[Talk-us] [Imports] Import of Lakes from water.usgs.gov

[David Fawcett]

I appreciate your enthusiasm for getting environmental data into OSM.
I think that it can have value, but only if it is done carefully and
with maintenance in mind.

The spatial accuracy of the EPA data that you uploaded is not very
good.  I have to say that even in mixed-case, it really subtracts
value from the map in my area.  Most of this data is collected and
edited at the state level and pushed to EPA.

The locations are based on everything from survey quality GPS to
county centroid.  Both the states and EPA maintain a code for the
horizontal accuracy.  I am quite familiar with this data from my state
and I can tell you that the EPA data is not as recent as the data that
can be obtained from the state.  These locations are continually being
edited and in my state, a new copy is pubilshed every day.  There is
no government conspiracy, it is in the mission of these agencies to
make this data available to as many people as possible.

I think that if data like this is included in OSM, it needs to be done
in a way that it can be updated is a systematic way when better
locations or attributes are available.  There should be a standard way
to mark these features up (at the feature level) with a standard
namespace for the source and tags for the date the data was obtained.
An attribute for horizontal accuracy would be of value too (or just no
uploads for data below a specified accuracy).  If the goal is for this
to be used for property valuation, the data currently does more harm
than good.

I think that there is a need for some tagging standards for
environmental info too.  The tag man_made:environmental_hazard is not
appropriate for many of these features.  Some of them have been
investigated and found to not be contaminated.  Some of the data
tracked are organizations that have hazardous waste permits.  This
could be a warehouse with thousands of barrels of methyl-ethyl-death,
or they could be your dentist or hardware store.  In some ways, the
environmental info may just be another attribute of an existing POI.

I know that several states are working on publishing data through OSM,
so some of this may be worked out already.  We recently had an OSGEO
meeting in my area where we talked about the possibilities and
implications of govenment agencies publishing more data through OSM.

This information is important, so let's do it in a careful and
coordinated manner.

David.







Apologies for crossposting, but I think that it makes sense to finish
out this thread this way.

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 9:29 AM, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com
> <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 4:22 PM, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com
>> <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> The current NHD either includes these updates or is higher quality than
>> >> this
>> >> historical stuff that the USGS has. I would recommend working on
>> >> importing
>> >> the NHD rather than other datasets.
>> >
>> > Any links? I have not seen that yet. This is pretty detailed, the data
>> > that I found.
>>
>> I found something, will process it next.
>> http://www.horizon-systems.com/nhdplus/extensions.php?filter=11
>
> Please don't use this! Just go to nhd.usgs.gov and grab the official data
> set and use the existing process to upload NHD in your area:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NHD
>
>>
>> I wonder if the older data has more types of data in it....
>
> I looked at the data you previously pointed to and it looks to be old and of
> low resolution. Also, it is comprised of landuse polygons which tend to be
> lower resolution and a general approximation of what's on the ground rather
> than a specific data set like NHD.
>
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