[HOT] Thank you from MSF!

Sun Apr 7 17:36:58 UTC 2019

 Walker, thank you for that. It's an interesting approach, and in fact I've just had someone else suggest use of "ref". Would be interesting to see how many others have used this approach, will keep you posted.
Best regards, Kevin

    On Sunday, April 7, 2019, 6:11:16 PM GMT+1, Walker Kosmidou-Bradley <wkosmidoubradley at worldbank.org> wrote:  

 Dear Kevin,
In many countries, the country designations are mapped to the OSM conventions and then the Main, District, or Local to which you allude could be a part of the ref/number.  Afghanistan has a pretty simple process to go from from OSM to national data (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Afghanistan) please note that this highway tag list was adapted from the fine work done for https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa.
In Afghanistan, the government knows that OSM secondary roads are “district roads” and the ref number reflects that, e.g. D320781 (Secondary) and NH1010 (Trunk), Afghanistan doesn’t use the motorway designation from OSM.  If they need to change the tag after downloading, a simple if/than script can make the adjustment in a couple minutes.
I’m happy to learn more how other folks have tackled this issue.

Best,
Walker
On Apr 7, 2019, at 21:30, Kevin McPherson via HOT <hot at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

[External]
Dear all, I am new to this HOT interface on OSM, but joined last week, and interested in road classification in OSM. This is my first posting, and first time I have engaged with anyone on OSM, so am still getting up to speed.

"Road Classification" is an important topic for roads agencies, it helps define the funding and prioritisation for development and maintenance of the road network in a country.
With regards to OSM, one issue is that the <highway> tag in OSM is never quite the same as the official definition of the country. For example, the highway tag:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway
uses "Motorway", "Trunk", "Primary", "Secondary" etc. while a national roads agency might use other terminology such as "Main", "District", "Local" etc.

What this means is that the road network classification in OSM is never quite the same as that used by the Roads Agency, and there are discrepancies between the "official" data of the roads agency, and the OSM definition. This causes confusion to anyone who wants accurate mapping.

As part of my work, I am trying to encourage Roads Agencies to review OSM mapping, to compare with their official definitions, and to update OSM based on their own records. However, the differences in the classification terminologies are a barrier to this. Every country potentially has a different classification system. We have been discussing internally that an extra "layer" on top of OSM might be a way forward, but that is an overhead and requires extra cost and administration.
Would be grateful for anyone's views on this.
Regards, Kevin McPherson

On Saturday, April 6, 2019, 3:34:19 PM GMT+1, Ralf Bernhardt <raabee at gmx.de> wrote:

My point this time is not the classification of a few roads. What I learn from this, is that our data is processed and reviewed again. If a mapping error is detected by local staff, it will most likely only be reported to their own mapping department. It will also only be fixed locally. We as mappers or validators will never learn from this process. All errors will remain in the OSM Database. That might be understandable in an emergency situation like now.  But without direct feedback from map users we will never improve. We should also demand that more local knowledge will be shared with OSM. A simple thank you is not enough.

Ralf

On 06.04.19 13:29, John Whelan wrote:

There is another wiki guide 

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa

both get updated from time to time.  As a general rule of thumb I tag highways between settlements as unclassified not track, I leave it to the local mappers to say if it is a higher classification.  Occasionally I'll tag as high as tertiary. Normally I leave the tags alone but have been known to retag motorways between two small settlements as unclassified.

I think step one is to get something mapped.  Step two is correct it and with lots of new mappers with different ideas we'll always see some problems.

Cheerio John 

Frans Schutz wrote on 2019-04-06 6:27 AM:

Hello Ralf 

you pinpoint to a situation which is not always clear. 
First of all. we ty to keep ourselves to the East African Highway tagging wiki 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines

Different mappers judge different how to tag a highway. Out of my own experience lots of mappers (and validators) struggle with how to tag a highway.  Looking to the importance, the routing, and the width of the highway, which is hard to measure from a satellite image, we have to decide. A big number of new mappers are joining us and have different ideas (nor no idea at all) how to tag a highway. I've seen taggings as secondary highway as a connection to 2 hamlets and so on. So we try to tag as good as possible, but often it is a (calculated)guess which tag is relevant. Take also in account that there is a huge time pressure on these disaster mapping projects, so sometimes you accept the tagging as they were made. When there is no time pressure you can take a look to each highway and decide. 
I hope you get an understanding how we have to deal with this subject. 
Best regards 
Frans Schutz 
Validator 

Op 5-4-2019 om 20:10 schreef Ralf Bernhardt: 

Interesting when compared to the openstreetmap data. 

There are many POIs I would like to see on Openstreetmap too, also 
boundarys and place names. 

I also noticed a different tagging scheme: Car, Moto and Foot. I would 
guess that Roads not passable for a car but by foot and moto should be 
highway=path in OSM. 

But most of them are still tagged as unclassified or residential. Is 
there a reason for that or will you change them later? 

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