[Talk-us] Importing highway surface tags

[Michael Patrick]

What I am interested in doing is bulk-tagging the surface of roads based on
> public data where no surface tag has been manually set. Before I begin this
> project (and pester my department of transportation for data) I wanted to
> check with the community about the permissibility and feasibility of this
> effort.
>
> A few questions:
>
> * Has anyone located a good source for state or national road surface data?
> The TIGER data doesn't seem to include surface information as far as I can
> tell.
>

TIGER was meant for delineating statistical areas and maintaining those
areas and associated changes over census intervals, and for mailing of the
forms.

Basically since funding for any road work also involves environmental
impacts, the road surface is usually somewhere - but it may not be obvious.
Rather than the roads file it maybe in some maintenance or facilities
dataset. Or the road accidents dataset. Any repository has thems, see
http://www.vcgi.org/dataware/?page=./theme_index/default_content.cfm , but
the attributes in these themes sometimes isn't to obvious.

Mostly it requires some detailed reading of the metadata ( and the
standards<http://www.vcgi.org/techres/?page=./standards/default_content.cfm>especially
for
roads <http://www.vcgi.org/techres/standards/partii_section_g.pdf>).

See
http://www.vcgi.org/dataware/?page=./search_tools/search_action.cfm&query=theme&theme_id=018-0025and
be sure to page to
http://www.vcgi.org/dataware/?page=./search_tools/search_action.cfm&query=theme&theme=018-0025&layers_startrow=21(
I hate it when they do that :-)

( a partial list)

* TransRoad_PAVCON09 *  Pavement condition data - 2009  VTrans      *
 TransRoad_PAVCON2011 *  Pavement condition data - 2011  VTrans      *
 TransRoad_PAVCON98 *  Pavement condition data - 1998  VTrans      *
 TransRoad_PAVTYP95 *  Pavement type data - 1995  VTrans      *
 TransRoad_PAVTYP98 *  Pavement type data - 1998  VTrans      *
 TransRoad_RDS *  VTrans Road centerlines from 1:5000 orthos and GPS
VTrans
* TransRoad_RDSBASE2000 *  Roadway base materials on VT highways 2000
VTrans
If we look at the metadata <http://www.vcgi.org/metadata/TransRoad_RDS.txt>for
*TransRoad_RDS :
*

    Attribute:
      Attribute_Label: SURFACE
      Attribute_Definition: Road surface type. Roads surface types are
      generally based on VTrans Town Highway Maps, or on regional/local review.
      Attribute_Definition_Source: VGIS Road Centerline Data Standard
      Attribute_Domain_Values:
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 1
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Hard surface (pavement)*
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 2
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Gravel*
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 3
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Soil or graded and drained earth*
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 5
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Unimproved/Primitive*
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 6
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Impassable or untravelled*
        Enumerated_Domain:
          Enumerated_Domain_Value: 9
          Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition: *Unknown surface type*
      Attribute_Value_Accuracy_Information:
        Attribute_Value_Accuracy: SURFACE
        Attribute_Value_Accuracy_Explanation:
          *Roads surface types are generally based on VTrans Town Highway
          Maps, or on regional/local review.  Little or no photo
          interpretation was done, but road shapes and distances
          were originally used to assign SURFACE codes.  Some regional
          and local knowledge has been used to update SURFACE
          codes in updated datasets (see the updates listing).
          Legal trails and discontinued roads were all originally
          assigned SURFACE equals 9 (unknown).
          The surface types of some very short roads could not be
          determined from the VTrans maps, especially differentiating
          between gravel (2) and soil (3).  Surface types for these
          arcs were coded 'unknown' (9), or a best judgement was
          made.  The Town Highway Maps are being generated from the
TransRoad_RDS
          data and require public highways to have surface code other than
          9.  The QA/QC process flags highways that don't comform and are
          corrected.*

There are more datsets there dealing with "Roadway widths on Vermont
highways 2000",
"Roadway base materials on VT highways 2000" etc.

Most jurisdictions are attempting to comply with the National/Global
Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI/GSDI). The Federal Geographic Data Committee
(FGDC) has been the primary organization sponsoring the development
of National (American) geospatial standards. The latest initiative
sponsored by FGDC is referred to as the Geospatial One -Stop
(http://www.geo -one-stop.gov). The Geospatial One-Stop initiative has
developed draft standards
(ANSI/INCITS1 standards) for each NSDI “framework ” theme
including Transportation*1. The draft Transportation standard includes
five sub-standards; air, rail, roads, transit, and inland waterways.

Sorry for the long post, and my apologies if you already
know some of this stuff, but it might be usefule for someone else.

Michael Patrick

GeoData Ferret

OSM Seattle
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20121222/e3444312/attachment.html>