The tasking manager was created by HOT, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team for coordinating mapping of disasters. This is primarily done either through activating volunteers to trace satellite imagery, or an organized mapathon.
I've found the tasking manager (TM) useful for my own importing projects, but the process is different. TM breaks down a large area into blocks so you are working only on a small section. It allows a user to lock an area while they are editing, so others don't duplicate the effort. Even if I'm working solo, it's a useful way for me to keep track of where I've been working. It sends the data for that area to the editor of your choice, I use JOSM, so that's what is documented here.
To get started, I download the relevant source datasets off my website if I have it. I currently have much data, roads and trails in public lands, footprints from Bing, and sometimes house addresses. All have a public domain license, so suitable for importing into OSM. I load the source files that have data I want to import into JOSM. When I click on the Edit button in TM, it'll load the OSM data for that area into JOSM. Also right under the editor button is a link to download the GPX boundary of the area being worked on. I find this useful as when I'm viewing data in the other source files, it's an easy reference to make sure I'm not conflating data outside the area.
Since all the documentation on installing Tasking Manager from git is oriented to Debian/Ubuntu, I thought I'd write down how I got it working on CentOS 8 Stream.
The backed of Tasking Manager 4 is written in python, so needs a stable python environment to run in. The usual way to do this is to create a virtual python environment that stays stable.
python3 -m pip install virtualenv
python3 -m virtualenv venv
. venv/bin/activate
venv/bin/python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
To run a python program under Apache, I used WSGI as it's more efficient. I never found any examples of how to do this, so here's what worked for me. I load the virtual python environment we just created, and then start the backend running.
# tm4.wsgi
# load virtual python environment
activate_this = '/path/tm.git/venv/bin/activate_this.py'
with open(activate_this) as file_:
exec(open(activate_this).read(), {'__file__': activate_this})
# start it
from backend import create_app, db
application = create_app()
if __name__ == "__main__":
application.run(host='0.0.0.0')
Then I configured Apache to execute the WSGI script whenever the root of the virtual host is accessed.
#
# Tasking Manager support
#
WSGIDaemonProcess tm4_process user=apache group=apache processes=1 \
lang=en_US.UTF-8 \
threads=4 \
python-home=/ \
python-path=/path/tm.git/venv8/bin:/path/tm.git/venv8/lib/python3.8/site-packages/:/path/tm.git/
WSGIRestrictStdin Off
DocumentRoot /path/tm.git
ServerName tm4.foo.com
WSGIScriptAlias / /path/tm.git/tm4.wsgi
ServerAlias tm4
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/tm4.error_log
TransferLog /var/log/httpd/tm4.access_log
DocumentRoot /path/tm.git
WSGIScriptAlias / /path/tm.git/tm4.wsgi
ServerName tm3.foo.com
ServerAlias tm4
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/tm4.error_log
TransferLog /var/log/httpd/tm4.access_log
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/XXX/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/XXX/privkey.pem
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/XXX/chain.pem
Options +ExecCGI
SetHandler wsgi-script
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
I wrote up a tutorial on how I import data that covers this process in more detail. Once an area is mapped, it needs to be validated by an experienced mapper. At least for the projects on this site, I'm the validator and fix my own mistakes.
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