[Talk-us] Federally Funded Research R&D Centers: landuse=military?

[stevea]

I muse whether "Federally Funded Research and Development Centers" 
(FFRDCs) are amenable to either "landuse=military" or something like 
it.  I'm not proposing a vote because this may be peculiarly 
USA-centric.  (Then again, maybe it isn't, as there may very well be 
similar entities in other countries).

Looking at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_Funded_Research_and_Development_Center 
we see that for each of these, there is an Administrator (such as 
RAND Corporation, MITRE, Associated Universities, Inc. or University 
of California) consisting of private corporations, and both private 
and public universities, as well a Sponsor, which is a much shorter 
list consisting largely of Department of Energy, Department of 
Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, NASA (supposed to be civilian), and National Science 
Foundation (and that's about it, unless you get more specific within 
DoD, like "Department of the Army").

Indeed, this wikipedia article quotes a source of "Congressional 
Research Service: 'The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with 
Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics.'"  And so, 
these hybrid or quasi-government/military/private sector/(sometimes) 
public university entities do more often than not fit the definition 
of "landuse=military" which is "for tagging land areas owned/used by 
the military for whatever purpose."

Notwithstanding the Military page in the wiki which states "exercise 
caution and know your rights related to mapping military facilities," 
I do wonder whether we may want to extend some of the "military=*" 
tags (airfield, barracks, bunker, range...) to include these areas. 
Maybe "military=research_facility" with this rendering into a 
concomitant red-hatched area in mapnik/standard?

This was initiated by noticing that Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratories 
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=37.6881587505341&lon=-121.704912185669&zoom=15) 
is a "hole" with respect to landuse around the rest of the City of 
Livermore, California.  This particular facility is administered by 
the University of California (but clearly is not landuse=university) 
and sponsored by the Department of Energy, which as a national, 
cabinet-level department, is largely concerned with nuclear weapons 
and reactors, radioactive waste and domestic energy.  Nuclear fusion 
(and perhaps weapons) research are being researched at this 
particular facility, so at least "landuse=industrial" is correct. 
But is some flavor of "military" more precise, or not?

SteveA
California