Permission for using WiGLE tiles for contributing to OpenStreetMap
Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2020 12:16 pm
Dear admins,
I'm an OpenStreetMap map editor and have also contributed to WiGLE in the past. It is amazing how thorough coverage the WiGLE volunteers have managed to achieve since then.
I would like to offer a novel use case for your efforts that could potentially serve the community. Several software that we use to edit OpenStreetMap (mostly JOSM, iD and Vespucci) support adding imagery tile layers as a background.
For example, multiple parties have donated tiles that were filmed from satellites and airplanes providing us with global mapping coverage of various recency (Mapbox, Maxar, ESRI, Bing and some others). We also use high resolution aerial photographs made from kites or drones as a background to trace buildings, playgrounds or fences. We can use tiles donated by Strava that depicts paths that their hikers and cyclists follow to infer and/or add new footways and cycle paths.
I've discovered after looking at my own network collection logs that it is actually possible to contribute to OpenStreetMap based on that data:
1. If I find a wifi network near a restaurant with a matching name on OpenStreetMap, I can specify internet_access:ssid=RestaurantFree. This could serve both customers and a potential automated lifecycle monitoring solution in the future.
2. If I find a wifi network that has a name indicating a potential venue of public interest, but I can not find a matching object on OpenStreetMap nearby, I can start to investigate around that area either by doing web searches, conducting a survey or consulting photos to validate the existence of such an object.
If you could perhaps allow usage of WiGLE tiles in OpenStreetMap editor software as a background for the purpose of contributing to OpenStreetMap that would be a great service to the free community. All data in OpenStreetMap is licensed under ODbL 1.0.
On our side, it would be as simple as adding your TMS (I already have the URL), so no extra work should be necessary from your part:
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Maps#Listofsources
Best regards
I'm an OpenStreetMap map editor and have also contributed to WiGLE in the past. It is amazing how thorough coverage the WiGLE volunteers have managed to achieve since then.
I would like to offer a novel use case for your efforts that could potentially serve the community. Several software that we use to edit OpenStreetMap (mostly JOSM, iD and Vespucci) support adding imagery tile layers as a background.
For example, multiple parties have donated tiles that were filmed from satellites and airplanes providing us with global mapping coverage of various recency (Mapbox, Maxar, ESRI, Bing and some others). We also use high resolution aerial photographs made from kites or drones as a background to trace buildings, playgrounds or fences. We can use tiles donated by Strava that depicts paths that their hikers and cyclists follow to infer and/or add new footways and cycle paths.
I've discovered after looking at my own network collection logs that it is actually possible to contribute to OpenStreetMap based on that data:
1. If I find a wifi network near a restaurant with a matching name on OpenStreetMap, I can specify internet_access:ssid=RestaurantFree. This could serve both customers and a potential automated lifecycle monitoring solution in the future.
2. If I find a wifi network that has a name indicating a potential venue of public interest, but I can not find a matching object on OpenStreetMap nearby, I can start to investigate around that area either by doing web searches, conducting a survey or consulting photos to validate the existence of such an object.
If you could perhaps allow usage of WiGLE tiles in OpenStreetMap editor software as a background for the purpose of contributing to OpenStreetMap that would be a great service to the free community. All data in OpenStreetMap is licensed under ODbL 1.0.
On our side, it would be as simple as adding your TMS (I already have the URL), so no extra work should be necessary from your part:
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Maps#Listofsources
Best regards