[Strategic] Routing on OSM (Andrew Harvey)

[Steven Feldman]

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Steven Feldman
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KnowWhere Consulting

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On 30 Jan 2011, at 12:00, strategic-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:

> I can see merit in both sides of the discussion.

Incorporating routing on the main osm page will display one of the main use cases of the data and encourage people to contribute and QA routing elements, which would be beneficial to building the database (although this is more likely to be of relevance in the already detailed areas). This could certainly help with gathering turn restrictions etc, particularly if there was a simple way of entering through potlatch or something like it.

I am not sure that the try the routing, find an error and fix it use case is the most efficient method of identifying and fixing network discontinuities - surely there are software and process based solutions to that problem? 

A potential concern could be determining which routing technology we deploy, there seem to be a load of OSM contributors/developers working in this area, how would we select? I doubt this would be like tile layers where we can connect to multiple tile servers without placing a load on the OSM servers, or could it?

steven
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Re: Fw: Routing on OSM (Andrew Harvey)
> 
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:25:56 +1100
> From: Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com>
> To: strategic at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Strategic] Fw: Routing on OSM
> Message-ID:
> 	<AANLkTinV6evh07Q-wGEv5hu3sSYmg8hDHKKxFMLosBzP at mail.gmail.com>
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> 
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>> Milo van der Linden wrote:
>>> It is my personal opinion that routing should not be something the
>>> foundation will facilitate. Why? Because it will ask a lot of the hardware
>>> and it is not part of the OpenStreetMap foundation mission statement.
>> 
>> I tend to share that sentiment, however the point has been made by some that
>> routing - if done properly and integrated well, i.e. not necesarily
>> "end-user-facing" - could be a major quality driver. See
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup/250_cities/routing_grid for
>> an example how routing was used in an automated fashion to assess data
>> quality. There are also many OSM users who would like us to offer a better
>> map user experience on www.openstreetmap.org, including routing. Personally,
>> I'm more a "www.openstreetmap.org is for mappers, let end users go to
>> MapQuest and other user-optimised sites" person but other opinions do exist.
> 
> I agree with this, an end user routing interface (like the nroets
> demo) is a driver for improving the quality of the data in the OSM
> database.
> 
> I've made fixes to OSM to help routers (eg. connecting crossing ways
> that are really intersections) that I only noticed because of using
> the routing demo. Just like the tiles on the main osm page help
> mappers map, a routing interface would help us improve quality of the
> data.
> 
> I'm not trying to make a comment on whether routing should or
> shouldn't be on the OSM.org main page or if it should be supported by
> the OSMF, I'm just saying that if it were on the main page, it would
> make it easier and more accessible for mappers improve the database.
> 
> 
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> End of Strategic Digest, Vol 8, Issue 14
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