There is no convenient way to consume this data programmatically. I toyed with the idea of downloading the entire map as a grid of images and then parsing them, but that would take a lot of time and effort, and any conflicts with existing OSM data would have to be resolved manually either way. For that reason, I prefer to import the data completely manually, and am willing to do it all by myself.
What steps do I need to take before starting the process?
The optimal course of action is to ask for a raw data export. If you manage to obtain a file (shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoPKG, etc), it can be easily converted to a format compatible with JOSM.
A manual import could involve JOSM. JOSM is an offline OSM editor. You would put the OSM data on top of the GIS data and be able to fill in the missing data. You’d even be able to copy-paste the missing stuff from the GIS layer to the OSM layer, making the job easier.
There are more automatic methods (such as scripting in Python etc), but I think having a human in the loop like that currently is the highest quality of import. (AI is not there yet)
Failing that, one might be able to convert the raster into polygons via tools such as QGIS, SAGA, GRASS etc. But these require some GIS experience, and even the best result would probably be less optimal than obtaining a vector file from the source.
(Note: I am not very knowledgeable on de-rasterizing stuff, and someone else may be able to provide more accurate information about the feasibility of this)
Another possibility could be to stick a screenshot from the website as a layer in JOSM, and scale it to the right proportions based on some landmarks. I haven’t tested this in practice (is it possible? Natively or with some plugin) but will investigate and report back.
One needs to take care of getting the image in the proper geographical projection though (the screenshot and JOSM need to be operating on the same projection). I’ll also play around with this when I have the chance, out of curiosity.
Followup edit: JOSM is capable of working in any projection. Additionally, there seem to be plugins for placing images as layers and anchoring them, but I haven’t tested them.
My question is more about community-related requirements. Should I create a wiki page / wait for further community approval etc. before starting to submit changesets?
Bulk edits should be discussed, so opening this thread was a great idea! You’re basically done; You’d need to wait a bit to see if someone has objections or feedback. If there are no objections, you can go ahead and perform the edit.
I highly recommended that you then document the edit well:
You can post the changesets numbers here or on the Wiki for the record.
You can edit the Bots_and_imports section of the Israel Wiki page to link to this post.
@yrtimiD is keeping track of the imports in this post, but I see he already added this thread there.
Further recommendations before you begin the import:
Maybe performing some editing in JOSM to get a feel for it. It has more learning curve than the web editor but is more powerful.
Check out who’s editing your area of interest, and maybe notify them of the incoming import if it seems relevant to what they like editing. There are various tools mentioned in the Wiki, here are two of them:
I will create a separate changeset for each neighborhood. This post is a mapping between neighborhood names and their changeset numbers, and will be updated as I edit the map.
