[Tagging] [Imports] RFC - Adding UN LOCODE tags to OSM

doug.fraser at tarisoga.com doug.fraser at tarisoga.com
Sun Feb 3 17:47:52 GMT 2013


Followup to my post: 

I am here at the London OSM Hack Weekend and spoke to someone who explained 
to me the larger issues and questions about importing / updating metadata 
like LOCODEs that can't be surveyed - i.e. data where managing the process 
of keeping it current may be troublesome. 

I agree with everything he explained and so now I don't think updating the 
LOCODEs that are present, etc would be the best idea.  Letting the existing 
tags die off sounds like the best idea. 

But locodes are assigned to harbours and they are surveyable, can be 
verified by the public, all that sort of thing.  So the UN list could be 
used to update or verify that cities have appropriate harbour tags 
associated with them.  IIRC, Long Beach (or LA) was one test case I looked 
at and it didn't have a tag that i'd expected. 

So now my idea is to check the harbour tags against the UN data (this could 
also be done for rail stations) and then determine how much data is missing 
and what ought to be improved. 

A related idea is that port terminals (for commercial shipping) are 
becoming prominent features (e.g. they are getting their own locodes) and 
perhaps a new tag harbour:terminal (like harbour:pier) could be created for 
handling this data.  Container terminals are physical features and won't 
arbitrarily change, so they aren't metadata like LOCODEs. 

If anyone has any feedback, I'd appreciate it.  I don't plan on doing 
anything until I fully understand the details of all this, so I can write 
it all up, etc. 

doug 


[Imports] RFC - Adding UN LOCODE tags to OSM writes: 

> Hi everyone,  
> 
> This is a duplicate of a email I sent to the Tagging list:  
> 
> The company I work for deals with shipping ports, UN LOCODEs, and shipping 
> schedules - I had hoped to use OSM to correlate geographical type info and 
> LOCODEs.  The problem has become messier than I ever thought, and 
> unfortunately OSM does not have much in the way of LOCODE related data.  
> 
> At this point, we have a well maintained list of LOCODEs and other such 
> data that I keep track with the UN list as it is updated.  So I thought 
> it'd be useful to put all that into OSM and clean up the handful of LOCODE 
> tags that I have seen in OSM.  This list also includes IATA data and some 
> other port type info - everything has been gleaned from public data 
> sources like the UN, so I'm sure there are no license related issues.  I'm 
> also confident of the accuracy since I'm the one responsible for 
> maintaining the data.  
> 
> I will write up a feature proposal on the wiki to outline the details, but 
> first I wanted to see if there were any comments or advice people might 
> have.  I do plan to automate the updates - none of this is map data per 
> se, but just tags, so I assume there won't be any real complications. So I 
> will read all about the guidelines around automation.  
> 
> The questions I had are:  
> 
> 1) the UN provides geographical coordinates of these LOCODEs, typically 
> the city center.  Is there any standard that OSM adheres to regarding the 
> location of cities?  Anyone have any pointers to info I should read?  
> 
> 2) alternative place names - the UN provides some data and we have data 
> from other sources.  The data is good, but is there any consensus on this 
> topic about how OSM ought to operate?  
> 
> 3) locations/cities not in OSM at all - adding these in is a separate task 
> entirely so I will leave that till I understand OSM better.  But if 
> someone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great.  
> 
> Thanks
> doug 
> 
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