[Imports] Massachusetts road data

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
<calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
> The issue with routes is mentioned here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Massachusetts#Fixing_One_Way_Roads

To summarize, in OSM parlance:

The road ways indicate they're oneway (oneway=yes) but we don't know
the direction that the flow of traffic.

Correct?

And does this new dataset include the direction of these one way roads?

> That is a one question to ask, what kind of format is best to make it available in, currently we have the 2010 data for roads on our website http://www.eot.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=content/plan02&sid=about is .gdb .mdb and shapefile, but we can make up to date data available in other formats.

I'm afraid I don't have much of a GIS background, but generally our
preferred formats are ones that are readable by Free/Open Source
software, so Shapefiles are best.

>From there we can do whatever we need to with them (convert them to
our format, put them in a database, etc.).

And it's great you also provide documentation on the labels. Thats so
often missing. You guys are clearly taking the issue of providing this
data to the public seriously.

> The oblique and ortho data is in .psi and .pmi formats respectively, which is a type of .jfif file that the program pictometry uses, for those I was more looking for some information for how we should go about making those available.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with any of those formats. Maybe the Open
Aerial Maps know. They're a separate but related group of folks
working to make imagery available.

>From our perspective, the best thing would be a readily consumable API
to the data, as either TMS or WMS so that we could view imagery into
one of our editors.

The snag is that it's expensive for an individual or even a small
organization to be able to afford storage and hosting of such large
datasets. The OAM people are looking at technical solutions, but at
the end of the day "it's just hard to do".

I think the first step for us is, if you can't host the service, then
ideally it'd be good if it were in a format we could consume.

Of course, if you could find a way to share it via one of the
aforementioned protocols (WMS or TMS), well, you'd be my hero.

- Serge