|
| 1 | +# Future Plans / Ideas |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +This page describes various things we **want** at HOT, and are either |
| 4 | +in the process of achieving, or have marked as potential future |
| 5 | +projects. |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +If you are software developer and wish to contribute to something new, |
| 8 | +fun, and exciting, feel free to reach out about one of these ideas. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +## Kubernetes |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +- Every HOT tool should be hosted in a Kubernetes cluster. |
| 13 | +- This means every tool needs to be containerized and follow |
| 14 | + a [12factor](https://12factor.net) app development approach. |
| 15 | +- Tools should be deployed using a GitOps approach, via ArgoCD. |
| 16 | + This means the container repositories for each tool are scanned, |
| 17 | + and when a new version is uploaded, it is automatically deployed. |
| 18 | +- Load is shared amongst tools on cluster nodes, reducing overall |
| 19 | + costs of running multiple separate servers. |
| 20 | +- Autoscaling capabilities when high load is detected for a tool, |
| 21 | + automatically spawning new containers as needed. |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +## Shared UI Components |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +See [this page](../modules/frontend.md) for more details. |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +- We don't have the resources to implement a very in-depth design |
| 28 | + system across all of our tools. |
| 29 | +- We also have existing tech debt due to development velocity and |
| 30 | + no centralised design from the start (a need to move quickly...). |
| 31 | +- The proposed solution is to converse around a single **web component** |
| 32 | + library, such as [Web Awesome](https://backers.webawesome.com). |
| 33 | +- Web Awesome is free to use / open-source, has strong backers, and |
| 34 | + would allow for a consistent style across all tools, regardless of |
| 35 | + framework used (framework agnostic, web standards). |
| 36 | +- It should also improve maintainability, as part of the promise of web |
| 37 | + components, is minimal requirement to upgrade into the future, as the |
| 38 | + World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) does not break existing web functionality. |
| 39 | +- We would also avoid the framework churn, by having our **underlying |
| 40 | + building blocks** as web components, while building our wrapper apps in |
| 41 | + whichever technology we choose. |
| 42 | +- A few additional **helper** components will be designed and made available |
| 43 | + as part of the [HOTOSM UI](https://github.com/hotosm/ui) library. For |
| 44 | + example, a consistent header, footer, and sidebar for every tool. |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | +## Shared Map Components |
| 47 | + |
| 48 | +See [this page](../modules/frontend.md) for more details. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +- Historically we may have used OpenLayers and Leaflet in some places. |
| 51 | + This should be consolidated around MapLibre. |
| 52 | +- We have many implementation of MapLibre in our different tools. Ideally |
| 53 | + we can use the same wrapper implementation, improving developer experience |
| 54 | + and speed of development. |
| 55 | +- **Option 1**: contribute to an existing established tool, that can compile |
| 56 | + to plain JavaScript. This JS could be wrapped in a web-component for use in |
| 57 | + any web app, any framework. |
| 58 | + A top candidate would be |
| 59 | + [svelte-maplibre](https://github.com/dimfeld/svelte-maplibre). |
| 60 | +- **Option 2**: build a web component wrapper for MapLibre from scratch. It |
| 61 | + is anticipated that community support would be high for this, being entirely |
| 62 | + framework agnostic and embeddable anywhere. |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +## Python Modules (Backend) |
| 65 | + |
| 66 | +See [this page](../modules/backend.md) for more details. |
| 67 | + |
| 68 | +We have a lot of duplicated logic that could be centralised: |
| 69 | + |
| 70 | +- Parsing of user uploaded GeoJSON AOIs (no as simple as it |
| 71 | + sounds to do right). |
| 72 | + [geojson-aoi-parser](https://github.com/hotosm/geojson-aoi-parser) |
| 73 | +- Download of OSM data via raw-data-api. Every tool doing this should |
| 74 | + use the [raw-data-api-py](https://github.com/hotosm/raw-data-api-py) |
| 75 | + wrapper. |
| 76 | +- A bunch of OpenStreetMap-specific XLSForm surveys have been started |
| 77 | + in [osm-fieldwork](https://hotosm.github.io/osm-fieldwork), but this |
| 78 | + work needs some good community testing and peer review. The idea is to |
| 79 | + plug the XLSForms into FieldTM, for easy OSM-centric mapping of an area |
| 80 | + (to improve the map tags available, then push to OSM). |
| 81 | + |
| 82 | +## AI / LLMs |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | +- OSM tag extraction from images or free text. Some work has started |
| 85 | + on this in [osm-tagger](https://github.com/hotosm/osm-tagger). |
| 86 | +- A geospatial query chatbot, based on LLMs. Users want data for an |
| 87 | + area. The LLM can provide commands / ways to get this data, either |
| 88 | + via raw-data-api, overpass, or other available tools. |
| 89 | + |
| 90 | +## Easy OSM Conflation |
| 91 | + |
| 92 | +- Various tools in our stack need to contribute data back to OSM, merging |
| 93 | + it with the existing data present there (conflation). |
| 94 | +- There are two possible approaches we could take, listed below. |
| 95 | + |
| 96 | +### Conflation Web Component |
| 97 | + |
| 98 | +- A standalone 'conflation' web component that could be embedded in any |
| 99 | + tool. |
| 100 | +- It will load various dataset sources: OSM, custom data, Overture, etc. |
| 101 | +- Various imagery sources can be loaded in. Ideally high-resolution drone |
| 102 | + or recent open satellite imagery. |
| 103 | +- The UI allows the user to select the best geometry / tags for a given |
| 104 | + feature, based on the available imagery. |
| 105 | +- The feature is validated by others (optional), then uploaded to OSM |
| 106 | + as the new source of truth. |
| 107 | +- If features came from FieldTM are are **field verified** they should |
| 108 | + take precedence, and will be tagged as such in OSM. |
| 109 | + |
| 110 | +### Tasking Manager Conflation |
| 111 | + |
| 112 | +- Use Tasking Manager as a collaborative conflation tool. |
| 113 | +- Create a new 'conflation' project type. |
| 114 | +- Users load the imagery, and datasets required. |
| 115 | +- Tasking allow the conflation process to be subdivided amongst |
| 116 | + the community, and validated. |
| 117 | +- Final data is uploaded to OSM. |
| 118 | + |
| 119 | +## Other Ideas |
| 120 | + |
| 121 | +- Now we have [raw-data-api-py](https://github.com/hotosm/raw-data-api-py), |
| 122 | + it would be quite simple to make a QGIS plugin for this. Users of QGIS |
| 123 | + could download the latest OSM data directly into their project. |
| 124 | +- We could also have a QGIS plugin to easily access data via the |
| 125 | + [Humanitarian Data Exchange](https://data.humdata.org) |
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