OpenStreetMap editing using ID

By Mikel Maron, 24 September 2013

GeoJournalism Handbook, Global

• OpenStreetMap
• journalists
• Journalism
• mapping
• GeoJournalism
• editing

This tutorial is an adaptation of the EcoLab's GeoJournalism Handbook. The original material can be found here

You can easily edit the OpenStreetMap base map that you find at www.openstreetmap.org. And while doing it you will become part of the community of thousands of mappers worldwide who are creating the map together.

Introduction

What if your area isn’t mapped? Or you want to add a feature, like a waterway or lake? You can easily edit the OpenStreetMap base map that you find at www.openstreetmap.org. And while doing it you will become part of the community of thousands of mappers worldwide who are creating the map together. You’ll also support open, free use of map data by using OSM instead of a commercial product (like Google). This will become important when you need to actually do something with your map that’s not permitted by Google (see Downloading map information from OpenStreetMap). It’s also important because you can edit OSM immediately – no need to wait for edits to go through a corporate review process. You can then start using your map right away. Of course, if you create something incorrect, the thousands of users worldwide will monitor and remove it. This is called a Wiki – and works something like Wikipedia to keep the maps accurate.

First Steps

Go to www.openstreetmap.org. First, click Login in the righthand upper corner and either register yourself or log in if you’re registered already. You have to have an account in order to edit the map.

Then, center the map image on the place you wish to edit. You can use the Search box on the left hand side to find your area, or use the zoom button to zoom out then slide the map to your desired location, and zoom back in.

Then click the small arrow to the right of the word Edit above the map. There will be a drop down menu. Select “edit with iD”.

You can always do the Walkthrough in order to see how to use this editing software. Or, click “Edit Now” and follow this tutorial!

Editing your map

You may be told to “Zoom in to Edit the Map” if you’re not sufficiently zoomed in – just click there. Once the software displays all the mapped features on top of a nice satellite image provided by Bing, you can see a hand replace the arrow of the mouse pointer. Then you can grab and slide the map around to make sure it’s in the right place.

Share your map

After you’ve saved, you should let everyone know by sharing on Facebook or Twitter! Or just go see your edit in the live map.

Here is your changeset or any changes you’ve made:

What if you made a mistake? I’ve actually named this river myself so the name is incorrect. Well, someone might come along and delete my edit. Eventually that will in fact happen. But I can also remove the name myself.

I just go back to the window where I was editing the map (it should still be open) and click the river again to open the editing window. I click where it says All tags to open the tag list. Next to the names, I click the small trash can and the names disappear. Don’t forget to Save!

Conclusion

That’s all! For much more information on mapping in iD please see the Help section. Look for the small box on the upper left hand side of the map and click:

Mikel Maron (@mikel) is a programmer and geographer working for impactful community and humanitarian uses of open source and open data. He is co-founder of Ground Truth Initiative, and of the Map Kibera project. He’s also Founder and President of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, having helped to facilitate the OSM response to the Haiti earthquake. He’s travelled widely, organizing projects in India, Palestine, Egypt, Swaziland, and elsewhere. Previously to this, he co-founded Mapufacture and worked on collaborative platforms, geoweb standards, and various applications, with a wide spectrum of organizations from UN and government agencies to anarchist hacker collectives.