[Talk-us] Importing Virginia road centerlines

[Josh Doe]

I've been in contact with VITA, the agency responsible for GIS for the
state of Virginia, USA. They are interested in OSM utilizing their
road centerline data. VITA coordinates with all the localities in
Virginia to obtain this information, though most of it is sourced from
the Virginia Base Mapping Program (VBMP), which updates orthoimagery
of Virginia every few years with resolution between 6-inches and
2-feet. This is the same data that is used for E911 in Virginia. From
what I've seen thus far this data is very good, and certainly much
better than the TIGER data.

I'm totally new to importing, so I first wanted to see if anyone else
is interested in this project, though I am willing to take the time to
learn the process myself. Is the process used for importing the
Canadian database [1] the best method for doing this?

Of course I'm all for the standard rules of imports, don't destroy
previous work, okay to blow away TIGER data in areas that haven't been
touched by other mappers, but conflate in other areas, etc. I'll be
taking this very slowly.

Unfortunately the statewide RCL database doesn't contain address
ranges, though some localities does provide that information. For
example, Fairfax County provides RCL data in the public domain that
includes this information. This of course leads me to believe that it
is best to import the data on a locality by locality basis, if not
even smaller regions.

Again, don't think I'm about to do a massive import all of a sudden.
Right now I'm looking for interest and feedback, and will begin to
flesh out a wiki article about this import.

Regards,
-Josh

[1]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geobase_NRN_-_OSM_Map_Feature