[Talk-us] Merging a GNIS node with a TIGER way - for a town

Richard Welty rwelty at averillpark.net
Wed Jan 29 19:31:33 UTC 2014


On 1/29/14 2:14 PM, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
> If a search is done for "Fortuna, CA" in OSM, two different entities
> show up at the top, for the same thing. One is from a TIGER import,
> one is from a GNIS import. One is a node the other one is for the
> boundaries of the place. I assume a place doesn't need to have both a
> node and a way. If I delete the node, do I copy all its tags and place
> them on the way? Would that result in a confusing soup of both TIGER
> specific and GNIS specific tags? Is that still OK?
>
> On top of it, one of them claims Fortuna, CA is a town, while the
> other claims it is a city. I suppose this one can be settled with a
> research through some other online and offline resources - so not a
> biggie. When I was there it definitely seemed like a town and not a
> city to me - but I'm not sure what rules are used for this type of
> classification in the US.
terms like town and city generally have specific legal meanings in
the US, and those meanings vary from state to state. this is one where
in all likelyhood you should leave it to a local mapper, or consult with
a knowledgeable CA mapper about the situation there. i know the NY
political/admin boundary situation tolerably well but i would _never_
assume that i was qualified to tinker with this data in CA based on
my current knowledge.

now if the data from the GNIS import is reflected reasonably well on the
TIGER boundary, i'd say delete the GNIS node. the lat/long from the GNIS
node is probably a reasonable approximation to some concept of "center",
but otherwise the boundary conveys a lot more information. most of the
tags from the GNIS import aren't terribly interesting.

richard

-- 
rwelty at averillpark.net
 Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
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