[Talk-GB] Naming of sewage treatment works and other such infrastructure

[Russ Garrett]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 at 14:28, SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> The name plates of Severn Trent infra are organised in such a way that deciding what is truly the name is not straightforward. The tend to
> have a descriptive term "Sewage Treatment Works", "Sewage Pumping Station" in larger type above a location element: "Flaxton", "Wollaton Park Charnock Avenue Playing FIelds"
> in a smaller one. It might be worth having a convention as to how to treat these, as I've not added name tags to a few

I think there's a tension here between the on-the-ground rule, the
"names are not descriptions" rule, the "one feature, one element"
rule, and producing a useful map.

I think the name has to go at least some way towards identifying the
object. If your sewage works is called "Flaxton" and it's in Flaxton
that doesn't really help anyone much (one-feature-one-element
potentially applies here as there's only one Flaxton).

It's worth noting this also applies to other infrastructure-y stuff
like substations. In the UK our practice - which I may have been
partially responsible for entrenching - is to put "substation" in the
name, but in many other countries they don't.

I guess my rule of thumb here is to name these things as the operator
would refer to them in an official external document - say, in a
planning application or a press release. In that situation, the words
"sewage treatment works" are almost certainly part of the name. It's
part of the street address, even if the operator might not use that
name internally.

>From a practical (some might argue tagging-for-the-renderer)
perspective, I don't think many general-purpose maps are going to have
unique symbology for a sewage treatment works or a substation, and
even if they do, it's not going to be a hugely recognisable symbol. So
seeing some vague area on the map in Flaxton which just says "Flaxton"
is not a good experience in my opinion.

Cheers,

--
Russ Garrett
russ at garrett.co.uk