Hi everyone, my name is Tareq Al-Ahdal. I am a computer science undergraduate student at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Recently, I got accepted into Google Summer of Code 2022 as an open source contributor with OpenStreetMap. I will work this summer on enhancing Nominatim: OpenStreetMap’s geocoding software that enables us to search and find location addresses based on their names and vice versa.

Nominatim is currently using a computed importance value to rank the search results based on the location’s perceived importance. This importance value is derived from the popularity of the Wikipedia article of each location. However, not every location on earth has its own Wikipedia article. As a result, the locations that do not have their own Wikipedia articles will not have an importance value, thereby the ranking of the search results, in that case, is deemed inaccurate. OpenStreetMap has data regarding the number of times users accessed each location on the map. This data is a good indicator of how popular a place is. The aim of my work is to integrate this data into Nominam’s computation of the importance value so that the search results become more accurate which will help the users find the correct places that they are looking for in less time.

I will use this diary to keep you updated about my work. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding my work or anything else you have in mind.