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

[Toby Murray]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 4:41 PM, stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
> 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?

This facility is being built in my city right now. It isn't in the
list you linked to but wouldn't it be a similar situation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bio_and_Agro-Defense_Facility

Right now it is just under construction:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/161231605

But I've wondered what the appropriate tagging for it will be in the future.

Toby