Thanks for your thoughts on this. I won't respond to individual points not because I don't think they are valid, but because I think it will be useful to hear from others and let the conversation develop. I am of course aware that there is ia lot of concern about the proposal in the comments so far.<br>
<br>One point of clarification though - I did indeed consider that I and other could be 'locked out' of OSM due to my use of OS Open Data, however that is no longer the case given that the OS have adopted the Open Government License.<br>
<br>Regards,<br><br><br>Peter<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 3 February 2011 11:03, Jerry Clough : SK53 on OSM <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:SK53_osm@yahoo.co.uk">SK53_osm@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
On 02/02/2011 21:10, Peter Miller wrote:
</div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div></div><div class="h5">ITO have been offering a service to compare osm road
names with os locator road names for a while now[1] which has
encouraged a lot of activity - and has even led to Andy to
obsession.[2] I have also suffered from a bout of urgent mapping
myself while completing all of Suffolk to 95% in the past few
weeks! Can I suggest that for our sanity we should consider
developing a bot to do some of this work for us? This would also
allow us to get the rest of the 250,000 remaining roads in place
in less than the 13 months Andy estimates will be required?<br>
<br>
This bot would do a number of repetitive tasks for us within the
bounding box in which it was authorised to operate by a
contributor.<br>
<br>
It could do the following:<br>
<br>
1) Add names to existing roads in osm where there is a single
un-named ways in osm with a bounding box which matches that of a
single entry in os locator.<br>
<br>
2) In addition... it might be able to also add roads to osm from
os vector district, snapping them into existing roads as required
where the existing roads align neatly with os streetview. It would
only do this if there were no ways close by on either side.<br>
<br>
Complex situations will be left to humans. Humans could also
sometimes prepare an area for analysis by the bot, splitting ways
as appropriate, adjusting alignment of existing roads and dealing
in advance with situations we know the bot will have difficulties
with.<br>
<br>
Edits would be made as individual changesets, referenced to the
mapper operating of the bot. Each edit would be 'signed off' by
the mapper who would be able to see the proposed changes visual
prior to accepting them.<br>
<br>
Any thoughts?<br>
<br>
<br>
Peter<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/osm_analysis/summary" target="_blank">http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/osm_analysis/summary</a><br>
[2] <a href="http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2011/02/02/the-london-streets-challenge/" target="_blank">http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2011/02/02/the-london-streets-challenge/</a><br>
<br>
</div></div><pre><fieldset></fieldset>
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</blockquote>
<br>
I personally don't think it's a great idea. There are many aspects
to this, so I'll just take the ones which occur to me right now.<br>
<ul>
<li>Automating road completion is not a huge impossiblity. In a
desultory way I have been playing with name assignment to
VectorMap District data, and I'm sure that approached in a more
systematic and determined fashion it would feasible to produce a
programmatic way to assign Locator names to the VDM data set. I
have a pretty good idea of the major issues, and the outline
algorithms to do this. The main step I have not tried is
sticking combinations of linestrings together to maximise fit to
a locator box. Connectivity is the other main issue. However, I
think such data would be pretty much useful on their own, or
could be mashed-up with OSM data for a given application (e.g.,
a garmin map). I don't see huge immediate utility in putting
such data into OSM, as opposed to making it available in such a
way that it could be integrated with OSM data.<br>
</li>
<li>Relying on OS data reduces the range of sources and validation
of OSM. I'm currently <a href="http://sk53-osm.blogspot.com/2011/01/simulating-urban-atlas-using-osm.html" target="_blank">experimenting</a>
with the Nottingham area to see how close I can get to the Urban
Atlas mapping done for the EEA. My gut feel is that OSM data
which is sourced through combinations of ground-survey and
aerial imagery can provide similar levels of accuracy in terms
of areas, and higher levels of reliability in terms of landuse
classification. In other words, once OSM data start to get very
detailed they provide a separately surveyed source of data which
is distinct from OSGB. If we populate huge swathes of the
country from OSGB data we lose this value (but see next).<br>
</li>
<li>Huge swathes of the country <b>are to all intents and
purposes</b> only populated with OSGB data. Most towns in
Northern England appear to have been largely traced: obvious
examples: Darlington, Middlesborough, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale,
Grimsby, many parts of South Yorkshire. In many cases tracers
using OS StreetView have not bothered to add road names (from
time to time, I have been doing sweeps through Oldham fixing
some of these). The few journeys I have made in these places
indicate a poor level of quality. Adding data does not add
mappers.<br>
</li>
<li>Many areas traced from Yahoo have received little or no ground
survey. Most of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and West London
fall into these categories. In some cases a concerted effort has
been made to at least add street names from OS StreetView. See
comment above.<br>
</li>
<li>We are still nowhere near 1 dedicated mapper per City/District
which seems to be the minimum to give a mapped area 'life'. Of
course we really want a group of people maintaining an area, but
I'd settle for A lifeless but complete map will not IMO attract
these individuals. <br>
</li>
<li>Progress has been substantially affected by license FUD. This
is not just about using OS OpenData, but the prospect that edits
may be lost because an earlier editor in an area is no longer
contactable or refuses the new terms. You, yourself, have
expressed concern about this issue <a href="#12deb3173222df5c_1">[1]</a>,<a href="#12deb3173222df5c_2">[2]</a>. I anticipate the ODbL, CT issues will
continue to affect how and what people map until the whole
process is resolved. Pushing in a whole load of additional data
won't help, particularly as strong resistance to ODbL may result
in certain areas becoming rather sparse. Consideration of doing
this after complete adoption of ODbL may be a different issue.<br>
</li>
<li>Availability of OS OpenData has opened whole new avenues for
using data for many OSM contributors. Exploring these avenues
have reduced time and effort devoted directly to generating OSM
data. However, I would think that these explorations will
produce more people able to manipulate OS and OSM data in more
sophisticated ways, which in turn will result in richer OSM
data. </li>
<li>OS OpenData is out-of-date. The April 2010 StreetView tiles
are at least 2 years old, and where I've checked VDM is
similarly dated. I have not failed to find a significant change
between OS OpenData (and Bing imagery) in detailed surveys I've
done this year. Chris Hill has a similar <a href="http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2011/01/surveys.html" target="_blank">experience</a>.<br>
</li>
</ul>
So in summary, I have no problems with collectively working on an <b>external
</b>enhanced data set sourced from OS OpenData designed to
complement what is in OSM, and tools to link it with OSM data
outside the planet db. Importing such data on a large scale will
just leave us with a lifeless data set and a stagnant contributor
community. <br>
<br>
Jerry Clough<br>
<br>
P.S. I long ago generated an OSM file with all Nottingham roads so
as to be able to preemptively 'flood' any unmapped areas should mass
tracing or import occur. I did this to avoid a reoccurrence of mass
realigning of ground surveyed roads to OS StreetView as happened in
the Carlton & Gedling area. The changes required to unroll this
are too complex, so effectively this area requires re-mapping from
scratch.<br>
<br>
<a name="12deb3173222df5c_1"></a>[1] <a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2010-August/010185.html" target="_blank">http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2010-August/010185.html</a>
<br>
<a name="12deb3173222df5c_2"></a>[2]
<a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2011-January/005611.html" target="_blank">http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2011-January/005611.html</a><br>
<br>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>