[Talk-us] Imports - an attempt to explain

[Richard Welty]

On 12/20/12 4:21 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> That's why I often react strongly if I encounter people who don't seem 
> to share this deeper "why do you do all this", people who, at least 
> superficially, seem to be concerned only with getting a nice map 
> quickly and who couldn't care less about how the map is made and 
> whether or not this has a social component or is part of a greater 
> movement that shapes mankind.
>
i appreciate your comments and rationale.

now i happen to be working on a project which will require imports of 
address data, let me explain why it's important to me.

i want OSM to be more than a nice display map. i see where OSM, 
maintained with care by dedicated mappers,
can be used in applications in meaningful ways, to make things better, 
to make things possible that weren't
before. that's why i'm working on my emergency response project. i'm an 
address import away from being able
to deploy OsmAnd on android tablets in fire trucks with OSM derived 
maps, which should significantly improve
mutual assistance calls where firefighters have to leave their normal 
districts. every firefighter or chief i've talked
to about this immediately seizes on the mutual assistance call and how 
they get lost or have trouble finding
tings.

i also should be able to populate hydrant information and give to the 
firefighters something that looks like
openfiremap (if not openfiremap itself), so that once they arrive at 
unfamiliar scenes, they no longer have
to send a firefighter walking down the road to find the hydrant -- 
they'll know where it is already.

this is just within reach, and i can get nearly all the way there with a 
well managed import of enhanced 911
address data, which is of very good quality, and already the data being 
used by the dispatchers.

and that's the kind of thing good imports can accomplish. and this sort 
of project can build the community
too -- i plan to document what is being done for quality assurance, 
confidence testing, etc., quite thoroughly
so that others can have a path to do it where they live.

richard