Smart Walk feature: Automatically optimized walking route for quests

[ExecutableYTgithub]

Hello everyone,

I would like to suggest a feature that could make using SCEE even more attractive: A function that suggests a "smart" walking route based on your current location and the available open quests in the area. The goal is to calculate a route that allows you to complete as many tasks as possible with as little walking as possible.

Why is this useful?

• Many users want to contribute to improving OSM in a targeted and efficient manner without wandering around aimlessly.

• An optimized route saves time, makes using the app even more motivating, and increases data quality, as more quests can be completed in one go.

• The feature could also help motivate new users, as it makes it easier to get started ("Where is it worth taking a walk?").

How could this work?

• The app analyzes open quests in the vicinity and suggests a route that covers as many of them as possible.

• Optional: Users can filter by maximum distance, type of quest, or difficulty level.

• The route can be displayed as a map and exported if necessary.

I am convinced that this feature offers real added value and would make SCEE even more attractive.

Thank you for reviewing my suggestion!

Best regards, Jurek

[mnalis]

Hi Jurek and thanks for your suggestion!

While I agree with you that such a feature would be nice, it is very likely quite out of scope for SCEE, as it would require:

• implementing whole routing engine (i.e. most of the work of apps like OsmAnd or GraphHopper), which is a huge effort in itself
• making that routing also solve Travelling salesman problem in efficient way, which is computationally NP-hard problem, especially when number of nodes (i.e. unsolved quests in SCEE) can be in the hundreds and even thousands; so the suggested route would likely be suboptimal (i.e. require more walking then technically required), even if it churned a lot of time and battery to try producing better result.
• also problematic is adding enough tweaking parameters so users can select what quests they are interested in, in which priorities, at what distances, what vehicles (if any) they want to use for traveling, etc. That would be either very taxing for user to define, or (if made simpler) would likely produce results unwanted by the user (e.g. visiting less important quests while not reaching more important ones, or leading users over ways where they cannot go without proper vehicle which they may not possess etc.).

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The best workaround I can suggest:

1. install OsmAnd (or CoMaps) routing app, if you don't have it already
2. Select only quests which are important to you in SCEE (put them in special Preset for easier use later),
3. zoom out the SCEE map so you can see circles with numbers indicating how many quests there are
4. long press on location with sufficiently big number of quests, and chose "Open in another app"
5. select OsmAnd, and add that location as a intermediate point for a route
6. repeat steps 3-5 for other groups of quests
7. when you've selected enough, sort your routing points (automatically by distance, or manually for better results), and start voice navigation in OsmAnd using wanted navigation profile, and let it run in background, routing you between groups of tasks you want to solve (when OsmAnd leads you to the "group of quests", you'll still to have to navigate to individual Quests in that local group manually; so it's not an ideal solution of course)

Alternatively, you can just eyeball that map with number of quests, and decide to go to that neighborhood yourself, without a need for external navigation. Much simpler, but requires that you know how to get around that area...

[ExecutableYTgithub]

Thank you very much for your detailed answer! Yes, I had actually considered whether I really wanted to suggest this feature, because I also had doubts that it might be beyond the scope of this app. I don't think the method you suggested is bad at all, but I personally have the problem that I live in the center of a very large city and therefore have a very strange distribution of quests... But yes, maybe I'll try this in the future, thank you very much! Best regards, Jurek

[mnalis]

but I personally have the problem that I live in the center of a very large city and therefore have a very strange distribution of quests...

Yeah, I know what you mean...

Luckily, with big cities it is usually a case that one has a never-ending stream of quests everywhere, so there is less need to search for them - even if your preset reduces the number of quests to meet your primary interests (e.g. I often map with just "cycling infrastructure" SCEE Preset when I don't have too much time, but still find it a waste to go somewhere and not improve the OSM on the way!)

In fact, the number of quests in cities is often so overwhelming for me, that I intentionally make my points of interest (for purposes of choosing "where will I go today") very rare.

So, for example, lately I'm on a mission to add & verify drinking water sources (of which our capital of Zagreb is lacking - there is only 1 public drinking water source on every 4 square kilometers on average).

I use national data sources and https://overpass-turbo.eu/ to collected all alleged amenity=drinking_water sources, import that .gpx into OsmAnd as list of POIs, and let OsmAnd route me to them. Each time I choose different part of the city to solve several water sources which are there, and then on the way towards them I solve either most interesting SCEE quests on the way, or most of the quests - depending on quest density in specific area and my available time on the way to my chosen "primary targets". Quick-button for changing presets comes very handy there!

And when I reach the water source, I verify it and add details in SCEE (and also add panoramax image using mapcomplete.org), and then I remove it from OsmAnd .gpx list, so I know that one is finished and I don't need to visit it any more.

So that is another idea for choosing "where to go", but there are so many more:

• you could use SCEE itself to find interesting areas - just make a preset with very few quests, and see where those are prevalent on the map (you need to load the areas first)

• you can go to places where you haven't mapped before (see e.g. https://yosmhm.neis-one.org/)

• you can go to places where there are OSM Notes to be resolved (especially ones tagged with #surveyme - see e.g. https://ent8r.github.io/NotesReview/)

• you could use some of the QA Tools to find areas of the map that would benefit from the survey most (e.g. streets missing names, or houses missing addresses on https://qa.poole.ch/)

• you can use versatile overpass-turbo.eu and its export/gpx functionality in many interesting ways. For example, this query will find streets which do not have their etymology tagged (i.e. how did this street gets it name / what is it named after). Some cities have those etymologies on tables at beginning/end of street, and mapping it allows for educational maps like https://etymology.dsantini.it/ (and I've learned a lot of things about my own country I didn't know by reading those!)

• or, one might use overpass-turbo to go after tourism=artwork and certain historic=* POIs, e.g. to add their pictures to Wikimedia Commons and link it to OSM, as well as adding other details - name, subject, author, year...

So maybe some of those might give you the idea how to choose where do you want to go mapping today. And most importantly, keep having fun mapping!