
Grab is messing up OpenStreetMap data in Southeast Asia - danso
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/grab-maps-osm-thailand-southeast-asia/
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rmc
"The problems came to a head in November when the Open Street Map Foundation’s
board of directors rejected membership requests for “more than 100 applicants”
from GlobalLogic, thereby restricting the number of outsourced representatives
working on maps for Grab and other clients of the agency.

“There had been a mass sign-up of 100 new accounts on 15.11.2018 from India,
most coming from one single IP address from a company “well known” to
OpenStreetMap. There had been a larger amount of complaints regarding edits
from that company, who provide “mapping services” to other companies,” read a
circular issued by the board."

This is poor journalism. If you read the linked post (
[https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-
talk/2018-Nov...](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-
talk/2018-November/005456.html) ) it says the complete opposite. The new
members were not rejected. (The request to block them was rejected)

~~~
sabas_ge
There's also the implication that without OSMF affiliation you can't edit the
map, which is wrong.

~~~
rmc
Yes that's totally wrong. The OSMF (now) has about 1,000 members, and
OpenStreetMap has ~4,200,000 registered accounts.

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marcus_holmes
SE Asia is a mapping nightmare. There are frequent duplications, and Google
Maps in unreliable at best.

My first gym appointment was on Mao Tze Tung Ave, Phnom Penh. I turned up at
the correct number at the correct time, to learn that I was 30 mins ride away
over the wrong side of town. This is common. House numbers relate to plot
numbers, plot numbers relate to developers, street numbers relate to an
original plan of the city that is unrecognisable now. Drench it in rain for
six months and nothing looks recognisable or anything like what you started
out with. There are three developers building the same number house on the
same street now. You want a Grab? hahahahahahahhahhhahhahah

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jamp897
The meta issue here is that they didn’t have a plan to then validate the
changes afterwards. And Grab’s contractors being from India know that streets
can be unpredictable and change since it’s assuredly the same for them too and
not just a quirk in Thailand. It’s an astonishing disconnect from reality
based on western standards of paying attention, but I think this is pretty
normal in SE Asia and causes a lot of problems. Hopefully they’ll be able to
shed these habits at some point.

~~~
geezerjay
> Hopefully they’ll be able to shed these habits at some point.

...or, you know, companies like Grab can host their own data and provide their
own services.

~~~
mikepurvis
But then the data is tied up in their proprietary service. Like, I appreciate
the attempt to contribute this kind of thing back, even if it was a bit ham-
fisted.

~~~
geezerjay
> But then the data is tied up in their proprietary service.

It doesn't need to be proprietary. They can follow the lead of OSM and publish
their data so that others can use and edit it.

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londons_explore
OSM has full edit history like wikipedia, so 'undoing the damage' doesn't need
to be hard.

They could have a simple flag on edits which say if they're done from
satellite data, and if so what age the data is. Any real-world surveys
shouldn't be allowed to be overwritten by older satellite data without good
reason (eg. spam, or the real world survey was done badly)

~~~
thomersch_
Objects are dependent on each other and new, legitimate edits can happen on
top of damaging ones which we would not like to revert automatically.

Yes, there are tools in place which can revert edits, but there is still
manual checking required. The annoying thing is that companies sometimes go
ahead and "invest" money into edits which turn out to be garbage and then
volunteers need to revert or fix them up.

~~~
ris
There are also a couple of subtle details of the OSM editing model that could
make it a lot easier for a knowledgeable vandal to make changes that are
rather more painful to undo than they should be.

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OedipusRex
I'm a little confused as to why Grab would hire a firm to update OSM via
satellite images. OSM had to be more accurate than the outdated sat. images so
why was there a need in the first place?

~~~
kozikow
Not defending grab, but osm has lots of false negatives. Satellite image does
not have to be outdated - you can get less than 6 months old satellite image
accurate enough to extract roads and buildings from Digital Globe or Airbus.

Shameless plug: At tensorflight.com we have deep learning models that can do
just that.

~~~
bzbarsky
6 months old is outdated, depending on how fast things change on the ground.

Even 2 months old can be outdated (e.g. can be missing houses built since, or
showing houses that no longer exist). In some areas, this can be a very
significant effect.

~~~
kozikow
For most use cases it's more cost effective to use existing, slightly old
imagery. On the other hand, for some use cases, it's necessary to get a very
fresh image and commision an airplane flight (or drone if the area is very
small) - e.g. hurricane damage mapping.

~~~
bzbarsky
It's more cost effective if your choices are to use the two vintages of
imagery, sure. I understand why imagery can be stale.

My point was that OSM data can be much more accurate than the imagery. Or not,
depending on location.

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kahlonel
Not sure how that's going to be possible, but there's a need for big companies
to "fork" open data before massively manipulating it. And merge with main
system if everything works for them, hence contributing positively instead of
screwing everything up.

~~~
sabas_ge
That's the Mapbox way. /s

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aaron695
WTF

Grab is spending big $ to improve the maps and contribute back to the
community.

How about less bitching and more helping them spend their $ better.

And a side note, Grab and the other products like it are revolutionising Asia.

They are allowing the poor to have more rides, giving the drivers consistent
work, wiping out the tuk tuk mafias, are making the vehicles far more
efficient and clean, allowing non local language people to use local people to
take trips easily.

I've never seen anything like it. It's a revolution. It's how tech can truly
change the world.

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maxerickson
_improve the maps_

The contention of the "bitching" is that they are not actually doing that.

