[Talk-us] Strategy for 'updated' TIGER regions

[Mike N]

There have been analysis and strategy about fixing TIGER 'Deserts'[1], 
but what is the best way to manage regions that have been thoroughly 
updated to match TIGER, and possibly enhanced beyond that with local 
knowledge?

Background - An essential task in keeping OSM updated and relevant in 
the US has been to compare existing OSM data to the latest TIGER data 
and add new roads.   This generally means adding the endless new streets 
for subdivisions or possibly a single new cul-de-sac development street.

   The problem is that once an area has been completely synchronized to 
TIGER, what is the best way to update it in the future?  The problem 
comes when revisiting a completed area looking for new roads.  What if 
someone had deleted or modified those streets based on local research or 
knowledge?   The old TIGER street shows up as a 'new' street, and 
there's no way an armchair mapper would know what to do.[2]  The street 
or segment gets added back to the map and OSM becomes a museum relic 
holding old TIGER data unless someone knowledgeable happens to notice.

   I'm starting to keep an empty way with a note on the old TIGER trace, 
but I suspect that almost no one has historically done this in the US.

   I propose 2 changes to TIGER challenge tasks -

1.  Future TIGER challenges in completed areas should highlight only 
changes relative to the previous year, or 2010 and not treat all TIGER 
data as authoritative.   Roads are sometimes accidentally deleted in OSM 
but those could be flagged by telemetry from Scout.

  2. Focus on areas that desperately need alignment, but may not have 
even updated TIGER.   Just aligning streets to aerial imagery will make 
the area usable by navigation systems.   Admittedly since those areas 
are also likely to be low population, there may not be a payback for 
paid mappers to help.

   This is not meant to be anti-armchair mapping but a way to continue 
to make better use of armchair mapping resources.

   Mike
  ---------------

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup#TIGER_desert
[2] In the past, I demonstrated OSM's local mapping advantage to a 
friend by comparing Skobbler's turn by turn to Garmin soon after this 
frontage road access was closed for safety reasons.  Google and Garmin 
finally corrected their routing after some years, but OSM went back to 
the old days -
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/30249051

More armchair mapping challenges -
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33549289 !
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/32398213
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/32373023