<div dir="ltr">Hello All, <div><br></div><div>I am one of Chad Blevins' interns, and have been one of the more vocal ones about being in disagreement with the Wiki and would like to do my part to rationalize out why I am thinking this way.</div><div><br></div><div>In terms of the Unclassified/Tracks/Paths debate, in these rural areas especially, I believe tracks should almost always win out. I say this because if these indeterminable lines pass by and connect houses/huts or fields, then the road type is clearly not unclassified, as it has a classification of connecting residential or agricultural areas. Further, it is indistinguishable for us at a distance to determine between tracks and paths because one day a family could get a motorbike and start traveling what could have been considered a path with a motorized vehicle, or anyone for that matter could drive down the path/track on a motorbike to access the houses or fields. From my understanding, out in rural areas, especially Africa, there are no controls on the modes of transportation as transportation is limited to what any person is able to acquire within their means. Going forward into the future this means that the modes will be changing as more families get motorbikes or 4 x 4 vehicles, thus, classifying a road as a track covers all the bases for now and moving forward. The local population will be the ones to make the distinction and things will change as time progresses.</div><div><br></div><div>To wrap up my thoughts on this, when viewing OSM (not logged in for editing) residential and unclassified roads appear the same, but tracks appear differently as how unmaintained roads would appear on nearly any map around the world. In terms of the PMI and other humanitarian initiatives, it would be disingenuous to classify these narrow roads as unclassified as the users of the map should be ready for a track, or possibly something untraversable for their vehicles. If we are to map in terms of an areas actual use of roads, to my understanding unclassified would not cover these types of roads and would not describe them accurately at all for actual drive-ability.</div><div><br></div><div>Please let me know what you guys think!</div><div><br></div><div>Thank You,<br>Alex Bogedain</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Chad Blevins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cblevins@usaid.gov" target="_blank">cblevins@usaid.gov</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Hi John,<br>
<br>
You're absolutely correct. When Courtney and I created the
Mozambique Tracing Guide the original tasks were urban focused, and the scope
has changed to rural areas. Currently a
group of interns are mapping those districts and I've had</span> several
inquiries about road classifications. The
guidance I’ve given is to tag all rural roads as unclassified unless they are clearly
labeled/numbered as a “major” road, or very small pathways.<br>
<br>
The Africa roads wiki is great and was referenced when
creating the Mozambique guide. Many road examples in this part of the
world are debatable as "unclassified", "tracks", or
"paths". It’s almost
impossible to know the use and in some cases classifications may change based
on time of year. A subset of interns
copied here (Forrest, Julia, and Alex) have agreed to review the Mozambique guidance
and suggest edits for the rural landscape. This could be a good opportunity for them to review
and comment on the Highway Tag Africa wiki as well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">More to come.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Thanks,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Chad<span style="font-size:12pt"></span></span></p></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 8:01 AM, john whelan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jwhelan0112@gmail.com" target="_blank">jwhelan0112@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">OSM has its roots in the UK and Germany, in the UK highways are
classified A, B, I think even C and other very minor roads were labelled
unclassified by Ordnance Survey historically so that is where the term
comes from. The UK Ordnance Survey was historically important in
creating everyday maps.<br><br>By using a standardised set of tags for
highways it makes the rendering systems life easier. OSMand for example
is used everywhere in the world and if it had to know about a different
set of tags for each country the software would be much more
complicated. If you’re mapping in OSM of course there is nothing to
stop you tagging highways in any manner you like. The only problem is
that the features will not be rendered by the normal systems.<br><br>If you’re mapping in a HOT project then you’re expected to follow the HOT guidelines for tagging. ie building=yes etc.<br><br>The
problem here is the instructions for a group of projects only contain a
subset of the highway types used for mapping in Africa as defined by
the African Highway Wiki and the examples shown are all urban areas so
the instructions although correct are incomplete as the project covers
both urban and rural areas.<br><br>Cheerio John </div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><br></div></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><b><font size="4" face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">Chad Blevins</font></b><div><div><font color="#666666" face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">GeoCenter<br></font></div><div><font color="#666666" face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">U.S. Global Development Lab </font></div><div><font color="#666666" face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">USAID</font></div><div><font color="#666666" face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif"><a href="tel:202-712-0464" value="+12027120464" target="_blank">202-712-0464</a></font></div></div></div></div>
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