Benjamin Herfort
Benjamin Herfort is researcher at HeiGIT and Heidelberg University. In his PhD he has investigated questions of representation and data quality in OpenStreetMap from the perspectives of humanitarian and machine learning-assisted mapping in order to map what is not mapped. In his research and work he is furthermore dealing with the temporal evolution of OpenStreetMap data, MapSwipe and information from social media.
Benjamin works as a product owner at HeiGIT where he is developing open source tools and methods that incorporate geographic information systems for disaster management, humanitarian aid and climate action.
Sessions
In this talk we introduce ohsomeDB - the successor of the OpenStreetMap History Database (OSHDB). ohsomeDB is a scalable distributed Postgres database. It’s powered through PostGIS and Citus and a database schema optimized for OSM data analysis.
MapSwipe is an application that enables crowdsourced data collection for OpenStreetMap and helps prioritize mapping efforts by identifying areas needing updates. This talk will explore future possibilities for expanding its role, including potentially allowing direct edits to OSM and strengthening ties with the OSM community for more seamless contributions.
fAIr is an open AI-assisted mapping tool developed by HOT, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Recently a new machine learning algorithm was added and OSM users can experiment with mapping buildings around the globe. How well does fAIr work and has the new addition improved this?