Mapping and improving map data in cities of Thailand

Objective: Grab team is going through some of the existing road geometries in the mentioned cities and will work on making improvements. We’ll be reviewing and mapping the following features: missing roads and unconnected roads.

Regions we are reviewing/mapping: Roi Et, Phrae, Uttaradit, Yala

Workflow: We’ll be following the same workflow as mentioned in our wiki - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Grab#Process_Flow

Validation: We’ll be following the validation guidelines mentioned in our wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Grab#Quality_Process

Changeset Comment: Mapping and improving road attributes: https://github.com/GRABOSM/Grab-Data/issues/49
Source: MAXAR – we would refer to others if need be.
All the edits will contain the tag import=grabremote as agreed with the Thailand community team.

Filter: None

Plugins: None

Edge cases: None at the moment, we’ll post it as a subsequent comment if need be.

Team involved: the Grab Data Team

Do reach out to us if you have any questions or suggestions on the same. Happy Mapping!

@jinalfoflia @corinag_grab I have been looking into past GrabOSM edits in Phrae Province where you plan a new mini-campaign.

I found out that at least 85 (EIGHTY-FIVE!) different GRABOSM mappers have done additional, and modifications in the small Phrae province in the last few years. 85!

Not only that, almost half of these mapper accounts do not work anymore for Grab so they will never respond to messages and changeset comments.

No wonder, how inconsistent and low quality are GrabOSM edits:

  • there is no way you can quality control the work of so many mappers
  • temporary workers will not care about quality and ignore changeset comments

This cannot go on, and your campaigns need to be suspended until we find better ground for quality control e.g.

restrict the number of dedicated mapper accounts province

Limiting the number of mappers will increase quality, and consistency across your edits.
Dedicated mappers within an area will ensure they can be reached by the local community.

prefix all GRABOSM user account with “grab_”

So that we can identify quickly between your organization’s users and the local community.
Facebook uses prefixes (RVR/LVR) for this purpose.

Please kindly comment on these proposals, or suggest any alternative solutions.

Some good points there @cmoffroad, perhaps when creating accounts, other than using the grab_ prefix they should use one email box so that if any comments come in it goes into a central email address and cleared.

@jinalfoflia inactive account seems to be a real issue, how is Grab dealing with it?

I would generally agree that “temporary workers will not care about quality and ignore changeset comments” I disagree with “there is no way you can quality control the work of so many mappers”

We do have large teams working in a precise manner all the time, in fact modern industries such as semiconductors, automotive, or even construction relies on on this. This is where a good process design with checks and balances built in comes in.

@Grab Could you come up with a way to quickly review edits? I’m thinking perhaps an overpass query that can be imported into JOSM for a quick review with incremented project id embedded in the hash?

Presumably you’re using something similar to this to review your edits? I think opening up the process in a standardized manner would be immensely useful as well.