---
title: Grab's GlobalLogic OSM team edits in Thailand
description: Observations and Notes by volunteer evaluators from several Asia communities
tag: OSM-Asia
---

Grab operates in Southeast Asia, and their OpenStreetMap editing operations are contracted to GlobalLogic. They have conducted editing in several other countries in south-east Asia prior to their foray in Thailand. These never came un-noticed by locals and didnt't always have a great [start][0], but in time, developed into positive working relationship with these communities.

In December 2018, an [article][1] was published in TechCrunch that described the edits made by Grab's contractor, GlobalLogic, as "absolute disaster." This tickled the interest of some mappers from several Asian communities, and they agreed to conduct their own assessments of said edits in Thailand.

## Changeset assessments by volunteers

The following volunteers agreed to conduct their own indpendent assessments of the changesets made by acknowledged [team members][2] of GlobalLogic. These volunteers have extensive experience in OpenStreetMap, and are known to be active OSM advocates within their respective communities.

Reviewer | OSM username | Assessments
--- | --- | ---
ABROKWA, Kelvin | [Muzirian][4] | [Notes][5]
CHEN, DennisChen | [Supaplex][6] | [Notes][7]
DWIJANANTO, Adityo | [Adityo][8] | [Notes][9]
OLARIO, Erwin | [GOwin][10] | [Notes][11]
SAMBALE, Maning | [Maning][12] | [Notes][13]

The instruction to volunteers was to randomly select changesets using an OsmCha [filter][3] of un-reviewed changeseets of Grab's GlobalLogic team in Thailand, numbering about 7,000 edits. And to use OsmCha to verify said changesets, and leave comments on them to record observations, if necessary.

## Conclusion

As with any other countries with active mapping volunteers, the Thai mapping community is similarly lucky to have their very own active, diligent, and prolific mappers who make time to map their favorite neighbourhoods. We've frequently seen usernames which became familar after several changeset validation, and we kept seeing the same names again and again. Kudos to these contributors.

Overall, there is no substantive evidence to support the allegation of massive detrimental edits, or systematic errors by Grab's GlobalLogic OpenStreetMap editing team. The errors found appear to be isolated, and though there were unusual edits (that aren't necessarily bad), there are some bad edits that should have been caught by their internal Quality Assurance (QA) team - the onus of primary validation of their team edits should not be on the OSM community, but Grab's GlobalLogic editing team.

A few changesets were marked as bad, but none were considered critical. Those marked as bad should be immediately addressed by Grab's OSM team.

Some unusual behaviors were noticed:
* deleting road segments and re-adding them;
* redundantly adding `oneway=yes` to roundabouts;
* their JOSM settings appear some users use a different/edited source strings for the same imagery, instead of what's available by default from JOSM. These are unusual, but nothing major or critical.

There are instances of inconsistencies with imagery interpretation: tagging, use of various imagery and adjusting for offsets. The mappers' training and on-boarding process can improve in these areas, and all other mappers, ideally could have re-orientation to familiarize themselves with the issues raised.

The Grab's OSM team should look into supplementing their imagery source with Mapillary/OpenStreetCam imagery collected by the local community. They've been helpful to the validators in many instances during this validation effort. Their QA team should take advantage of those, as well.

This is not to say that the complaints from the local community are unsound - local knowledge trumps imagery interpretation - feedback from the community should always be considered, and investigated closer. Remote mapping, validation and on-the-ground validation play an important role in the mapping process. Grab can do better with engaging the local community, or communicating better whatever assistance or help they might need. Although, they should be wary of imposing these needs on the community.

Validating edits from organized editing activities is primarily a responsibility of the project initiators, and Grab's GlobalLogic OSM data team (as with any other organized editing effort) should be more mindful of edits made by mappers with local knowledge when the imagery shows something else (especially from trusted and prolific contributors) who have this advantage. If in doubt, communicate with the editors.

## Recommendations

* The internal Quality Assurance team can do better catching the issues we caught, and it may seem like a refresher course would be very helpful.
* Give current mapping team members a briefing about the issues identified by the individual assessors, and how to address them.
* Improve communications and engagement efforts with local mapping communities, to avoid misunderstanding.

---
:::warning
###### Revision notes

0. 2019-015 - Revised "Global Logic" string to "GlobalLogic"
0. 2019-019 - Added this section. Add link to Dennis' notes.
:::

---

[0]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/harrymahar/diary/43671
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/grab-maps-osm-thailand-southeast-asia/
[2]: https://github.com/GRABOSM/Grab-Data/blob/master/Grab%20Data%20Team
[3]: https://osmcha.mapbox.com/filters?aoi=739470d2-4cb5-4c40-93b8-205adc88f264
[4]: http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?muzirian
[5]: https://gist.github.com/muzirian/04804d765968b0e5764eb0e1213ef51f
[6]: http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Supaplex
[7]: https://gist.github.com/Supaplextw/95358e5aa732a9f7bfcb1893cec9ebf2#file-grab-review-in-thailand
[8]: http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?adityo
[9]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_rI7YuJ5_g8s6HrNUOqRFVoFDUyYxetW0nO1Fk6Fs7A/edit
[10]: http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?GOwin
[11]: https://gist.github.com/govvin/6c8c9df8106c667b6c28823131419d1e
[12]: http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?maning
[13]: https://gist.github.com/maning/61d9a1962454159b33ffa046bdeb092c