[Talk-ca] [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful

[Sam Vekemans]

Hi Dave,

I'll bud in for a moment :) .. with my 2 Canadian pennies

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Dave Hansen <dave at sr71.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:59 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > Dave Hansen wrote:
> > > If we can come up with a scheme for getting the addressing imported in
> a
> > > sane fashion and the consensus is that people want it done that way,
> > > it'll get imported.  There are still quite a few squeaky wheels that
> > > like to grumble about TIGER, but I haven't heard a single person say
> > > that it did more harm than good.
> >
> > I firmly believe this.  TIGER contains so many errors in Oregon,
> > Washington and Idaho that it would likely be easier to start fresh than
> > fix.
>
<snip>

>
> So, what I did initially was go and contact all of the mappers in the US
> that I could find.  I asked them all individually what should be done in
> their local areas and I believe I was able to follow their wishes
> without failure.  If you want to do the same with TIGER removal, I'd
> welcome it, especially if you have something superior to contribute.  On
> a small or large scale, we should *NEVER* keep any data in the map just
> because it is what was already there.
>
> TIGER doesn't provide the best possible map, but it did (and does)
> provide the best map that we have access to.  If anyone has better
> suggestions, I'm open to them.
>
> Perhaps I have low standard, but I'd prefer a map of turds to
> whitespace. :)
>
> -- Dave
>
>
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The basic approach that were going with (for the Canada Import) on a
National level is this.

1 - A few people (we can call the data conversion team) are in charge of
taking the data in it's source form (in this case SHP) We use the tools
availble (shp-to-osm.jar and/or shp2osm.py) and are the ones who create a
set of 'rules' listed showing the source tags, and how we identify them in
OSM.

2 - This team then works and converts this data to OSM format, and makes the
files available on a server somewhere.
2a - IF there is alot of conflect then a postProcess is needed.  So
geobase2osm was created so that we can take an area and use AutoMATCH and
see what data needs to be added to osm.

3 - When these .osm files become available on a server,  it's up to the
local area mappers to decide on what they want todo with the data.
3a - if the data is too complicated, local area mappers tell the conversion
team, and this team works out the bugs and learns from everyone else on how
to handle it.

So the point here is that yes, it's GRRReat that this tiger data is
available to use.   BUT it doesnt all HAVE to be used.  We all know that the
source is of mixed quality.

So the  way to handle the addition of this housenumbers is that a script
gets run and this .osm file becomes available. Yup, it'll be work todo by
everyone.   So in somecases it might be easier to just go out there and map
it.

So it's great to hear that Dave has again taken on this HUGE task.  Great
work!
And now were able to learn from eachother.  :)
BTW, i'm cc'ing the imports@ list so then the imports team can take a look
at whats going on.   As it will (most probably) be needed up here too, when
were ready to import the house numbers :)

Cheers,
Sam
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