[Talk-ca] Data Quality and getting organised

john whelan jwhelan0112 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 22 01:59:08 BST 2009


This is all red tape type stuff but as you get more complex so it
starts to pay off.

At the moment we seem to be importing the initial imports from
Geobase.  To me that seems quite different from other parts of the
world where the maps have to be built up by hand from GPS data.

Could some one identify what is the most useful thing new people can
do perhaps on the wiki page for Canada
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Canada.  I get the
impression we would like to limit roads etc being input to people with
GPS devices and not only that but we'd prefer one that was WAAS
capable or accurate to 3 meters rather than the 15 meter accuracy of
the older devices.  Could we identify a map that has been imported and
tagged so people can get an idea of what we are trying to do and the
standards we are after?

Whilst I don't especially like recommending one companies product over
another it might be worth pointing out that if they'd like to purchase
a GPS device then something like Garmin eTrex Legend HCx GPS would be
ideal.  Being both WAAS, having ample memory and being highly
sensitive.  Also there seem to be more projects that create Garmin
maps than others at the moment.  Perhaps a pointer to the device on
www.mec.ca / www.amazon.ca.

There seems to be a need to "Trace" Ariel / Satellite  maps in the US
using JOSH since they don't have the facility to do the import has we
have so perhaps we could point people in this direction until we were
ready for them to search out "Tim Hortons" and add them to the
imported maps?

To improve data quality might it be an idea to limit edits to Canadian
maps for the moment until the import is done for a particular section
then allow additional data to be added perhaps even some restrictions
on what people can do initially unless they were "known" in some way?

I note that Bikes lanes and bus stop data are being sort from two
cities.  Could same sort of circular letter be created that would list
the sort of data we would welcome from other cities?  Then get local
volunteers to request this data?  I think it might be best to be able
to go to the cites with an example of the map as it exists for their
city perhaps after an import?

That raises another issue that of writing scripts to do the imports.
Currently we have one of two people with that skill is it documented
anywhere so others could do a few?  This becomes especially important
to cope with the sheer volume of data if we manage to extract data
from the cites for bus stops, cycle lanes etc.

Cheerio John




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