[OSM-newbies] newbies Digest, Vol 25, Issue 38

[Donald Campbell II]

That's a lot of good info in that post, thanks. :-)  I've heard of the
government agency that does mapping and surveying, perhaps your friends work
there. It's at the end of Hadfield near the zoo.  A friend here as told me
they once offered to let him copy their data onto his Hard drive but he had
to leave before he got a chance to do that.  I was planning to drop by
sometime and seeing if I could get permission to use their data for OSM like
the TIGER data was imported in the US and other countries in Europe.  What
do you know about the compatibility between Guyana's government data and the
public domain concept?  I've seen maps here with a copyright Guyana Lands
and Surveys Commision, so there IS some form of copyright law in Guyana even
though the newspapers claim otherwise.  ;-)  Perhaps we may have better
results through your contacts than if I just randomly show up in their
office.  :-)

About Kaieteur Falls, I've heard of a fairly long road trip you can take
there that stops at several villages along the way.  Is it basically the
same as taking Intraserv to Lethem?  Ideally I could stop at a village a day
or so long enough to get their major streets mapped and then move on.
What's the best way to do that?

Oh and getting off the main roads.  :-)  My buddy in New Amsterdam flipped
when he saw the GPS and actually made me sit in his truck all day as we went
to Skeldon and many side roads, if you check out that GPX track you may
notice us stopped in a spot over an hour or so, that's where we drove into a
ditch backing up on a small road.  Does that qualify for an OSM mapping
accident??  :-)  We had to hire a tractor to pull us out, I should add that
to the wiki sometime.  I definitely plan more trips there in the future and
hopefully I can find someone else who's interested in OSM and willing to get
a GPS of their own.  I met a missionary who's spent around 15 years
backpacking and jeep trailing all around the interior, he's still at it so
I'm hoping I can figure out a way to get him involved.

Thanks for the tips, let's see if we can get Guyana's Land and Survey's
Commission involved in OSM somehow.  :-)
-DC


>
> 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.
>
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