current questions, I don’t think you can expect any engagement from us elsewhere (my €0,02).

Onderstaande nieuwsbericht zegt genoeg…

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/197428/tomtom-automatiseert-productie-digitale-kaarten-verder-en-schrapt-500-banen.html

“ Het bedrijf geeft niet aan welke extra bronnen nu worden aangesproken, of hoe het geautomatiseerde platform werkt. ”
OSM community als onbetaalde kaartmakers voor TomTom,
byebye maproulette