OpenSeaMap - the free nautical chart

Markus Bärlocher and Team, OpenSeaMap

Details about the talk:
Introduction
OpenSeaMap is made to map the 71% of the world that is "blue". We are happy to have such a wide-ranging test area in order to make the best use of OSM: GUI-editor based on a consistent data scheme, multiple cross applications like weather charts and Wiki-port-pilot, easy downloadable and usable offline-maps, navigation tools, to incorporate the third dimension for water depth and bathymetry, involving new user groups like sailors, divers, surfers, cooperation with research institutions, etc. etc.

GUI Editor for OSM
A new SeaMark editor is being developed to enable a wider range of nautical map features to be input into the OSM database. This JOSM Plugin presents a panel with a number of tabbed panes, each for qualitatively different types of features. Within each tab, the data entry is made as simple as possible using button fields, drop-down menus and text boxes. The buttons are emblazoned with symbols familiar to mariners with mouse hover textual tips for fuller descriptions. As features are added to the seamark being edited, the composite symbol that will be rendered on OpenSeaMap is displayed in the panel. Upon clicking "Save" all the necessary tags within the "seamark:" namespace are generated, thus relieving the user of the need to learn the complexities of the (IHO S-57 based) tagging scheme.

Import of Lights
A large (public domain) database in PDF format has been transposed and imported into the OSM database using a Perl script. The 50,000 nautical lights are described in a international standard code and have been transformed into the OpenSeaMap human-readable OSM tags. Problems that had to be solved: syntactic and semantic errors, different local reference systems, inaccurate positions. As there was no possibility of automatically merging the imported lights with the existing 2000 man_made=lighthouse, this was done by crowd sourcing.

Visions
OpenSeaMap is driven from a lot of visions. I would like to introduce to you the most promising ones in five minutes.

Details about the speaker:
Initiator of OpenSeaMap

in professional life:
Organization Development, Quality Management, Sailing Teacher

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