[Imports] RoadMatcher

[Richard Weait]

Dear Import team,

During the call today, SteveC suggested that I outline what the
Canadian community has been doing with RoadMatcher.[1]

The RoadMatcher code[2] is a plug-in for OpenJUMP[3].  The OpenJUMP
code[4] is a Java GIS desktop program licensed under Gnu GPL.

The RoadMatcher adds conflation options for road networks.  It finds
similar road sections in multiple data sets and allows conflation
operations on these data sets.  One of the Canadian contributors,
Steve Singer[5], has experimented with and patched RoadMatcher to work
with the Canadian road network data sets.

Background

The Canadian road network data is non-uniform.  High quality topology
is available in the National Road Network[6], a few provinces also
include street names and block face addressing.  Another older road
network file[7] data set from Statistics Canada has street name data,
but the topology is poor.  An un-named Canadian government source has
advised me to never use the topology data in the Statcan file.

The Canadian community also agreed that it is more difficult, but
preferable, to add road data without wiping out existing community
contributions.  RoadMatcher made that possible.

Benefits

RoadMatcher and OpenJUMP takes road names from the StatCan data and
adds them to the NRN data, when they match closely enough.

RoadMatcher also compares NRN geometry to existing OSM highway
geometry and creates output files for:
All NRN roads, with StatCan names added.
NRN roads plus StatCan names that match roads found in OSM as roads
not to upload.
NRN roads plus StatCan names not found in OSM as roads to upload to OSM.

Drawbacks

The RoadMatcher matches between NRN an StatCan data are imperfect.
The RoadMatcher matches between NRN and OSM are imperfect.
When uploaded to OSM, the NRN road network does not connect
topologically with the existing OSM network.  Nodes must be created
where they join.

Best regards,
Richard.

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geobase_NRN_-_OSM_Map_Feature#RoadMatcher
[2] http://www.jump-project.org/project.php?PID=RM&SID=OVER
[3] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenJUMP
[4] https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=118054&package_id=320958

[5] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Stevens

[6] http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/nrn/description.html
[7] http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss/2006Dissemination/Data/FRR_RNF_e.cfm