[Talk-GB] Somerset Levels Flooding

[Andy Allan]

On 7 February 2014 12:37, John Baker <rovastar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Always to play the devils advocate.....
>
> We have all heard about "mapping for the renderer" but are you "mapping for
> the third party data providers that is slow at updating the planet data".

Define "slow" for a printed atlas? Should we be pulping them each
minute? Day? Week?

> I think we all have different opinions on this (it will likely take months
> for the work to be done at least 6 weeks was the latest I heard this
> morning) and don't we pride ourselves about having the most up-to-date
> information and what is on the ground?!

There's a difference between providing up-to-date data, and being
unnecessarily misleading. For example, there's a section of the A82 on
Loch Lomond that was only one lane wide, and controlled by traffic
lights. It was marked as two-way, but at any one instant it is, of
course, one-way. Should we have marked it as one-way and flipped the
direction every 90 seconds? Of course not. Should remove a railway
line when it's closed for overnight engineering works? Is a field
flooded for a week now a lake?

> Permanent versus temporary is very subjective and people will have different
> opinions.

As with anything. But I suspect that a sensible group of people will
come to a sensible answer in every case. In the two at hand, the
railway is still a railway, and the Levels are fields, not lakes.

Unless, of course, there are people who are deliberately looking for
an argument...

Cheers,
Andy