[Imports] [Talk-us] Mass towns

Metcalf, Calvin (DOT) calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us
Wed Oct 19 13:50:12 UTC 2011


Ok I can plan on ignoring those for now, unless I get bored today.  

>-----Original Message-----
>From: peter.dobratz at gmail.com [mailto:peter.dobratz at gmail.com] 
>On Behalf Of Peter Dobratz
>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 9:42 AM
>To: Metcalf, Calvin
>Cc: talk-us at openstreetmap.org; imports at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mass towns
>
>sounds good.
>
>I think some of the county borders are already in the map as
>overlapping Ways, and I was planning on cleaning those up eventually.
>
>On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
><calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
>> Yeah ways on top of ways would be bad, I grabbed the massgis 
>arcs from survey points without coast which is a file that has 
>just the linework with off shore boundaries,  the ways are 
>currently already split at junctions, my method is going to be
>> 1. take out counties boundaries and state boundary
>> 2. take out boundaries already in
>> 3. check to see if anything already there corresponds to the 
>border (river etc)
>>
>> Would that be helpful or am I missing the source of 
>duplicate ways/need for splitting?
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: peter.dobratz at gmail.com [mailto:peter.dobratz at gmail.com]
>>>On Behalf Of Peter Dobratz
>>>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 8:56 AM
>>>To: Metcalf, Calvin
>>>Cc: talk-us at openstreetmap.org; imports at openstreetmap.org
>>>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mass towns
>>>
>>>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shp-to-osm.jar
>>>
>>>It's basically just a Java command-line program that reads in a .shp
>>>file and produces an .osm file.  It can use a configuration (rules)
>>>file that allows you to map attributes in the .shp to tags in the
>>>.osm, but I just create an empty rules file and add appropriate tags
>>>manually.
>>>
>>>If you find it easier to add Ways without Relations first that would
>>>be useful.  But I would avoid adding Ways on top of each other, as it
>>>would seem like just as much work to start from scratch instead of
>>>having to split Ways and delete duplicate Ways before adding them to
>>>Relations.
>>>
>>>On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
>>><calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
>>>> So on ubuntu you can open up a self extracting exe with
>>>archive manager (I smacked myself in the head when I learned
>>>that, turns out massgis makes them on linux).   I'm not
>>>familiar with shp-to-osm.jar link? I've been using Merkaartor
>>>to convert, but that usually forces me to then use kate or
>>>gedit to clean up the tags it makes. I wasn't going to add any
>>>extra tags except maybe population (so that a renderer could
>>>use the relations to label).   Would it make sense for me to
>>>add the ways now with relations to come as people are able, or
>>>does that sound like it wouldn't save much time?
>>>>
>>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>>From: peter.dobratz at gmail.com [mailto:peter.dobratz at gmail.com]
>>>>>On Behalf Of Peter Dobratz
>>>>>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 8:06 AM
>>>>>To: Metcalf, Calvin
>>>>>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mass towns
>>>>>
>>>>>I had just added Tyngsborough and Dunstable and my plan was to work
>>>>>along the NH/MA border downward, especially over the 
>winter when it's
>>>>>harder to go out and see things with the snow accumulation.  I also
>>>>>plan on continuing to clean up NH towns as people often import them
>>>>>such that you have lots of overlapping Ways.
>>>>>
>>>>>For NH towns, I had been starting with the TIGER shapefiles.
>>>>>Generally I open the .shp file in QuantumGIS, then select 
>a town and
>>>>>save it as a .shp file using EPSG:4326 - WGS 84 
>coordinates.  Then I
>>>>>run this .shp file through Shp-to-osm.jar with a blank rules.txt.
>>>>>This gives me an OSM file without tags that I can open in JOSM in a
>>>>>separate layer.  If there's already a Way in the map (mostly from a
>>>>>border of a neighboring town), then I split and re-use part of the
>>>>>existing way and add them to a relation.  If there are 2 or more
>>>>>overlapping Ways in the map, then I delete all but one of
>>>them and add
>>>>>it to multiple relations.  If the way doesn't exist yet,
>>>then I either
>>>>>merge a portion from my other layer or for straight lines I
>>>just merge
>>>>>the 2 end-points instead of the tens of points all along a straight
>>>>>line from TIGER.
>>>>>
>>>>>On the Way itself, I add boundary=administrative and admin_level=4
>>>>>(state), admin_level=6 (county), admin_level=4 (city/town).  On the
>>>>>relation, I add type=boundary, boundary=administrative, 
>name=(actual
>>>>>name of the town), admin_level=(4, 6, or 8), wikipedia=(appropriate
>>>>>article link).  Each way of the border is added to the 
>relation with
>>>>>role as outer (unless there's an unusual border where an inner is
>>>>>necessary to make a whole in the town or county).  Note: it
>>>looks like
>>>>>you could just as well use type=multipolygon on the relation as the
>>>>>values for the roles are identical (inner/outer).
>>>>>
>>>>>Rather than deleting Ways or Relations in the database, I would
>>>>>instead split existing Ways and edit existing Relations if they are
>>>>>not right.
>>>>>
>>>>>For MA, I had also been using TIGER as I looked at MassGIS, but the
>>>>>only download I could find was an EXE and wasn't sure how 
>to extract
>>>>>it on Mac or Ubuntu.  If you can point me to how to get an 
>.osm file
>>>>>from this on a non-Windows system, that would be helpful.
>>>>>
>>>>>It is annoying that MassGIS tends to use hundreds of points to
>>>>>represent roads where 10 or so would suffice, and I've 
>been deleting
>>>>>hundreds of points on roads near what I happen to be 
>editing.  Also,
>>>>>if you do end up pulling stuff from MassGIS, try to avoid 
>adding tens
>>>>>of tags to each way just because there is a MassGIS database
>>>field, as
>>>>>they are probably not all relevant.
>>>>>
>>>>>As far as Boston goes, I would think you'd put the whole city in a
>>>>>relation with admin_level=8.  There's no convention to map smaller
>>>>>divisions within a city or town.  Looks like the
>>>non-agreement on this
>>>>>has been summarized on the wiki:
>>>>>
>>>>>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Neighborhood
>>>>>
>>>>>Peter
>>>>>
>>>>>On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
>>>>><calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
>>>>>> As towns are the primary division in MA that peole tend to
>>>>>use I'd like to add them to osm.  From what I can tell a few
>>>>>have been put in near NH as boundary relations (tyngsborough
>>>>>and dunstable) one has been put in as a closed way (stow) and
>>>>>10 or so have been put in in the south west as multipolygon
>>>relations.
>>>>>> Looking for some suggestions on the best way to do it, seems
>>>>>to me after playing around a bit last night that it would be
>>>>>something along the lines of taking the town boundary arcs
>>>>>from massgis, probably simplifing them, deleting any arc
>>>>>already up (county boundery, state boundary coast), uploading
>>>>>those arcs as ways with boundary=admin and admin_level=8, add
>>>>>admin_level=8 to the current 4 and 6 ways, a/d then longer
>>>>>term putting in the relations.
>>>>>> Is there a better or easier way? Which of the 3 ways used so
>>>>>far is prefered (if any).  And if I wanted to add cambridge
>>>>>and boston neiborhoods how would I tag that (cambridge I made
>>>>>myself as cambridge gis somehow figured out how to embed a pdf
>>>>>inside a kml).
>>>>>> Sent with Verizon Mobile Email
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>>>>>> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
>>>>>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>


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