[Talk-us] Update for Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Thomas Colson thomas_colson at nps.gov
Thu Apr 25 16:10:55 UTC 2013


A Linux conference in east TN?!!

I am going create a FAQ section in the Project WIKI for all listserv comments on this project, in keeping with Public Domain/FOIA status. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Ollie [mailto:jeff at ocjtech.us] 
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 11:59 AM
To: Thomas Colson
Cc: talk-us
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Update for Great Smoky Mountains National Park

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Thomas Colson <thomas_colson at nps.gov> wrote:
> Great Smoky Mountains National Park is planning to update its core 
> base data. We have identified many inconsistencies in online 
> location-based data which often results in hazardous navigation 
> scenarios for park visitors (e.g. travel on a closed trail, wrong way 
> on road, etc…) and plan to slowly migrate our latest data collection 
> to the public domain. In addition, we are including many new Points of 
> Interest and other man-made features not presently included in the park OSM footprint.

I think that this is an awesome project.  It's been a while since I've been to the park, but I've been daydreaming about a visit to the park this summer in conjunction with a Linux user conference.  Probably won't happen due to time & budget constraints but I'm glad to see these sort of improvements to the map.

One question about what I saw on the wiki page.  I can understand not wanting the public to drive on administrative roads, but are those roads closed to hikers as well as vehicular traffic?  I can understand keeping hikers off of the roads under normal circumstances but if I was out hiking a trail that crossed an administrative road I'd be pretty confused if the map on my GPS didn't show it.  I'd find them useful as navigational references if nothing else.  I would think that it'd be useful in emergency situations as well.  For example if a group of hikers was trying to evacuate an injured/sick person an administrative road could be a quicker way to get to more advanced medical care.  Or for volunteers conducting a search for lost hikers.

--
Jeff Ollie




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