Organised Editing/Activities/LocalImpactGovernanceActivity Zambia

Project Specific Mapping Notes

• Zambia follows the East Africa Tagging Guidelines when tagging highways, please refer to them here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines

• Please do not map paths, focus only on highways that are wide enough for a four-wheeled vehicle to pass. Please be very selective when mapping highways

• Imagery: Please use Maxar Premium imagery (Beta), which is currently set as the default imagery for mapping. You may switch to BING, ESRI or others for comparison but Maxar has been chosen for this area due to it being the most recent imagery.

• Some squares will already be partially or fully mapped, map in more if needed or fix up the existing mapping, or submit it with "Yes" selected in response to "Is this task completely mapped?" if it is already complete.

• Existing mapping does not match imagery - This happens in some areas, when different imagery sources are used. If this occurs, check to make sure you are using Maxar imagery. If necessary, adjust existing mapping to align with Maxar, then continue mapping.

• Alternative imagery is better - Sometimes due to shadows, alignment and other factors it may be easier to trace features using other imagery. That is fine as long as you adjust for any offset. When finished please leave a comment in the Tasking Manager when you mark done/stop mapping to say you used alternative imagery. See LearnOSM for detailed instructions on handling imagery offset, or Aerial Imagery & Alignment for adjusting in the iD editor.

Buildings

• Quick Tutorial: Buildings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLe6rjtgi0

• Please accurately outline all the buildings you can find. The outline should be for the full size of the building even if it is partly covered by trees in the imagery.

• Take care to not include the building shadow in the building outline.

• After tagging as a building, please leave all the 'Fields' empty - this information is added later by local mappers.

• After drawing the outline and tagging as a building, use the 'Q' key in the iD web editor to "square" the corners.

• Many buildings are very close, but do not actually touch each other, try to map them close to each other without letting them connect or share nodes with each other, roads or residential area outlines. In the iD web editor, holding down the "alt" key will keep nodes from "snapping" to each other and accidentally connecting.

• In the iD web editor, you will only have the option to tag new features as buildings, see below for editing or adding other features. Only if you have personal knowledge of a building, please add that information to the building, like the type of building (hospital, school, gas station, etc) or a name if it has one.

Roads and Paths

• Quick Tutorial: Roads - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZWur1YG1k

• Please map roads and major paths as completely as possible by connecting them to the main road networks where ever possible.

• Many minor Zambian roads tend to meander and become ‘braided’ where they encounter an obstacle such as a wet patch. Please only map the central ‘braid’ in this situation rather than all the side routes.

• Very short segments that do not connect to anything should not be mapped.

• Short segments of a road or path that you cannot see through the trees but seem very likely to exist should be mapped to keep the road complete

• Try and map a little beyond your task square so the person who maps the task square next to yours can easily connect them.

• Always connect roads to other roads where they meet and never end roads on Residential area polygon edges.

You will most often use the following "Road Features":

• Minor/Unclassified Road - This is for roads that connect small villages and settlements

• Residential Road - These are roads that are in settlements but only are used for access to houses and buildings.

• Unmaintained Track Road - This is for roads that only lead to farm fields or forests. They do not connect settlements or residential areas.

• Path - This is for small paths that are usually used by people on foot or 2 wheeled vehicles. They may or may not connect settlements or lead to farm fields. Only map the major paths that connect to settlements or other roads.

General Mapping Notes

• Be as precise as possible - This takes a little bit of practice, but following a road closely or the outline of a building carefully really makes a difference in the quality of map data produced. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to mapping. Zooming in close helps.
• Changeset comments - These are filled in with some default information but you should always add what you mapped. For example "added buildings and roads" or "added in some waterways"
• It is ok to "split" task squares - Sometimes a task square will have a lot detailed settlement mapping. If you think it would help to make the task square smaller so the mapping could be finished in a more reasonable time, use the "split" link above the task square comment box.
• Personal knowledge - If you have local knowledge, that is incredibly valuable and any information you are 100% sure of you can add to the object you are mapping. Building names, health facilities, names of roads, etc, are all very valuable and the name= tag can be used to supply that information.
• If you have to stop mapping before you have mapped everything select "No" in response to the question "Is this task completely mapped?".
• You are making a real difference mapping - Every contribution matters in a real, tangible way. Mapping is not easy but know that your mapping is used by humanitarian organizations around the world every single day.