[HOT] Data quality & validation efforts (Re: Is HOT planning to validate this 4 year old project?)

[Paul Uithol]

Hi Mateausz, John, Benni, Ralf & Mario,

Thanks for (again) flagging these & additional issues. Couple specific 
points on this project:

- There are several very active communities in Tanzania 
(https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Tanzania) - including 
some quite active users of the TM, such as OMDTZ and crowd2map. Please 
do keep in mind this is far from an easy task on the whole - it's a huge 
country, with a lot of places and locations still totally unmapped, and 
often little or nothing to go on in terms of basic reference datasets - 
either in terms of formal road naming, numbering or topology, cadastral 
data, or much else, really.
- I have flagged this specific project to Innocent Maholi (the project 
creator) via email, in case he hasn't seen your messages. Even though 
you might have just been flagging this project one as symptomatic of 
wider issues, I agree it's still good to attempt to resolve immediate 
issues where those are spotted!

In the larger picture, I'll readily admit HOT has a lot of ground to 
cover to get to better outputs & data quality on multiple fronts, as 
John also highlights. From HOT as an organization, we have started 
directing more time and effort to data quality in general, and 
validation efforts specifically; and there is more in the works (also 
please reference the Data Quality session & talks at the Summit). To 
highlight a couple:

- There is a lot of ongoing work by the QC&A working group on assessing 
past TM projects and validation, as also indicated by Arnelie earlier on 
this list.
- We are working on improved & automated monitoring of problem areas 
across common data quality issues, for example overlapping buildings, 
often misused tagging, etc - this is related to the work Ramya presented 
around "OSM Galaxy" at the HOT Summit.
- I think the Data Quality internships is also a great initivative - 
some more info in Becky's diary post @ 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Becky%20Candy/diary/398216.
- Both my role, and that of several others in the organization, is 
changing and taking on an increased focus on data quality. If you're 
interested, I can share more of that once we're properly going with that 
over the next month or so.

Lastly, I would like to reiterate Arnelie's invitation to the QC&A 
working group meetings! And/or please feel free to reach out to me with 
further ideas, questions or suggestions.

best,
Paul
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/attachments/20211221/90732a9c/attachment.htm>