[Tagging] Damage Assessment Tags - Would like feedback on a schema

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

> Am 22.05.2015 um 09:04 schrieb Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>:
> 
> Yes, of course. If there is no bridge left at all then we'd simply
> delete - or refrain from mapping - the bridge (rather than create an
> object saying there was a bridge but it's gone now).
> 
> Incidentally this means that OSM is not suitable for use cases like
> "let's plot all the damage done by disaster <X>" because if the damage
> is obliteration then there will be nothing in OSM that we can plot.


it depends on the structure of the bridge but if it is/was a stone bridge or steel or concrete (i.e. a big serious bridge) it will typically not completely vanish, even if heavily damaged and temporarily unusable the situation will still be very different to no bridge at all (repairing will often be possible and done, and be much less work compared to starting from scratch, eg foundations)

Few here will remember WW II ;-) but we all know the pictures.
In 1945, Germany, after the war, reconstruction was less work than starting from scratch because even if it looked like total destruction, the streets impassable and blocked by rubble, but the sewage system, underground infrastructure, overground city layout, were still mostly sane, and allowed for much faster reconstruction than new development of a settlement would have been. Actually more buildings and structure has break destroyed in the time after the war (50ies/60ies) with the will of modernization than had been destroyed in the war.

cheers 
Martin