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Comment by nathancahill | Hacker News Reader

Timely. Just started a project to document Bosnia and Hercegovina's remaining minefields on OSM. The build system consumes PDFs from the European Union Force as they are updated, georeferences them and pushes the features to OSM. Many tile sets on live maps are updated within the week!

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> Just started a project to document Bosnia and Hercegovina's remaining minefields on OSM.

That's brave - one bug and you could have people walking into a minefield that you've told them was somewhere else.

Arguably better than nothing—kudos to nathancahill for doing something genuinely meaningful.

Also arguably worse than nothing as it could make people living in the area more complacent.

In this case, I think it really depends on the use-cases and whether proper warnings are displayed.

I mean, you wouldn't just drive in to a lake if it wasn't on your map.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY

Definitely doesn't denote the absence.

Yeah, but the first rule for hiking through the countryside in war torn regions like Bosnia is to avoid known areas of conflict (the war ended in 1995., so memories are fading) and known (or suspected) minefields.

This helps a lot, but it's not a replacement for brain.

They're already quite clearly marked, it's just that there's no digital map of them.

People using it should know that it cannot be 100% complete.

When using OpenSea map or any other nautical chart I understand that just because some rocks, wrecks, etc are marked there is no guarantee, that there cannot be more.

He is not marked area as "cleared of mines"

I worry more about e.g. defibrillators. They might break or be removed af being put on OSM, and we do not want people running the wrong way when time is short.

Do you have a website or are the mines (or minefields) already in osm(and)?

There are a few on OSM, maybe 5%. Don't have website since it's just a one man effort, basically a cron job that runs nightly on a server. Might spin up a little website with docs/information.

Nice, maybe a link to a location where the mines are? I think this is great initiative that makes the world safer.

Edit: I'm now on some NSA list, aren't I? Hi guys! Just finished Snowden's book, it was great!

Here's the raw PDFs before georeferencing: http://www.euforbih.org/eufor/index.php/bih-minefield-maps

Here's an example mine area: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/627538334#map=17/44.32936/...

Very cool, thanx.

You might want to consider proposing a sub-tag for military=danger_area specifically for mines. Eventually maps can choose to add rendering like a mine icon in addition to the danger area markings.

I would suggest adopting hazard=minefield (in addition to the other tags you use) for use on paths/roads/routable objects going over or skirting the minefields as well. The hazard-tag is a proposal, but has been used in the field a good number of times (coincidentally, a few times in Serbia).

Yes, new areas added by this system will have hazard=minefield.

I’d certainly be interested in information about how it works - I’m sure many others would be interested in reading too

Do you georeference them by grid coordinates and corners of the map or are doing something not so simple?

Yes, using the topo map grid lines.

Do you mind sharing how you became interested in/got started on such a project?

I do map-related consulting full-time and use OSM heavily, both for work and for mountaineering. Currently living remotely in the Balkans and saw the need.

Would it be possible to have the European Union Force update OSM directly?

I have a meeting with them tomorrow to ask them, but I'm not hopeful. The current setup is fairly low-tech on their end.

Good luck for your meeting! They might have at least georeferenced source files, no? You might have an easier time convincing them to work with you if you point out that this is the best and easiest way of getting the location of the mine fields into many people's phones and pockets.

Thanks. Georeferenced files, raw data, and using OSM directly are the 3 asks.

Let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

How did your meeting go?

> pushes the features to OSM

Do you have any more documentation on what you're doing, how you're doing it? That sounds interesting. Any OSM Wiki page about the project?

I'm writing up some docs with info. I'll send you a link.

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