[OSM-newbies] New country tagging help

Heinrich McBean heinrichmcbean at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 28 07:39:40 GMT 2009


Claudius and Donald,

 

I grew up in Guyana and know the country very well.  When I first learned of OSM my first thoughts were about mapping Guyana's vast network of hinterland roads.  From what I have seen, Donald is doing some very useful mapping work in Guyana but he needs to think in context.  If Donald should get off the main road he would discover that No. 47 Village actually has several hundred houses.  It still has a smaller population that a US or UK town of similar land area, but No. 47 village has well defined political boundaries and in the mapping process those boundaries have to be respected.   It is also not "common" for every five or ten blocks to have its own village name. All Villages in Guyana have well defined and established geo-political boundaries.  

 

With respect to the road network in Guyana Donald has to think about functionality.  I am a civil engineer and I have lived in the UK.  I can tell you that a motorway, although it is a multi-lane facility, it is not defined by the number of lanes but by its functionality.  Same as with the Interstate in the USA where I currently live.  Some sections of Interstate only have two lanes in each direction, while some US city streets may have 4 lanes in each direction.  That does not make the city street an Interstate highway.

 

Everything in Guyana is on a saller scale that he would be accustomed to and thus cannot be tagged using a scale that suits the USA or the larger European countries.  I can arrange for Donald to meet some local land surveyors and highway engineers who could be of much help in advising him on some of the issues that he has encountered.  By the way, Kitty and Campbell are two distinct and separate neighbourhoods (note the spelling) in Georgetown.  Within the City, incorporated villages are defined as neighbourhoods.  Thus the #44 bus does a loop from Downtown Georgetown through Campbellville and Kitty (or vice-versa) and back to Downtown Georgetown.  It is very much like a bus that goes from Manhattan to Queens via Brooklyn but on a much smaller scale.

 

And Donald, I hope you find time to visit Kaieteur Falls and to do a overland trip to Bartica or somes place further south to see the cable suspension bridge over the Issan, for example.  In Guyana, you have not done much travelling until you visit the "interior".  If you drink beer have a "Banks" for me.

 

Regards,

 

Heinrich

 

 

 

 
 
> To: newbies at openstreetmap.org
> From: claudius.h at gmx.de
> Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:49:19 +0100
> Subject: Re: [OSM-newbies] New country tagging help
> 
> Am 24.03.2009 11:58, Donald Campbell II:
> > I'm a little confused how to go about tagging things here in Guyana.
> > I've been here about two months and seem to be the only person here
> > actively mapping. Have done a bit of traveling and I have a pretty good
> > idea of what things are like all over so now maybe you guys can clear up
> > some questions I have.
> >
> > Okay like highway tags for example. There's nothing in the whole
> > country that is large enough to fit a motorway tag. The roads between
> > major cities are usually still one lane in each direction and rarely
> > divided. Often a major road is a single lane with barely enough room to
> > pass when you meet traffic in the other direction. Sometimes you have to
> > back up a while to find a spot you can pass each other at. Highway
> > secondary would be the biggest tag I could use here.
> >
> > So does the tag specify the purpose or the physical reality of the road?
> >
> > Also cities, towns, villages, etc... here it's common for every block
> > of 5 to 10 streets to have it's own village name. In the Capital city
> > Georgetown there's a few dozen smaller named areas that are listed on
> > the busses and used commonly for directions. ie: 44 bus Georgetown to
> > Kitty / Campbellville.
> >
> > Outside the major cities and along the coastal route many of the
> > villages simply get a number. Village 49 or whatever. Maybe those will
> > only have a dozen houses along their only road, which is also the main
> > road between other larger cities. So technically none of those are
> > large enough to warrant the village tag if it's defined by the number of
> > residents as the wiki seems to explain. They more closely map Suburbs
> > which are smaller named areas inside an existing city.
> >
> > If I tag them villages, it matches the local vocabulary but is
> > technically incorrect, calling them suburbs would make them render
> > correctly but also be wrong since they are often independent along the
> > main road. We also don't want to "tag for the renderer".
> 
> Don't stick to the documentation on the wiki too hard, especially when 
> it comes to numbers (city always more than 100.000 inhabitants) or set 
> characteristics (surface of trunk road has to be tarmac, two lanes + 
> exits lanes, etc.) as these only fit in a very small region of the world 
> called Europe and some of the United States of America. Rather set up 
> reasonable rules for you region. As Georgetown being Guyana's capital 
> has ~130.000 inhabitants this could be a good meter for scaling the 
> place-tagging for example. If "village 49" has only 10 houses it might 
> still qualify for a guyanese (is that the adjective?) place=village. 
> More important than the raw numbers are the infrastructural 
> installations found there (a shop, a place to find a bed, etc.) and the 
> importance of that place to it's surroundings.
> 
> I've seen you've started a wikiproject page on Guyana already. Keep it up!
> Regards,
> Claudius
> 
> 
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