[Tagging] Aerodrome classification

Joseph Eisenberg joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com
Mon May 20 12:10:53 UTC 2019


How should we classify different types of aerodromes?

We can already distinguish private aerodromes with the access tag
"access=private" and military aerodromes with "military=airfield", and
heliports have their own tag, but currently large international
airports and tiny airstrips are not clearly distinguished.

I believe we can make a reasonable distinction between major classes
of aerodromes:

1) Airstrips without buildings or any other developed features

2) Developed general aviation aerodromes which do not offer any
regularly scheduled public, commercial passenger service

3) Commercial airports which offer regularly scheduled commercial
passenger service

History:

In the very early years of OSM, there were three types of features
where planes could land: aeroway=airport for airports,
aeroway=airfield for undeveloped airstrips, and  aeroway=aerodrome for
general aviation sites, if I understand the history correctly. These
were rendered differently back in 2008, it appears, based on the old
discussion in the talk pages.

However, at some point all of the aeroway=airport and aeroway=airfield
features were edited (I don't know if it was done over a few months or
all at once) to aeroway=aerodrome, which was defined to mean any place
where aviation operations regularly take place, except for military
airports, which are tagged miltary=airfield.

Unfortunately, while this may work for pilots and aviation usage, it's
not very sensible for general mappers. Some mappers have used
aeroway=airstrip for small airfields without buildings or any other
developed features, so that they will not be rendered. Others have
proposed tags to specify the type of aerodrome.

The oldest classification system used "type=*" but this conflicts with
the key used for relations such as type=multipolygon.

Another option was "aerodrome:type=" which has been used a couple of
thousand times, but has not been clearly defined:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:aerodrome:type

The most recent proposal in 2014 suggested using "aerodrome=*" which
seems to fit best with the usual way of tagging the type or main
classification of a feature.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Aerodrome

I think this last option should be developed further, but we need to
decide which values of "aerodrome=*" are viable.

Mainly I'm interested in places with or without regular passenger
service, since this is of greatest interest to most map users, but
perhaps there could also be specific tags for cargo-only aerodromes
and other specialized facilities.



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