[talk-au] OpenStreetMap in Government

[Matt White]

I'm also very interested in 4wd trails - it's what 80% of my mapping 
consists of I think (that, and house numbers in the inner north of 
Melbourne)

The current 4wd_only tag was one of the tags I proposed a few years ago 
- there was a massive barney at the time over the smoothness=* and 
surface=* tags, and all I wanted to do was mark roads that were clearly 
tagged as 4wd only (proper 4wd as in low range, high clearance). The 
surface/smoothness debate was interesting, but got in the way of the 
larger problem.

I've come to the conclusion that the Australian mappers pretty much have 
to go it alone in this area - what the Americans and Europeans call a 
4wd track would be a national highway for us (and we actually have a few 
legitimate highways and primary roads that are 4wd/seasonal closure type 
roads. I'm not a massive fan of the tracktype=* tag - it's a random 
number that is too subjective.

There was an attempt in Victoria a while ago to class various tracks 
around the place as 4wd - the DSE/Parks Vic had a program where various 
4wd club members were trained in what constituted an green, blue, black 
and double black road (very ski-trail), and got people out mapping that, 
but it all went to pot when it turned out that the DSE/Parks Vic guys 
were taking those results from the 4wd guys, and then either closing the 
roads to management vehicles only, or grading them so they were rated 
green. Pretty soon after that, the 4wd clubs got suitably annoyed, and 
stopped supporting the initiative.

To the best of my knowledge, we still don't have a decent "subject to 
seasonal closure" tagging schema either - believe that Liz was at one 
time proposing something, but I think she's given up on OSM post license 
change.

I'd be more than happy to help put together an AU only/AU based 4wd 
mapping set of rules and tags that we can use - if we can agree on 
something, I can also mod the hi-res/4wd maps I crank out for the Garmin 
devices to suit, and possibly even learn the Mapnik rendering stuff to 
implement the rendering side in Mapnik (seeing as DIY often appears as 
the only way the renderer gets changed). I wrote up some surface tagging 
concepts ages ago I thought might fly for handling the surface issue for 
4wd tracks, as well as some general rules for tagging roads (eg: when 
off the beaten track, it's critical to mark the entire stretch of road 
as 4wd only or similar if there are no turns you can make to get off the 
road - often once you are on a 4wd road, you tend to be committed to 
going forwards...)

Matt

On 1/05/2013 10:28 AM, David Bannon wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-04-30 at 16:29 +0700, kristy van putten wrote:
>
>>
>> ...... has anyone thought of 4WD trails in OSM?  I would also be keen
>> to find out if there are any Ozzy teaching OSM to schools or scout
>> groups etc?
> Kristy, I have a particular interest in 4wd trails and OSM. I am
> particularly concerned how 4wd roads are recorded and typically
> displayed. The difficulty is that we all seem to use a range of
> standards and generally, the rendering people ignore them all. Perhaps
> not unreasonably.
>
> Just before christmas, I lead a bit of a campaing to get some clear
> standards in place for defining 4wd tracks, the idea being, consistent
> with OSM guidelines, that highway= be used to signify the purpose of the
> road and tags such as tracktype= be used to describe the likely state
> its in. Tracktype= already has grade1 to grade5 but 4wd tracks, needed,
> IMHO 6,7 and 8. Sadly, while everyone agreed something needed to be
> done, I did not see enough support for that idea to get past the OSM
> voting model. It therefore just a recommendation on
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Roads_Tagging
>
> 4wd_only is another option, it is at least official. However, it has
> only one 'level' and apparently the rendering community don't like tags
> that begin with a numeral, makes postqress column names messy.
>
> Trouble is that much of europe and the US don't really understand 4wd
> tracks/roads, unless there is a widely used stand way of describing
> them, the renderers will ignore it, mapers won't see any results and
> won't bother. The poor old motorist will find themselves in serious
> trouble every now and again !
>
> David
>
>>
>> Looking forward to talking to you all
>> Cheers
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>>
>> Kristy Van Putten
>>
>> Spatial Analyst, Data Manager
>>
>> Australia-Indonesia Facility Disaster Reduction
>>
>> Mb: +62 811 987 573
>>
>>
>>
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