[Tagging] Feature proposal - RFC - assembly_point:purpose

[John Willis]

Hmm... The active shooter discussion brought up some good things to think about. 


As far as I know, we are not mapping the evacuation plans of individual buildings with assembly_point. 

When talking about the schools, we talked about shelters and assembly_points. 

The pitch at a public school is often considered an assembly_point - not just for the children, but for the entire neighborhood. It is a government designated place for people to go during a large-scale disaster 

Perhaps thinking of those as active shooter safe rooms as "shelters" is wrong, and the mere evacuation point for a random private building is not something to include in emergency=* 

Perhaps having some evacuation_plan=* key and an accompanying relation can let individual buildings and complexes map areas, points, and evacuation routes on a micro level (like indoor mapping , ie: the fire evacuation routes and meeting point outside for a large hotel),  **but I don't think mapping a place designated for an individual building evacuation in case of fire is proper for =assembly_point.** They are for the *public* to gather and receive aid and possible rescue in a large scale disaster. They are usually designated and operated by the government, and mapped and signed by the government, so they know where to send rescue personnel. 

The only exception I can see is for tornado shelter or bomb shelter - as their physical existence is the "help" - and (I assume) are publically accessible assembly_points, even in private commercial buildings, and they blur the line between shelter and assembly_point. I don't know how to map those, as I am not very familiar with them. 

But Having a bunch of assembly_points coating a downtown area, even with access=private, would turn into tag pollution. The 2-3 locations (the school ground, the park, and the sports complex) would be lost in a sea of points on lawns and parking lots no one would care to be. 

If a large concrete mall near a coastline has a outside, designated, publically accessible stairway to the roof and signs telling people to evacuate there in case of tsunami, the fact that it is "privately operated" is not as important as it is publically accessible for *anyone* looking for Saftey. And the fact that any random building just happens to be tall and have stairs is not enough - has to publically known and publically accessible. 

Our local elementary school grounds are the designated evacuation point for our community in case of a failure of a nearby dam - we received flyers showing the hazard map and evacuation points. 

The building evacuation points do not feel like those are in the same category. 

The idea of assembly_point being publically accessible and designated for this purpose is the most important point. 

The narrow_definion of assembly_point seems best. 

Javbw

> On Oct 19, 2018, at 2:42 AM, bkil <bkil.hu+Aq at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The reason is probably to both increase survival rate by taking
> everybody as far as possible from danger and to ease the work of
> firefighters by not gathering a crowd around the building in question.