[Talk-GB] Guidance for adding PRoW to OSM: prow_ref=

[Barry Cornelius]

On Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:47:34 Steven Horner <steven at stevenhorner.com> wrote:
> I have followed the guidelines
> at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Tagging_Guidelines but
> should I tag the footpath with the local authority reference which would aid
> logging the path to the Council if problems like FixMyPaths, if so how?

Although I cannot add anything useful to the discussion about prow:ref and 
prow_ref, I do have some thoughts about the content of the tag.

Often the data a council provides about a PROW includes duplication.  For 
example, often the parish is given as a nice friendly name and also as a 
number.  Here's an example of the data given about a PROW that is provided 
by Devon County Council (both council and PROW chosen at random):
    <SimpleData name="PARISH">Abbots Bickington</SimpleData>
    <SimpleData name="STATUS">Footpath</SimpleData>
    <SimpleData name="NUMBER">1</SimpleData>
    <SimpleData name="NUMBER0">0</SimpleData>
    <SimpleData name="CODE">801FP1</SimpleData>
    <SimpleData name="NUMBER1">Abbots Bickington Footpath 1</SimpleData>

So the id of the parish appears three times (twice as a name and once
as a number); the number of the path appears three times; and the fact that 
it is a footpath appears three times.

For this, I guess you've got a choice betwen using the contents of CODE or 
NUMBER1. I would recommend choosing whatever appears on the Council's 
interactive map.  Devon County Council uses the contents of the NUMBER1 
field, i.e.:
    Abbots Bickington Footpath 1

On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 16:36:53 Craig Loftus <craigloftus+osm at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Is it wise to preclude adding more tags to the namespace? As an example, one
> additional tag that occurs to me is "prow:operator" (or "prow:authority"), to
> describe the local authority the references 'belong' to.

On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 22:35:31 Robert Whittaker <robert.whittaker+osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wouldn't have thought that listing the authority would be that
> useful -- you should be able to work that out from the county that the
> way resides in.

My view is that it would be useful to include the id of the council as I 
do not think it's obvious which authority is involved.  For example, the 
data for Devon does not include Torbay.  And Bedfordshire is provided by 
two councils: Bedford and Central Bedfordshire.  Gloucestershire is 
provided by the councils of Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.

For my web site (www.rowmaps.com), I've chosen to use the two letter codes 
that are used by the OS Opendata 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer:
    http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/50k-gazetteer/index.html

The two letter code is in field 12 of their colon-separated file.  There 
are 208 different values.  Fields 13 and 14 of that file also provide 
short names and long names.

Here are some examples of fields 12, 13 and 14:
    BF:Beds:Bedford
    BK:C Beds:Central Bedfordshire
    DN:Devon:Devon
    DU:Durham:Durham
    GR:Glos:Gloucestershire
    SG:S Glos:South Gloucestershire
    TB:Torbay:Torbay

Either you bundle the id of the council in with the name of the PROW as 
in:
    Devon Abbots Bickington Footpath 1

Or as suggested by Craig you could provide it in a separate tag - he was 
suggesting "prow:operator" or "prow:authority".

All of the data for councils that I've seen specify the parish in which 
the PROW appears.  So, really there are three separate pieces of 
information:
    id of council
    id of parish
    id of PROW
e.g.,:
    Devon
    Abbots Bickington
    Footpath 1
or:
    DN
    801
    FP1

-- 
Barry Cornelius
http://www.northeastraces.com/
http://www.thehs2.com/
http://www.rowmaps.com/
http://www.oxonpaths.com/
http://www.barrycornelius.com/