[Talk-ca] Flood Mapping in BC

Martin Chalifoux martin.chalifoux at icloud.com
Wed Nov 17 19:26:14 UTC 2021


OSM is not designed to map elements that change in time such is traffic, construction. There is no way to set start and end dates to element for example. It is a database that gets duplicated in tons of services be it online services that render OSM data, or apps on smartphones, etc. These services take a snapshot and then may not update again for months, a year, who knows. When people put elements that expire quickly, such as maintenance construction (OSM construction tags exists but are designed for new roads being built, not repairs), then there temporary elements are expires and removed, they remain in all the other services. It makes the OSM data unreliable. You add a bit of short time accuracy but even more long time inaccuracy.  Anyhow I presonnaly advocate agains adding broken roads to the OSM database. Road closures are the responsibility of the rendering engines and they must get that info from other sources than the map database and then add it as a layer. OSM is the map layer, then traffic, closures, weather, etc. are better treated as completely independant layers.

My take anyway, Martin.



> On Nov 17, 2021, at 13:55, Joel <joel at joelmcfaul.ca> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Numerous major highways have been washed out or blocked due to recent flooding in BC. Does this community have any thoughts about reflecting these changes in OSM? I assume most of these closures will be temporary, however are significant and may last for months.
> 
> Thank you,
> Joel
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