One of the biggest things that’s annoyed me with OpenStreetMap is the pertinent lack of POIs, compared to the big G that many around me have generally accepted as the standard navigation app and database for everyday use. It actually made me excited for Overture Maps, as I thought we could easily take the good stuff from Facebook’s places data to improve our map.
When the Overture Maps Foundation’s data released its first alpha files, naturally, the OSM community started sleuthing in there. The job became even easier when community member @bdon released a tool to overlay the POI dataset into an OSM basemap, as seen here.
The way Meta sourced the POIs in the first place has unintended consequences, however, like…
Top 12 Beach Resorts inside Neighborhoods near Me
That heading would suffice for a top-ten listicle, haha.
I’ve manually listed a small sample of such hotels, resorts and other kinds of supposed accommodations that, for humans, “obviously don’t belong there”: first as screenshots one-by-one, and then add them all into a table.
1 — Water Park in Tract Housing
- Confidence: 0.48
- Link to area in OpenStreetMap.org: /way/412897723
- Link to area in Overture Places: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#16.98/14.387574/120.995418
2 — “Beach Resort” categorized as Hotel, in Subdivision
- Confidence: 0.53
- Link to OSM: /way/415702588
- Link to OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#16.98/14.389237/121.001275
3 — Touristy Town in Tract Housing
- Confidence: 0.58
- Link to OSM: /way/415447583
- Link to OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#16.98/14.387513/120.999335
4 — Beach Resort in Government Housing Project
- Confidence: 0.59
- OSM: /query?lat=14.39644&lon=120.99158
- OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#16.98/14.396289/120.991495
5 — Capital City of an Island Province, in Subdivision
- Confidence: 0.58
- Link to OSM: /way/420991008
- Link to OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#17.41/14.393058/120.989378
6 — Hot Springs in Subdivision
- Conf: 0.62
- OSM: /query?lat=14.40376&lon=120.98302
- OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#18.06/14.404017/120.98331
7 — Mountainside Hotel in Housing Project
- Conf: 0.5
- OSM: /way/420991198
- OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#16.87/14.402843/120.988627
8 — Bayside Casino in Housing Project
Wew. In real life, that POI is located just beside my alma mater. Imagine a casino right next to a high school.
- Conf: 0.58
- OSM: /query?lat=14.40511&lon=120.97657
- OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#17.63/14.405121/120.976322
9 — Resort (and Mall!) in a Small Townhouse Development
- Conf: 0.66
- OSM: /way/425459044
- OP: https://bdon.github.io/overture-tiles/places.html#17.86/14.405576/120.97327
You get the point.
Select misplaced tourist attractions, sorted
| Num. | Claimed feature | Subd. type | Conf. | Link to OSM | Link to OP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Water park | Tract homes | 0.48 | way:412897723 | Link |
| 2 | Hotel | Lots subdivision | 0.53 | way:415702588 | Link |
| 3 | Beach town | Tract homes | 0.58 | way:415447583 | Link |
| 4 | Beach resort | Housing project | 0.59 | lat=14.39644&lon=120.99158 | Link |
| 5 | Provincial capital city | Lots subdivision | 0.58 | way:420991008 | Link |
| 6 | Hot spring | Lots subdivision | 0.62 | lat=14.40376&lon=120.98302 | Link |
| 7 | Hotel | Housing project | 0.5 | way:420991198 | OP |
| 8 | Casino | Housing project | 0.58 | OSM | OP |
| 9 | Resort | Townhomes | 0.66 | way:425459044 | OP |
Addendum
From what I can see, these are cases of people in Meta Platforms (i.e. Facebook or Instagram) who go to touristy places and then go home and post about it on social media as late uploads, tagging the location of the place and subsequently having their sat nav coordinates be absorbed by these apps along the process.
This is just my theory, of course, but I believe I’m not alone in thinking this is how much of Facebook’s (and in turn, the Overture Maps Foundation’s) places data is sourced.
If true, that might be a privacy violation of some sort..?
But regardless, OMF’s data can be used as a tool, the same way OSMF-licensed street-level imagery (e.g. Meta’s Mapillary) has already been used, to help armchair mappers map places they might have some background local knowledge of but don’t necessarily memorize.