[Talk-ca] Why import all of Geobase/Canvec?

[Corey Burger]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/11/08, Matt Wilkie <matt.wilkie at gov.yk.ca> wrote:
>> I've been following the conversations with interest, and find myself
>> wondering what is the value for OSM in ingesting wholesale the public
>> geospatial offerings of Canadian federal and regional governments? These
>> are big organisations with full time staff and big budgets dedicated to
>> processing and updating the data. Why should/would a handful of
>> volunteers expend the effort in digesting this volume of data? Wouldn't
>> it be simpler to utilise WMS services?
>
> Simpler yes, better maybe not.
>
>> The usecase for ingesting roads and trails is fairly clear, people are
>> actually adding attributes and adding and adjusting geometry to more
>> closely match the reality they see. I don't see the same potential value
>> adding activity for natural features like hydrology, contours, satellite
>> imagery, etc. Am I missing something?
>
> Elevation contours can be of real interest, I gather some bicycle
> groups in Germany have used elevation data in OSM for things like
> planning tour routes (not only do bicycle rides want limits on
> distance/day they also want limits on sudden changes in elevation (no
> steep hills)).
>
> As for hydrology, by attitude would be, if it isn't much trouble to
> add, why not?

I am very much in favour of importing all of Geobase, but only when
the db can let users do selective pulls. So for right now, I think we
should import:

-the transportation network
-the hydrology network exluding watershed boundaries
-political boundaries
-park/landuse boundaries
-coastlines
-water features

We should not upload
-elevation data
-anything else

For reference, opencyclemap and all the various elevation driven
mapping stuffs are adding in the elevation data after the pull from
OSM.

Corey7