[Talk-ca] Building_Canada_2020

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> writes:
> Stats was after things like the number of levels, house number, street
> name, is the building commerical, residential, apartment.  There are some
> 70 or 80 different tags used for buildings in taginfo.  At the bit of
> Brandon I looked at there were only two values used.  It was also after
> amenties such as cafes etc.

We say where we can go "definitively" (for now) in the non-project wikis (like building and man_made).  The union of those two keys' values are a good initial "solar system" of buildings and man_made features to start with as possibilities that might live in the local area.  You might require all students to read the wide possibility of choices and see if you can get them to reach a consensus about what subset they might like to focus on:  "Pick five to ten of these hundred+ tags and move into groups to focus on them...".

> These are all things that can be added with tools such as street complete.
> Because you are adding tags to enrich the existing data you are unlikely to
> to draw a building in the wrong place.

Adding a tag to an existing node or way is a straightforward thing that every software editor must do and easily, as it is key:value (pair)-based text editing, not hard.  Changing a tag from building=yes to building=house (because you are certain it is a residential house, for example) are skills elementary and middle school students can do, given the right sort of support curriculum like the right kind of demo of iD during a brief lecture/tutorial on the project.  More challenging editing like using more advanced features of drawing polygons gets outside the scope of editing text as I describe above and is for students with more of a natural grasp of drawing and/or geometry and/or good artistic and/or mathematical skills.  Cartography isn't for everybody, yet our tools are good at "ducks who wish to take to water."  At the high school level, all should have the skills, some might want to, some might not (they are teenagers).

> I'd go after enriching the existing data first before thinking of importing
> more buildings.

That's an excellent start, I agree.  The endeavor might be seen/planned as a multi-edit-session process, with more advanced skills for later (obviously).

> The wiki talks about grand ideas.

This is a current deficiency of the wiki, as it needs more "concrete steps" to make it a working, living document.  Please work to make it more of a how-to tutorial.  Grow this wiki, please!  Think "recipe, maybe with an example or two," it isn't supposed to be terribly difficult, and it isn't, especially as high school students do it.  Ah, just right!

> But what it doesn't do is give examples of how to enrich the building outlines.

Yes, for high school students, this might be more of a "second half" endeavor, or "later" if the effort stretches across multiple sessions.  This can quickly get quite advanced (pitched roofs, 3-D...).

> When I spoke to Stats Canada it was the enrichment that was the most
> valuable  How many churches are there?  How many apartment buildings?  How
> many levels (floors)?  How many care homes etc.  WiFi available?  Website?

This is a kernel of goodness here:  put these in the wiki!

> I'd think in terms of streetcomplete an android app for filling a lot of
> these gaps but there are other software packages around such as Vespucci on
> android, iD on whatever iD runs on.  JOSM but you need someone present who
> knows it.  It is excpetionally useful for accurately drawing building
> outlines though.

All true, there are more, it depends on what you might find/discover or word-of-mouth that people are using in your world / on your phones / with your Java stacks / at your library.

> I don't know what school students at various grades are capable of.

It's give-and-take.  Again, introduce them to "look at the landscape, read a couple of wikis to see what sort of planets-and-rings-and-moons-and-asteroids can be made, built, improved..." then pick out which sorts of buildings (three, five, ten...) they're going to have fun with for the next few hours.  Break up into a first group with iD, do a JOSM too, seed each of those to build #3 and #4 with the "duckiest duck in the water" splashing around and get to four or so groups working on things.  They'll tell two friends on two phones/web browsers, and they'll tell two friends...and you are off and running.  One person can do it (that's a lot to ask), two is much better, four should be sufficient for a high-school class-sized / library activity.  Two leaders, two helpers can be anybody, simply get there and it magically multiplies.

> I think the wiki page would be more useful if it listed what enriching
> details would be useful and how to tag them.

Absolutely, positively, YES.  Start small, let examples, feedback and crowdsourcing take over from there, while providing adults-in-the-room guidance as "go ask that Elmer guy over there, he knows how to do that."

> I would suspect that printing out a map with the buildings on it so notes
> could be made in the field might be useful.

Absolutely, positively, YES.  Start small...etc.  Having some already printed out (even if rough or incomplete) is awesome and effective.  In fact, the rawer and rougher, the better, maybe.

> Thoughts?
> Anyone with some expertise about what works for a mapathon with students?

That's a brief experience at the undergraduate level (often sophomore/junior University of California students, where I worked / had fun with the professor via four / five emails about a month, then a week before the class I visited with).  An excellent hour and forty minutes for his class, the students, crowdsourcing as a "wow, neat, cool, hey, this works..." thing to do and OSM's data in general (around here, some of them have taken up the mantle of OSM elsewhere).

Roll up one of these the right way and clone it (it isn't too terribly difficult, and much of the script "writes itself as to how folks do things locally") and voila, crowdsourced maps.  Keep your eyes open for quality along the way, course correct as you go, lather, rinse, repeat.

SteveA