Project Mapbox linters

[yuliyarazukevichus]

Introduction

Mapbox Linters is a division inside Mapbox that reviews errors with OSM data and fixes it where there’s the possibility for improving the road network, concentrating on road mistakes to improve map conditions. We get issues by an internal automated process made by our developers which is based on the open source tool OSMLint.

Types of Activity

The goal of the Mapbox Linters team is to improve OSM data by using the following linters:

• crossing_highways - adding\removing points of intersection of roads.
• impossible_angle - removing and aligning dragged nodes.
• impossible_oneways - editing one-way road junction without end.
• islands_highways - extension of the road which isn't connected with other roads.
• mixed_layer - editing objects with intersection and different layers.
• tr_excessive_roles_str / tr_invalid_role_tr / tr_missing_role_tr / tr_missing_type_restriction_tr - correction, removal and addition of from/via/to roles.
• roundabout-common-node - fixing incorrect geometry.
• roundabout-missed-name - applying tag name=/ref= to exiting/entering oneways of the roundabout

We use internal Mapbox data validation jobs that search OSM data for errors. The process is completely switched to automatic uploading and searching for data errors. Automation of the process was achieved with an internal algorithm which detects mistakes on OSM and divides these issues by categories we have. Our plan is to review the detected issues manually, and fix all invalid cases in OSM.

Link to the page with more detailed info about types of issues, how do we get them and how they can be viewed.

Geographical Scope

The Mapbox Linters initiative conducted for the following countries: Italy, France, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Slovak Republic, Ireland, Switzerland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Brazil, USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Portugal, Norway, Finland, Austria, Singapore, Romania, Slovenia, Australia.

Hashtags

All edits made by our team in this project have the hashtag #mapbox_linters. Editing Team All members of the Linters team went through the onboarding process before starting editing on OpenStreetMap and are familiar with the principles of editing. All team members can be found here: link.

Sources

For OpenStreetMap edits we use sources that are integrated in the OpenStreetMap tool:

• Satellite Imagery: Bing, Maxar, Esri etc.
• Street Level Imagery: Mapillary, Bing, KartaView
• Tiger Roads
• Source with ODbL license

For some OSM map edits Mapbox will use proprietary sources for support. These will typically be in situations where there is not sufficient evidence using the available sources in OSM editors. The proprietary sources will be ground-level imagery and GPS traces, collected by our drivers during testing.

Workflow

The processing of features goes by this way: at first we find sources for fixes (it can be searched through aerial photos or street level photos). We use only sources that are allowed in OSM ID. Then we choose a source with the best quality of the picture and the newest one. On chosen sources should be seen features that we want to map. Also we can watch OSM history to understand what changes were done with the feature, compare dates of changing.

Timeframe

This project is ongoing and will be continuously active without any time constraints.

Results

The results of our review made by our team in OpenStreetMap will be displayed quarterly in the /mapping repository in this project ticket.

Contact

We welcome feedback from local mappers as local knowledge always prevails. If you have any questions about a specific edit done by the Mapbox team or want to suggest some improvements in the editing process you can contact osm-edit-escalations@mapbox.com or post a comment in a changeset.

More information about team : Wiki page

[Natasha96-Zhouner]

We would like to notify everyone of minor changes to this project. Previously, the project used a separate tag for a separate country (for example, mbx_linters_usa, mbx_linters_it and etc), but now we decided to simplify this point and, for the convenience of tracking all the edits we made on this project, we created one tag, without specifying the country - #mapbox_linters.

Also in the "Linters" project we have additionally added two categories of errors related to roundabouts:

- roundabout-common-node - these are cases, where ways from/to roundabout connect in a single node. To-do: fixing incorrect geometry.

- roundabout-missed-name - cases, where there is a name / ref tag on the main road and no name / ref tag on oneways. To-do: applying tag name=/ref= to exiting/entering oneways of the roundabout.