A challenge to photo map the capital and collect useful map data for Ottawa.
We’re teaming up with Bike Ottawa to bring you the next #CompletetheMap challenge. This will be our biggest yet and that’s not hyperbole. Most of the other challenges have focused on a particular suburb or area of the city. For Ottawa bike lanes throughout the whole city are in focus.
The idea of #CompletetheMap is to divide a city into zones and then fill them in by capturing street-level imagery throughout the city. As you move through the city, your imagery of roads, bike lanes, and trails help to complete each zone and eventually #CompletetheMap. The Bike Ottawa team has already been contributing an impressive amount of imagery throughout the capital. This challenge will complement those efforts by encouraging citizens to focus on collecting imagery of bike friendly paths across Ottawa.
Anyone living in Ottawa or passing through during this time is welcome to join the #CompletetheMap challenge. Read on for more info on how the challenge works and how you can contribute.
Getting started with Mapillary
You can contribute imagery to Mapillary using any device capable of taking geotagged images. That is imagery that contains GPS information. Most people contribute with their smartphones using the Mapillary app on Android and iOS or using thier action cameras.
You can upload directly from the smartphone apps over wifi. If you’re using an action camera, you can connect it with the iOS app and also upload via your phone. Android is not currently supported, so see our instructions for uploading via computer here.
Take a look at our getting started page and the rest of our help guide here.
The Challenge
The Greater Ottawa area has been divided into a large grid, roughly corresponding to the city boundaries. To participate in the challenge, simply capture roads, bike lanes, and other trails that are bike friendly between August 25th 00:00 Ottawa time and September 17th 23:59. The contributor with the most unique kilometers of coverage in each zone by the end of the challenge wins #CompleteTheMap Ottawa.
If you’d like to take part, charge your cameras, and start capturing images in your area. Good luck!
The Rules
How do I enter the challenge?
Anyone capturing within the grid will automatically participate in the challenge. You don’t need to sign up for your images to be counted.
The Grid
This challenge is a bit different in that the winner will simply the contributor who uploads the most imagery during the challenge dates. In addition to this, we’ll also automatically check the location of every image and compare it to existing OpenStreetMap data to confirm whether or not it was taken in an area bikes are allowed access. This will help us determine the percentage of fresh coverage in each zone out of the potential areas for capture. It will also help you work out where to focus on. The grid colours are as follows:
Red: <20% of recognised bike accessible paths
Yellow: 20% to 80% of recognised bike accessible paths
Green: >80% of recognised bike accessible paths
Only images captured from day one of the competition (August 25th) will be counted.
Rankings & Updates
We’ll be maintaining a live page with the results that you can visit any time here. As usual, you’ll also be able to get updates on Twitter and Facebook.
How to win
The winner of each zone will be the contributor who has the most kilometres of unique coverage by the end of the challenge period (September 17th).
Invite Friends
If you would like to invite your friends to take part in the challenge, all they have to do is capture within the grid area and they will automatically appear on the leaderboard. If they want to stay updated, make sure they subscribe to our email updates and follow the #CompletetheMap hashtag on Facebook and Twitter.
And we’re off!
Charge your phones, get your action cameras out, and #CompleteTheMap Ottawa! Have fun exploring the city.
P.S. Nominate your city here if you’d like to see the challenge in your neighbourhood. We’ve also open sourced the code for the grid and leaderboard so that you can run the challenge yourself at any time.