[Talk-ca] water, woods and junkyards, Ontario Canvec test (and canvec2osm script update)

[Sam Vekemans]

Hi James,

Twitter: @Acrosscanada
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sam.vekemans


On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 12:35 PM, James A. Treacy <treacy at debian.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 01:48:46PM -0400, Richard Weait wrote:
> > Hi Talk-ca-ers,
> >
> > I've been importing some of the Canvec thematic data in Ontario to get
> > a feel for the data and tools.  I've created a Canvec status page [1]
> > on the wiki so others can follow along or join in.  I've chosen only
> > some of the thematic data for my tests, including water / riviers,
> > streams, marsh / wetlands and woods plus a few others.
>
> I live in Kitchener, so have been watching Richard's improvements as
> I make my own edits. Very nice.
>
> One minor nit (in general, not about Richard's work): Having the
> canvec data is very nice but it can be rather tedious tracking down
> all the unconnected roads (there are a LOT of them). I hope future
> improvements in the import process will reduce the number of these.
>
>
Roads are not part of the CanVec data, that's GeoBase.
See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geobase_NRN_-_OSM_Map_Feature#Status

And yes, it is a HUGE thing to deal with.  My suggestion (to all those
working on the geobase import) is to have the .osm files available, so then
local area mappers can download the tile area, as a complete.osm file and
only copy over the roads that they know need to be copied.



> > The results of the import / upload are imperfect.  Some material
> > duplicates the work of individual mappers though not as often as with
> > roads.  Some data is out of date.  One mapper has already reported
> > that an imported railway was removed from reality some time ago.  I've
> > seen an area that reports ponds where I believe there are houses now.
>
> I am the one who reported the railway which no longer exists. What is
> the best way to deal with this? It shouldn't be removed outright as that
> will just cause pain at the time of the next import. I am hoping that
> removing the 'railway: rail' tag will do the trick - the (old) rail will
> will still be in the database but it wouldn't be rendered. In particular
> it is hoped that the existance of a matching canvec:UUID will cause the
> next import to not import the object. Is this correct?
>
>
Having the files available to import, rather than directly importing the
data (remotely) should solve this problem about railways.

(I wasn't aware of Richards work until now, but i now updated the chart so
it's all good) :-),

On Vancouver Island (the primary main test area for canvec data) ... i have
loaded all of the railway data. In some cases, local users added in the
railway that they knew of.   So i didn't copy over the data.  But since the
canvec rail data has bridges, i just added those into the local area
manually.

For the other areas that have railway, that i can't be sure if they still
exist (ie. Port Albernie) i have only physically seen a small part of it, i
know it's abandonded, but dont know the full extent.

Thats why right now im working on the canvec2osm (data conversion script)
beta v0.9 which will be able to convert all 16 tiles of an area in 1
swoop.   So the .zip file will contain all the individual .osm files, (1 for
each entity), were i need to just delete those .osm files that have no .osm
data.   (The new shp-to-osm script might help fix that, but like i said im
still working on it).  and BTW, also the script makes an 'extra' folder,
this contains all the features that dont need to be converted (ie. roads and
rivers and water areas) as they are covered in the geobase datasets.

I estimate it should be done in the next 2 weeks for community review.
Also, so a BIG point is that there is a difference between "Data Conversion
Script" shp-to-osm.jar, and "data Import Script" geobase2osm.py , where with
not using roadmatcher, a complete .osm file can be made, then it would be a
'Data Conversion Script'.

As you can see in the wiki chart import history, thats what SteveS is doing
(making both files available), when others, further on in the chart, did not
create the full .osm file, which made it difficult to work with.   Hence,
the creation of the GoogleDocs chart, so then its known just exactly what
has / has not been done.   (i just didn't make it clear that the GoogleDocs
chart covers all the Data imports/conversions) and not just the roads.

P.S. when we deal with the road address numbers, having this chart will be
handy, so then we know when data was imported (copied over), and will show
who the main local area mappers are.

Also, a final note the data for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources -
will be available soon. (probably this week)  It's on my list of things
todo, but if anyone wants to tackle it before i do, your welcome too, but
please keep me up-to-date, as i know the features that are in the canvec
dataset like the back of my hand :), so i should be able to answer questions
about overlap and consistency.

Cheers,
Sam Vekemans
Across Canada Trails


> --
> James Treacy
> treacy at debian.org
>
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