[Talk-GB] New British Waterways map; why not use OSM?

[Peter Miller]

On 6 May 2011 16:58, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> Tom Chance wrote:
>
>> I completely agree that the tools aren't there yet, but could they
>> not have used OSM for their database?
>>
>
> In theory, yes. But there are huge costs to that, too. The effort required
> to work with the community, and in particular, through the tagging
> minefield. The extra complexity in some form of integration between
> Waterscape and OSM, including synchronising the two databases. The licence
> complications (BW is principally an OS GIS shop, after all) - and BW's
> lawyers are all tied up right now on the move from quango to charity status.
> I wouldn't have used OSM to do it when I was at Waterscape, and I know more
> about using OSM than most people!
>
> BW has about three pennies to rub together (admittedly, it would have more
> if it didn't pay its directors such vast sums). If it can spend two days
> knocking up something with PHP and MySQL, rather than a fortnight doing an
> OSM-based project, I can't blame it for doing so. We need to recognise that
> "collaborative+latitude+longitude" does not always need to equal OSM.
>

It does however seem disappointing for them to be duplicating some a lot of
work.

I agree that the OSM data is not perfect however it is good and could be
even better very easily.

We have an ITO Map view for 'navigable waterways' available showing what is
already in the DB and what is missing for boating purposes here:
http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/ito_map/main?view=24

There is certainly some cleanup work that needs to be done. In particular we
need to ensure that:
1) There is always a 'river' or a 'canal' as a linear feature along the
length every navigable river, even if there is a riverbank and through lakes
etc. There are plenty of examples in the UK where sections of river/canal
are missing.
2) That rivers and canals are tagged with boat=yes/no. There are many
without this information.
2) That riverbanks are tagged with waterway=riverbank and not with
natural=water (which signifies a lake). This view shows natural=water in
light blue and ignores riverbank. As a rule convert long thin 'lakes' along
rivers into riverbank.
3) Check that reservoirs/marinas/docks/lakes are tagged correctly. Plenty of
docks, marinas etc are still tagged as lakes..

Out of curiosity I have just produced a view showing waterways (rivers and
canals) and also walking route (path/footway/cycleway/bridleway/track).
Paths are in green, navigable rivers in red, navigable canals in orange.
un-navigable rivers and streams in light blue and unknown status rivers and
canals in grey. Clearly we have a shed-load of data in OSM that is relevant!
http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/ito_map/main?view=99



Regards,


Peter



>
> cheers
> Richard
>
>
>
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