# **2023 11 10-12 Report OSM BE @ State of the Map Europe in Blue Point, Antwerp**

###### tags: `events osm be`


Conference website: https://stateofthemap.eu/

The **Belgian OSM-community** was present with a big delegation. Several members were also active as a crew.

**Present OSM BE members**: Thierry Jiménez, Joost Schouppe (speaker & crew), Jonathan Beliën (crew), Ben Abelshausen (organisor), Thibault Molleman (crew), Pierre Parmentier, Seppe Santens, Julien Minet (speaker), Pieter Vander Vennet, Michaël Dierick, ... more?
**Present OSM BE community**: Eleanor Dennerman (crew), Philippe Casteleyn, Marjan Van de Kauter (TomTom & crew), ... more?

# Friday 10/11

# Saturday 11/11
## From BE to EU: can European Local chapters work together and learn from each other?


[Workshop presented by Joost](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/from-belgium-to-europe-can-european-local-chapters-work-together-and-learn-from-each-other)

comment Marjan Van Cauter (TomTom): **"I saw these SotM-EU pictures and feel like this should be the new tagline for OpenStreetMap Belgium"**

**Corporate membership program**


**Road Completion project**

* Edoardo Neerhut from Mapillary/Meta promised more camera's for the [OSM Belgium camera grant program](https://openstreetmap.be/en/2023/10/07/european-camera-grant.html).

## Does OpenStreetMap Need a Trustmark?
[Talk bij Stefan Keller](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/does-openstreetmap-need-a-trustmark)

**3 improvement points:**
1) Completeness
2) Reliability
3) Accessibility

**Recommendations to authorities:**

## A hiking map created by the Club Alpino Italiano - Parma Section

[Talk by Marco Barbieri](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/a-hiking-map-created-by-the-club-alpino-italiano-parma-section), a professional cartographer at https://webmapp.it/, who makes the printed hiking maps for Club Alpino Italiano. The toolset for this used to be all open source:
* PostGIS to store the OSM data
* GDAL and Blender for hillshading and contour lines
* QGIS to put it all together

But Marco has switched to proprietary solutions: the combination of Adobe Illustrator and the Avenza MaPublisher plugin.

OSM data were used for:
- water
- boundaries
- road and hiking trail network
OSM was not used for the rendering of landcover.

Marco showed some panoramic maps with Blender hillshading that were really stunning.

There's also an [online map](https://sentieri.caiparma.it/), that shows a photo (on Wikimedia Commons) for each signpost.

## The Art of OpenStreetMap
[Talk by Gregory Marler](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/the-art-of-openstreetmap)
Cool example: [OSM on fabric](https://www.nikkigunn.com/soft-cities)
A [lasercut OSM artwork](https://en.osm.town/@Limaginaire/111392058428809175) from 'a while ago' was dug up by Seppe. Something quite similar (lasercut OSM coasters) was [mentioned on Mastodon](https://mapsaregreat.com/laser/coasters.html) as well.

## Collecting street level pictures with centimetric geolocation at low cost
[Talk by Antoine Riche](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/collecting-street-level-pictures-with-centimetric-geolocation-at-low-cost)
Open source software and hardware to make centimeter precision possible for geolocalisation. We should compare this to the [Flepos service of the Flemish governement](https://www.vlaanderen.be/digitaal-vlaanderen/onze-oplossingen/flepos-centimeternauwkeurige-positiebepaling). If this is fairly easy to set up / use, it would be interesting. However, the benefits of centimeter precision might not be that big.

## OSM in Belgian train stations
[Talk by Julien Minet](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/osm-in-belgian-train-stations-welcome-on-board)

[Presentation](https://cyclone.champs-libres.be/s/j6QdnbSwDobZTf8)

Provide information to the travelers about the accessibility of the railway platforms for bikes, in a dedicated route planner [BikeOnTrain Beta](https://bikeontrain.belgiantrain.be/
)

## Insights into building your community through storytelling
[Talk by Courtney Williamson](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/how-to-be-an-osm-ambassador-insights-into-building-your-community-through-storytelling):

**What is a story?**
1) What is the problem?
2) Who made it?
3) What are the interesting details?
4) What's the happy outcome?

Do you want to stay in your own bubble or get out?
***Test your story with somebody who doesn't know***

***Share images of people doing something*** (or till a certain extend graphs) instead of text or objects

Share not only stories about mapper of the month, but also about **user of the month**

## Panoramax: the full FLOSS alternative for your ground level imagery [(Full slides)](https://forum.geocommuns.fr/uploads/short-url/mYoTJyIFcNgbhR1XdFbeZC2k4Y.pdf)
Fully open source (and soon federated) software stack for hosting ground level imagery similar to Mapillary. It's designed to be modular, for example, the blurring API is separate and could be swapped out if you prefer to use a different system. IGN France has switched to using Panoramax for [hosting their own imagery](https://panoramax.ign.fr/) (different licence from the OSM FR Panoramax instance. One not compatible with OSM). IGN FR has a budget of €540k for the project with multiple full-time developers working on it, [more info](https://forum.openstreetmap.fr/t/panoramax-pour-lign-cest-go/10401). '[Geovisio](https://gitlab.com/geovisio)' is the software stack that is used to run a 'Panoramax' instance. There are private Panoramax instances with imagery that can't be shared, but that use the same stack because it's user-friendly.
All the images are published as STAC (a standard used normally for aerial imagery, but also works for ground level), so it's easy to use in existing STAC scripts/programs.
[OSM FR's instance](https://panoramax.ign.fr/) is running a server using all second hand parts except for the SSD's. The cost totalled at 3000 euros. The server is located in a datacenter somewhere (I think they got the space for nearly free).
The server had 14 cores, don't remember which exact CPU's it was. It also had 2 GTX 1070's to do the graphics aspects (blurring and object detection).
One of us (iirc) did ask if it was possible for us to upload to their instance, but they were against that idea. In the sense that: yes, we can upload a couple batches as a test, but ultimatly each chapter (or region) is supposed to have it's own instance, which will then be able to federate with other instances.
For blurring: they mentioned when the user uploads images, they can choose if they want an 'unblur' ability or not. It was kind off vague how it worked. But from what I understand:
If a detection of a face/licenseplate had a low confidence level, then that section of the image would be stored but in some kind of encrypted way that it was only possible for the original uploader to unblur it. it is stored, but encrypted so that the instance admin can't even see it. This was mentioned to some privacy department somewhere and they really liked how the system worked and saw no problems with it.
Christian also mentioned that all the EXIF data in the images will be stored and for the blurring: only the sections of the image where blurring happens, is where some compression might happen. Any other part of the image stays perfecly like the original. (So the osmbe street imagery archive will be useful, since we'll have higher quality than if we scraped it from Mapillary)
They had done some training for traffic signs, could detect 120 different signs, specifically trained on French imagery. They use a platform (not built into Geovisio/Panoramax to be clear) for collectively working on labelling of imagery for training.
They are okay with providing free support to people trying to setup their own instance BUT they won't even do hosting for others, because the whole point is that everybody sets up their own instances and then they can be federated together. Federation is very early days.
At the end of SOTM EU, there was a vote on what was the best session and [the Panoramax session won, by a decent margin](https://mapstodon.space/@panoramax/111398476136368709).

## miscellaneous

* fun fact: this is Steve Coast, founder of OSM in ... 2004 (!)

* OSM BE puzzle

* Short informal exchange with **Bruno De Lat** working for [Gim](https://www.gim.be/en), ***Smart Geo Insights***
They are producing their own dataset called **BelMap** in which they try to provide standardized products for the whole of Belgium, combining datasets from Flanders, BXL and Walloon region (using a lot of FME for that). On top of that, they use object detection techniques on aerial imagery or on Cyclomedia images for the swimming pools, solar panels ...
* A representative of Toerisme Vlaanderen met the maker of https://knooppuntnet.be/ (who was also present) and saw the merits of using the tool to compare the official node network data from the provinces with the OSM data.

# Sunday 12/11
## OpenStreetMap and Overture: The case for collaboration
[Talk by Marc Prioleau](https://stateofthemap.eu/program/openstreetmap-and-overture-the-case-for-collaboration). Electricity was in the air, but the discussion was not as heated as some might have expected. Two things that I (Seppe) take home from the discussion:
* There's still a lot of work for the corporate world joined in the Overture Foundation to communicate with the OSM community in a meaningful and valuable way. It's very clear the values and the mentality of those two worlds are very different. As Mike Harrell from TomTom said on Saturday: Overture is lead by a group of executive directors from the corporate world that have no idea how to run a non-profit (paraphrased).
* OSM is a movement, but also an ecosystem of many different actors and tools. A lot of relatively small companies have set up their business around OSM. Now that big tech is stepping in, there's a risk that these smaller players will not be able to survive and this could have a big impact on other parts in the ecosystem.

## Closing session
* in the maps contest, the winner was a "forbidden map" of Turkey, which apparently is illegal according to Turkish law. The author remained anonymous, so the prize went to the runner-up.
* the prize for the best presentation went to [Panoramax](https://panoramax.fr/). This is at the least a project to keep an eye on (and maybe a project to participate in?)