
West Virginia on OpenStreetMap 12/16/23 (left) and 1/24/25 (right)
Attila is a university student from Hungary (OSM username: Ottwiz), who recently finished mapping all of the forest landcover in West Virginia! The OSM team reached out to Attila to ask a few questions about him and his mapping project for this month’s spotlight:
What drew you to the woods of West Virginia? I'm interested in the US culture and history, and I wanted to try something new than mapping only in Hungary… I talked with a friend from Pittsburgh area and they added me [to a group chat] where there was a friend of theirs from West Virginia, and [I thought] "Oh I know that area, John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads song refers to that state", and I was like, “okay let's see what that state holds in OSM… Oh wow it's empty! Let's map it!"
Did you face any hurdles during this project? The imagery was a big issue especially when it was outdated, or dim, or there was a lot of cloud in the imagery. [So] I switched back and forth between imageries, and then reconstructed it from all of these. Also… if the woods were cut into hundreds of pieces, that slowed me down in mapping, since I'm going for quality not just quantity. If I went for quantity [the map] probably… would look like a mess.
What is your favorite thing about the OpenStreetMap community? The positivity and supportiveness! People in the OSM community give helpful advice to each other…If I do something for the community that people appreciate, then I think I won the game.
You can learn more about Attila’s West Virginia project on this wiki page, or this recorded talk from Mapping USA 2025.
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