Alexey Klyanin: “Until 2018, I used OSM only as a substrate in my blog”

Alexey Klyanin is a designer from Ufa who is fond of tourism and photography. Not so long ago, using data from OpenStreetMap and personal zeal, he drew a real geographical map of the South Urals. How he did it, what tools he used for this, and why he can’t stop when he starts mapping in OSM — he told all this in an interview.

- When and how did you meet OpenStreetMap?

- I found out about the project a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly when. Until 2018, I used OSM only as a substrate in my blog , on which I displayed GPS tracks and hiking routes. But two years ago everything changed dramatically: I decided to make one cartographic project and bought a good Garmin navigator for this. He brought me to the world of OSM.

- What happened?

- The card that came with it was not old, but gradually I began to find more and more inaccuracies on it, mostly not enough roads. So I started looking for more relevant and detailed maps. I came across a maptourist.org site maintained by ValentinAKon which the daily map builds for Garmin from OSM data are laid out. By the way, in the future he helped me a lot in setting up and running the card generator, when I decided to collect them on my computer. This is a very important point that the cards were made based on OSM. This meant that now that I saw that something was wrong on the map, I could fix it myself and immediately make a new map for the navigator. I wanted my maps to be the most accurate, and I started mapping in OSM.

- Was it hard to start?

- No. I studied everything about making changes to OSM, downloaded the JOSM editorand on the GPS track he drew the missing road. This was my very first edit. And all would be nothing, you could close the editor and forget about OSM until the next problem, but it appeared right away - I saw in a satellite image that there are so many interesting objects around this road that for some reason are not on the map. I drew a stream, extended it to the river, noted a hay meadow, another one nearby, and between them a forest road and it stretches far into the forest ... and all this must be painted! It was then that I began to actively engage in the refinement of OSM.

- Continue to map?

- Of course, there are still “white spots” in places that interest me, so I see no reason to stop. But basically, I draw the locations of my future campaigns.



- How do you do that? Share secrets?

- The process of preparing for hiking in terms of cartography is as follows: I open the area of ​​interest and specify the objects that are important to me, most often - streams, forests and roads. The very next day, my edits are in the daily upload of data from OSM from Geofabrika. After downloading the desired region, I run the scripts to generate maps for Garmin. So I get the most recent and most relevant map of the territory I need.

The mapping process is incredibly addictive. And it delights, first of all, by the fact that the data you added can almost immediately be used for practical purposes. When you know that in a couple of days you will go along this path or go along this road, you want to draw these places as much as possible. But when you start to draw one, everything else stretches for it. You draw a forest, but noticed a stream. You start, before you lose, draw it. Reached the source, noted. Went down. While leading to the river, I found about a dozen branches - they also have to be drawn. After that forest roads with fords are pulled up through these streams and something else ... So gradually you find yourself much further than you planned, but to stop and stop painting is already almost impossible.

- Not so long ago you diddetailed map of the South Urals. It is based on data from OSM. Tell us about it.

- Two years ago, I took part in a project to publish the book of Boris Prokhorov "To the heights of the South Urals." It has a lot of references to geographical objects, so we needed our own map of this territory. Since by that time I already had experience with OSM data, I decided to try to make it based on them.

For the first time, it turned out not bad , but, of course, there were some mistakes. Basically, they concerned my carelessness when analyzing OSM data. Suppose there are two similar roads, each of which leads to a specific village. In reality, they are the same in quality, but in OSM one of them is marked with a tag that has a lower status, therefore this road was not displayed during rendering.

A book reprint is being prepared. It will be supplemented with a number of pictures, and the map will be updated, on which there will no longer be such annoying errors.



“How did you make the map?” What tools?

- It all starts in the JOSM editor. First, I determine for myself the data structure that I plan to use. For example, rivers, roads, cities and towns. Then I determine the borders of the map. Within them, I individually pump out the groups of objects I need from OSM. Received data using the maperitive program, and styles written for these tasks, I translate into svg vector format. Next, I open these files in Adobe Illustrator and collect the map by layers. After I edit the layers, adjust the colors, the thickness of the lines, I rule something with my hands, as practice has shown, almost everything requires such attention. Because, for example, the name of the river may overlap with something.

