iiab
Change map tiles to Humanitarian theme
Hi! I just returned from a volunteer trip with Unleash Kids to three schools in Haiti using Internet-in-a-Box. Thanks so much for your work! After discussing the project with teachers, I returned with three points which I'm filing as separate issues.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) recently developed a humanitarian map style which is available as an option on OpenStreetMap.org: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/51.495/-5.581&layers=H The current Mapnik layer is the default on OSM, but it isn't an appealing design. Additionally, in remote areas without internet access, it is likely that the humanitarian map tiles provide more relevant content and information than Mapnik (for example, unpaved and often-flooded roads are styled differently in this map style).
Update: I've asked on the HOTOSM style repo, which uses CartoCSS, if it can produce a Mapnik XML file suitable for mod_tile: https://github.com/hotosm/HDM-CartoCSS/issues/250
Update: I was able to generate a mapnik.xml file ( https://github.com/mapmeld/humanitarian-mapnik-xml ), which can be used with mod_tile ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/HowTo_mod_tile ) and the Humanitarian map repo's icons ( https://github.com/hotosm/HDM-CartoCSS/tree/master/icons ) to render tiles. Haven't set up a VirtualBox to try it yet.
Hi mapmeld. Thanks for the feedback, it is great to hear reports from the field.
Even nicer would be if instead of storing image tiles in various resolutions, the actual vector data could be stored instead, and served as svg in the browser. That would mean not only storing the data once, but as svg it would also occupy drastically less space, and thus the project could afford to have maximum detail everywhere in the world. There's some information about this approach here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vector_tiles
