[Talk-us-massachusetts] 2015 ortho licensing, thank-you text
Tom Parent
tomparent at gmail.com
Thu Jan 7 06:39:56 UTC 2021
Thanks for updating the wiki.
FYI:
I discovered you can connect the MapWithAI
<https://gitlab.com/gokaart/JOSM_MapWithAI/-/wikis/home> JOSM plugin to a
"feature service" layer hosted on the same MassGIS ArcGIS
<https://massgis.maps.arcgis.com/home/gallery.html?view=grid&sortOrder=desc&sortField=modified&focus=layers-weblayers-features>
online server or any other similar ArcGIS online server (was able to
connect to Vermont's GIS this way too). Most compelling are OpenSpace and
Parcels. This allows one to view and merge polygons directly all within
JOSM...forget over-tracing raster images! It's eliminated a lot of tedium
of doing exports from OLIVER and then importing. It's slick. I can share
more details if interested or update the wiki myself.
Seems OpenSpace parcels have been cleaned up quite a bit from the initial
import a decade ago. In many areas, polygons line up perfectly with parcel
map. Some towns, not so much (I won't name names...) A personal new
workflow on particularly misaligned parcels:
- see if a better polygon existing in MassGIS
- use MapWIthAI plugin to import
- merge polygon over to the working layer
- use the "Replace Geometry" command from the utilsplugin2 JOSM plugin
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/utilsplugin2>. This
preserves way/nodes history and tagging.
On another note, I've noticed OSM is no longer an option for basemap in
OLIVER. This is unfortunate because it was nice to peruse OLIVER with OSM
as a basemap and at-a-glace see any difference in, say OpenSpace or
wetlands, between the two. Would like to know what drove that decision to
drop. Greg, perhaps you could ask your contact? Would also love it if
more "feature layers" became available like wetlands.
Tom
OSM: TomPar
Belmont, MA
On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 8:49 PM Peter Cooper Jr. via Talk-us-massachusetts <
talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
> On 1/6/2021 8:04 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> > I've been having a brief offlist discussion with Peter about details of
> > the MassGIS page, which he has *massively* improved lately, and I've
> > added a few typos :-) A few notes from my end.
> Well then, I suppose I could add a couple notes here myself. :)
>
> Mainly I just wanted to write it all down for me to use later once I
> forget it all, and I figured if I wanted notes for myself I might as
> well write them down for other people to use too. The MassGIS imagery
> and tools are really neat, and I'm still learning about and discovering
> them. (A lot of stuff there is just educated guesses that seemed to work
> for me in iD and QGIS so I just ran with it and assumed it was the right
> way to do things.)
>
> I also want to thank Greg for helping and encouraging me with this. I'd
> say you added much more to the process than just typos. :)
>
> > […snip…]
> >
> > 3) I took the liberty of speaking for all us in expressing our
> > appreciation for the data being under a compatible license, because I
> > believe that is obviously the consenus view and uncontroversial. Please
> > feel free to speak up here or to me privately if you think I shouldn't
> > have done that.
> Well, it's possible that they can't really put much under more
> restrictive licenses due to it being a government function and all, but
> yes it's very much appreciated that the data is there, and that they
> answer questions, and that it's on a freely available tile server rather
> than needing to check a disk out of some library that's only open odd
> hours or anything weird like that. (They could make it public domain
> without also paying for the bandwidth for random people on the Internet
> to use any part they want at any time, but they actually do both.) It's
> something *very* easy to just take for granted. Thank you for passing
> along our thanks.
> > I plan to send the link to my MassGIS contact tomorrow
> > afternoon -- my impression is that they find it useful to be able to
> > point to good things that happen because of their data, and amazingly
> > state websites use OSM instead of the MassGIS basemap.
> A (not so quick I guess) aside: My whole effort on looking at OSM again
> a couple weeks ago started as I was trying to figure out the status of
> the road I live on (is it a public road, or a driveway, or something
> else… it's a long story), but in any event many maps even have this stub
> of the road in the wrong place (confusing it with a pipeline clearing a
> bit further south). So I fixed it in OSM, and then I asked somebody at
> the state (I think it was a contact email somewhere in OLIVER's help)
> about how to fix it and they pointed me to MassDOR RoadIE, which I was
> really surprised used OpenStreetMap. So the tool for reporting errors in
> MassDOT/MassGIS's road data, doesn't even use their own road data as its
> base map! (I could click on the empty space where they thought the road
> was, though, and see there were open issues for it.) I'm not sure what
> any of that says about, something, but I found it interesting.
>
> But yes, I think they're trying to gather anecdotes to help convince the
> Powers That Be to keep giving them more funding so they can keep taking
> pictures from planes and things like that. They have a survey at the top
> of the 2019 Orthoimagery page [1], and a different survey at the top of
> their main site [2], asking what people do with their data and giving
> them help telling a story of how terrible the world would be if they
> couldn't provide it (if I may paraphrase a bit). I filled them out, and
> while I don't know if everyone here filling one out "just because" would
> necessarily be helpful, if you have specific feedback for them I'm
> guessing they'd be happy to hear it. (And maybe mention how useful you
> found the MassGIS imagery & data if you happen to have the ear of your
> state legislator or something.)
>
> [1]
>
> https://docs.digital.mass.gov/dataset/massgis-data-usgs-color-ortho-imagery-2019
> [2] https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massgis-bureau-of-geographic-information
>
> > Also, I would
> > like to show them the courtesy of making sure that our description of
> > their terms is accurate.
> It wouldn't shock me if people here may have thought about their
> licensing terms more than they have by this point. :)
>
> > 4) If you haven't checked out the LIDAR layer at least scroll down and
> > look at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuse, which has WWII
> > history clearly visible. (Thanks pete@ for adding this, and I'm glad
> > you thought this was cool too.). FWIW, I know someone who went around
> > chekcing blackout shades during hhe war, and saw a talk by people whose
> > land was seized in 1942 to create this ammunition storage facility.
> It *was* pretty neat, and when I thought that it'd be helpful to add
> some pictures showing examples of what the various layers showed
> (especially the ones that aren't "just" imagery), that area you
> mentioned to me just seemed like the perfect picture to demonstrate the
> power of what the LiDAR data could show. (It was a bunch of things and
> not just like a single line showing a stream or stone wall, it was an
> interesting thing from history, and it was someplace public rather than
> like someone's backyard.) All adding up to a great (public domain!)
> illustrative picture. The ones for the other layers I just took from
> MassGIS's site and aren't nearly as impressive in my mind.
>
> --
> Peter
>
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> Talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us-massachusetts
>
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