Part of the data, such as forest, rivers, etc. goes to the substrate, which is rasterized. If everything is left in the vectors, then the map will be drawn so slowly that it physically will not work. In fact, it turns out that there is a main file with data that can be promptly edited. These are mainly the names of settlements, rivers, lakes, peaks. Raster files are linked to it, which are generated from other vector layers, such as a road network, rivers, forest, etc. When they are in a raster, they do not interfere with the drawing of the entire map, but you can edit their source and generate the rasters again . It turns out quite conveniently and efficiently. If anyone is interested, then I recorded the process of preparing the map on video .

- How long does it take to work on one such card?

- I worked on the map for about a year, but you need to understand that I did it occasionally, that is, not all this time I drew it. If you draw only a map, then according to my estimates, it will take at least a couple of weeks.



- What other data was used besides OSM?

- Via maperitive generated elevation contours from SRTM files . When I drew everything, I found an excellent open data set with forest geometry . If you have to make a new card, I will use it. For my map, its accuracy is enough, but at the same time there will be all forests, not just those drawn in OSM.

- How difficult was it to work with data from OSM? Did you quickly understand the tags and architecture of the project?

“Pretty simple.” Any issues with tags are resolved through a search on the documentation on WikiOSM , everything is described in detail in it.

- How would you characterize the RU-OSM community?

- When I wrote scripts for generating maps for Garmin, I actively re-read the forum and found the necessary solutions. That was about two years ago. Later I went there, but there is not particularly active communication. Now I actually do not go to the forum. All the questions that helped to resolve there were related to the further use of the received data from OSM. For drawing a map, information in WikiOSM is enough. Chat in Telegram - mainly for chatter. Useless, but often on topic. There is still a channel of Chelyabinsk osmer- in it sometimes it is possible to quickly discuss with a neighbor in the region some points related to drawing a map - conveniently.

- Why do I need to edit the map in OSM? What would you say to a person who is outside the project.

- There can be many scenarios. For example, there is a territory where some kind of competition takes place. You can draw a detailed map of this location yourself, even everyone will be perfectly oriented on it, but in the end this data will be lost. And you can do the same thing, but based on OSM. Then this data will be saved and useful to someone else.
Also, an abstract experienced tourist who knows the places in detail can clarify the map in OSM. Of course, this is a superfluous job for a tourist, but he will pass on his knowledge to the rest. I believe that knowledge should work and help others, and not lie dead weight. These are the scenarios of entering the project that are close to me, although in reality there are much more of them.

- What do you like about OSM? I do not like? What would you do better?

- Hard to tell. As a tool, it is quite good for my scenario. For others, there are most likely certain things that can be done much better. Perhaps it would be cool if the OSM tools based on artificial intelligence, with which you could quickly draw huge objects of the same type, such as forests, rivers or fields. In the meantime, you have to draw them with your hands and this is a very time-consuming task. I even bought a graphics tablet for these purposes. Otherwise, it is impossible to do it efficiently and accurately. But still, in the 21st century, I don’t want to draw forests myself for 4 hours a day, but to make robots do it. I heard that there are already certain developments in this direction, but I want it to become a solution “out of the box”, accessible to many.

- Use OSM for work?

- Sometimes it happens that you need to pull out any data. For example, the outline of the borders of a specific region. That's all.

- Maybe you have some kind of story related to OSM?

- Once I decided before the orienteering competitions to draw in detail the venue. I did it ahead of time - in early August, when the competitions themselves were scheduled for mid-October. I thought that the maps in Maps.Me would have been updated by this time, and instead of emptiness, everyone would have a detailed map. As a result, this did not happen, the maps were updated only in November, although the site says that this happens "once a month." Such a fiasco, bro.

- What do you say or wish to our readers?

- Do not be lazy to make efforts to share the accumulated knowledge with the world!

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Communication of Russian OpenStreetMap participants is in the Telegram chat room and on the forum .
There are also groups on social networks VKontakte , Facebook , but they mainly publish news.

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Previous interviews: Maxim Dubinin , Alexander Pavlyuk , Sergey Zaichenko , George Potapov , Vladimir Marshinin , Evgeny Usvitsky , wowik , SviMik , Kirill Bondarenko , Artem Svetlov , Sergey Sinitsyn , Natalya Kozlovskaya , Victor Vyalichkin , Ivan aka BANO.notIT , Anton Belichkov , Elena Balashova , Ilya Zverev , Timofey Subbotin , Sergey Golubev .