[OHM] tagging for historic race tracks / NEH

Tue Dec 30 01:54:58 UTC 2014

Karl,

Following up on your question of 'consensus map', I don't think that it's possible. Not for lack of good faith, but rather the primary sources will conflict and it may not be possible to resolve it. Even if it would be, the ability to track multiple hypothesis for discussion without messing up someone else's rendering seems to me desirable.

Adding that to the 'want list'.

-rhw

On Dec 29, 2014, at 8:02 PM, Karl Grossner <karlg at stanford.edu> wrote:

> a +1 to two thoughts expressed by Rob earlier
> 
> -kg
> 
>> OSM does not currently differentiate between the
>> two and this is a problem for us since we can't differentiate between a
>> conflict over a feature (which Cartage?) and its location (Where was
>> Cartage?).
> 
> absolutely -- places have time-dependent geometries, which also vary according to the cartographer. also names, also types. which is why making places a sort of blank node object is working in projects like Pleiades and GBHGIS; 
> 
> this points to a fundamental question: should OHM endeavor to build a consensus map, like OSM - or should it record what's on old maps, leaving questions of how to conflate them to applications and users? or both? either way, I think OHM is much more complex undertaking than OSM.
> 
> which leads to the next...
> 
>> One thing we need to communicate well in the proposal: this isn't about
>> rendering a nice map with a time slider but about managing the data
>> underneath that drives the visualization. Not all reviewers will immediately
>> understand the difference and we have to highlight it.
>> 
> 
> I sometimes say I'm in the business of making trouble for cartographers. If you gather a bunch of conflicting and uncertain/error-ful representations of the past (aka do historical research), you wind up with data that is *really* hard to join or represent well on a map. but to me that should be an afterthought -- more important to first get all the nasty old sparse uncertain data down with some minimal formal structure than to let the data development be driven by 'what can I readily map at the moment?' Cartographers and app developers will rise to the occasion imho once the problems are made clear. So Open Historical Geodata necessarily precedes Open Historical Map?
> 
> re: standards
> I don't know of any standards particularly relevant for historical data (open-world, sparse, uncertain). There are lots of spatial-temporal models in the GIScience literature that have never been implemented -- for time-indexed identity/geometry change for example (create,split,merge,destroy). Much less for fuzzy or otherwise uncertain spatial and temporal data, though people are trying stuff.  I was attempting (w/Elijah Meeks) something with Topotime (http:/dh.stanford.edu/topotime) but have paused for the moment. Completely agree we make more progress by building real stuff than by making theories to fit toy problems.
> 
> 
>> best,
>> rhw
>> 
>> On Dec 28, 2014, at 3:17 PM, Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> Rob & the list -
>>> 
>>> Is there a metadata standard for historical geodata we should be
>>> encouraging / eventually enforcing for contributions?
>>> 
>>> Even if there's not a perfect fit, it would be interesting to see the
>>> differences between that effort & what the OHM/OSM key:value structures
>>> can support easily.
>>> 
>>> Enforcing start_date at the API level might be a start in this area?
>>> 
>>> - Jeff
>>> 
>>> On Saturday, December 27, 2014, Rob H Warren <warren at muninn-project.org>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> We have been trying to fit substantially more information into the OSM
>>> tagging schema than it was originally meant to support. Workarounds are
>>> available for simple things with start_date and end_date, but we can only
>>> go so far with things like 'DisusedRailroad'.
>>> 
>>>> From other work, the recording of historical GIS data requires:
>>> 
>>> a) Labelling by language, datetime and by source. The 'source' is necessary
>>> to keep sanity when dealing with multiple nomenclatures used by different
>>> people.
>>> b) The associated feature by datetime.
>>> c) The different geometries associated to the features by datetime.
>>> d) The different states (active, disused, abandoned, damaged) by datetime.
>>> 
>>> The above is the only way to capture all of the use cases you mention.
>>> Given the amount of work that an NEH submission is going to be, perhaps we
>>> should look at a redesign of what is under the hood. OSM is already using
>>> two different databases for editing and rendering!
>>> 
>>> best,
>>> rhw
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Dec 19, 2014, at 8:00 AM, historic-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Message: 2
>>>> Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 11:20:07 -0800
>>>> From: Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org>
>>>> To: Richard Welty <rwelty at averillpark.net>
>>>> Cc: "historic at openstreetmap.org" <historic at openstreetmap.org>
>>>> Subject: Re: [OHM] tagging for historic race tracks
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>     <CAA1fFexccePOAQ=dHzrMg-b-u2HeWQf4qq46vfWGB38Ripz9zw at mail.gmail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>> 
>>>> These are great questions to consider - I've asked the same thing about
>>>> how
>>>> to represent historical Tour de France routes on a year by year basis.
>>>> 
>>>> I'll defer to others on this list on how to handle, but I did think there
>>>> was something similar to bus routes that might be reappropriated for this
>>>> type of application (e.g. a use-based set of tags, rather than
>>>> feature-based).
>>>> 
>>>> Do you want to take stab at figuring out a starting point for tagging
>>>> conventions for this stuff & posting it on the wiki? He who writes first
>>>> writes best?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Richard Welty <rwelty at averillpark.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> more fun tagging issues to consider:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1) the original watkins glen course (1948 through
>>>>> the early 50s) ran on public roads that still exist.
>>>>> so it could be tagged in OSM. but maybe it should
>>>>> be in OHM instead? what do we do? it will never
>>>>> be raced on again.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2) there are traces of old ovals in the form of
>>>>> city streets, one which is complete in San
>>>>> Francisco, and one which is only in part in
>>>>> Rhode Island. so these could be partially or
>>>>> completely tagged in OSM. again, what
>>>>> should best practice be? once more, these
>>>>> will never be race tracks again.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> richard
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> rwelty at averillpark.net
>>>>> Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
>>>>> OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux
>>>>> Java - Web Applications - Search
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Historic mailing list
>>>>> Historic at openstreetmap.org
>>>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Jeff Meyer
>>> Global World History Atlas
>>> www.gwhat.org
>>> jeff at gwhat.org
>>> 206-676-2347
>>> 
>>> OpenStreetMap: Mapping with a Human Touch
>>> osm: Open Historical Map (OHM) / my OSM user page
>>> t: @GWHAThistory / @OpenHistMap
>>> f: GWHAThistory
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 