[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - protection_class=* (Words, not numeric codes)

[Kevin Kenny]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 6:37 AM Andrew Davidson <theswavu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/4/20 9:23 am, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
> > The only thing that the proposal page still needs is a couple more
> > detailed definitions for some of the tags.
>
> Maybe not. A quick read finds this statement:
>
> protect_class=2 will be tagged as boundary=national_park (de facto)
>
> This is a problem because boundary=national_park already exists as a
> generic tag for a conservation area. A quick survey of all of the
> existing boundary=national_park with a wikidata link finds the following
> range of IUCN Protected Area Categories:
>
> Class  Count
> IA       95
> IB       70
> II      848
> III      74
> IV      277
> V       234
> VI      159
> Total  1757
>
> So less than 50% of "National Parks" are Cat II.
>
> I would suggest adding protection_class=national_park and dropping the
> suggestion of using boundary=national_park.

[A side point:]
While I regard IUCN as a fine authority for the definition of the
protection categories, I have found it to be considerably less useful
for the application of the definition. For instance, in my home state
of New York, all Wilderness Areas are tagged as category VI on IUCN's
site. This is surely incorrect; the language that establishes them is
nearly identical to the parallel language in the (US Federal)
Wilderness Act. Motorized travel, harvesting of trees, bicycles, the
erection of permanent structures (there is an exemption for certain
improvements to trails and campsites to protect the rest of the area
from hikers), all are strictly forbidden. Areas protected by NGO's
(e.g., Nature Conservancy, Open Space Institute, Ducks Unlimited) and
land trusts are not listed at all.

[A stronger point:]
I agree with you that boundary=national_park presents us with an
awkward problem: what does it mean? It's a tag that's been around for
a long time, and there are over a thousand objects that bear it. If it
simply means that an area has the phrase, "National Park" (in the
local language) somewhere in its name, it's pretty redundant, and
fails to cover features that are national parks in structure and
function but named differently. If it simply means 'category II
protected area,' then it's surely redundant, but furthermore, half of
the ones we have are mistagged. Perhaps most awkwardly, once we've
chosen to use the tag, 'boundary=national_park', then
'boundary=protected_area' is no longer available to us.

Can we work around the problem simply by allowing 'protection_class'
to apply to 'boundary=national_park' as well as
'boundary=protected_area' and asserting that the default value of
'protection_class' for 'national_park' shall be assumed to be 2
(surely the plurality, if not the majority, of the areas listed
above)?  That could also allow us to choose, for example, 1b for a
national park that is all wilderness, or 6 for one of the porous
national parks in the UK, where most of the land is in private hands
and people continue to live and work inside a park's borders (albeit
under severe constraints as to the uses to which the land may be put).
We could also then state that 'boundary=national_park' should be used
in preference to 'boundary=protected_area' where it applies.

That would also allow us to address Joseph Eisenberg's objection (in
the talk page on the WIki) that the proposal violates the 'one object,
one tag' principle. We could retain established tagging for such
things as 'leisure=nature_reserve' or 'landuse=recreation_ground'
while still indicating that the features enjoy a particular legal
protection, by augmenting the tagging with a 'protection_class'.
'Boundary=protected_area' could then be reserved for the features for
which no existing tagging applies. The inapplicability can come about
for numerous reasons. For instance, 'protected_area' may become the
unifying tag because the protection status is the only salient
feature, or because there is no existing tagging that applies well, or
because the area admits of mixed land uses that share a common
boundary and name.


-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin