[Talk-us] parcel data next steps

[Russ Nelson]

SteveCoast writes:
 > If anything parcels will be hard. That's a good thing. If we want to take the easy route we should give up now.

Well, as Josh points out, parcels are not necessarily related to
anything on the ground. They could be, e.g. my property lines are
co-incident with stone walls, barbed wire, and split-rail fences
except where they don't.

And the source of parcel data is going to be external to OSM -- almost
certainly the county clerks's real property office. And it's not a
physical description of the property anyway -- it's a legal
description of it. Having the physical features perfectlty mapped
wouldn't help.

So the chief value, I think, of getting this "into" OSM is more,
rather, getting it into OSM format, and aggregating it on a single
server. That is an fton of value, and is a worthy goal.

I don't believe that there's any sensible or valuable way to get it
into OSM itself. I only say this because I tried it. Bought a copy of
Oneida County's parcel data, put it into OSM format. Loaded it into
JOSM, and ... It didn't really make any sense when merged in with OSM
data. As a separate layer, it makes sense.

-- 
--my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  |     Sheepdog