[Talk-gb-westmidlands] Nov 4th Social

[Andy Mabbett]

On 5 November 2010 09:12, Brian Prangle <bprangle at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike is busy adding all the methodist churches and I'm about to add all the
> heritage buildings and we'd both like to build separate maps highlighting
> these so Christophe is going to deliver an hour's hands on session on
> OpenLayers before the December pub meeting at the Bull on Price Street

A map of all of the places of worship would be useful.

> Thanks to Andy M's introduction of the PMSA sculpture database I've been in
> touch with Ian Leith the vice chairman of PMSA who is quite excited about
> the possibility of us adding PMSA listed sculptures and eventually making a
> rendered map of them. Firstly we have to get a sensible data representation
> other than their web site listings, which I'm working on as Ian gave me the
> contact details of the academic who conducted the original survey.

It would be fantastic if they could release that as open data; but do
bear in mind that it's *very* out-of-date and, so far as I'm aware,
they have no plans to update it. That's a great pity; I wonder whether
they might be willing to make it available as a wiki, or to allow
someone else to fork it as such? It would be good if it also included
coordinates.

> I've explained to Ian it's going to be a year at least before we've added enough
> data. With heritage buildings, blue plaques and public sculptures we could
> have a very rich cultural map of Birmingham and its environs.

BCC has an "Historic Environment Record":

     http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Planning-Management%2FPageLayout&cid=1223092741495&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FWrapper

If I hear you correctly, MM are asking for this (with personal info
such as keyholder contact details suitably redacted) to be made
available as open data?

By way of illustration, here is Lichfield's open-data for Listed
Buildings (xml) and locally-listed buildings (georss-xml):

     http://www2.lichfielddc.gov.uk/data/categories/datasets/planning-and-development/

Also, in case anyone's not already aware of it, there's the Open Plaque project:

     http://openplaques.org/

Its a pity, I think to see such work duplicating some of what we do. I
do wish people would not reinvent the wheel! Is there anything we can
do to either import their data, or to get a feed of new additions
which we can verify and add manually>? (I'm thinking of the model used
recently with the supplied list of cycle shops.)

> If we can do
> this Ian reckons we can generate a lot of interest from bodies who are
> responsible for this and I think he's off to explain what we're intending to
> do to English Heritage.

I wonder whether  there might be some grant funding to enable this?

> Walsall gritting routes are now well on the way to completion and we
> should probably concentrate on Wolverhampton next.  perhaps Andy M could use
> any contacts he has to get Sandwell's gritting routes.

Already in hand ;-)

I'm also chasing Walsall for corrections and answered to the issues
raised on the wiki.

> Christophe looks set to leave us after Xmas so we need

... a farewell party?

> Missed you all - look forward to seeing you at the December meeting.

Likewise.

I've re-added the machine readable date to the microformat in the wiki
listing for that:

     http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Mappa_Mercia&diff=560082&oldid=559680

(it's the 2nd, not the 4th as Andy R suggested). If maintaining that
is a chore, let me know and I'll remove the microformat altogether.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk