[HOT] Use of Intermittent and Seasonal tags to Describe waterways

[Will Skora]

Hi Hotties,

I'm writing about a couple tags:
seasonal=*<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:seasonal>and
intermittent <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent>  and
would like to hear how you've used them in the field, mapping remotely, or
any other HOT projects.
As I understand, intermittent is used to describe waterways and bodies of
water that contain water after some storms or precipitation, otherwise it
is mostly dry.
Seasonal is used to describe waterways that contain water and are flowing
for a continual part of the year (like the season opposite the Harmattan
and the dry season in Senegal).
In terms of usage: intermittent is used ~688,000 times ; seasonal > 6,000
times in the planet. Admittedly, A quick look at the taginfo combinations
show that 655,000 of the intermittent=yes tags were from a GNIS/NHD import
(a federal govt US dataset).

At the moment, as I understand the tags, here's what I currently propose
for the HOT/HDM Preset

intermittent=yes to describe that it's intermittent (intermittent=no would
not used, because with OSM data, it's assumed that the mapped object is
always there)

seasonal=yes (seasonal=no would not used)

I wouldn't use both seasonal=yes and intermittent=yes for an object. If a
stream or canal only has water some time of the year, intermittent=yes
would suffice.

I also propose to add these tags into the HDM tagging set -
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Tags/HDM_preset
https://github.com/hotosm/presets/issues/12

Also, should we use these for other tags besides waterway= ?
I'd also propose to use these 2 tags for natural=water as well.

Feedback and critiques are welcome here or on the github issue.

Lastly, if someone could translate this for other local communities where
english isn't widely spoken (Indonesia, Haiti, and many more), to hear
their opinions and existing practices, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Regards,

will
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