[Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Old Aerodromes

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi all, 

Thanks for the feedback. I understand that the existence of an small airfield can be hard to verify from imagery - but I am also wondering what the value of this unverified and stale data is to OSM. If they were mapper surveyed nodes to begin with I would perhaps feel the need to be more cautious in removing them. I looked at perhaps 30 of them, looking them up on various airport related web sites, and ~70% of them were private air strips with no public access from air or ground. So those being fundamentally unverifiable (unless there is a sign or some structures on the ground that would make it so) I would see no problem deleting them. 

I like the suggestion for encouraging additional mapping (runways) if visible and this is already part of the instruction, let me know if that could be clearer.

I am not so concerned with rendering - that’s not what we map for.

Martijn

> On Apr 12, 2016, at 3:40 AM, Christoph Hormann <chris_hormann at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 12 April 2016, Martijn van Exel wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I was mapping some rural area in the U.S. and noticed, not for the
>> first time, an aerodrome node in the middle of a field where there is
>> obviously no airport or airfield.
> 
> I am not sure here.  For small airfields the aeroway=aerodrome feature 
> is a fairly abstract thing essentially indicating only that this is a 
> place where aircrafts start or land.  This is not generally something 
> that can be reliably determined from imagery.
> 
> This is also a problem for map rendering - map styles use these features 
> to place labels and icons but these features are generally too 
> ill-defined and undifferentiated to do this properly.
> 
> The real observable feature of an airfield is the perimeter fence or 
> other form of delineation which then makes it a landuse mapping but 
> this only works for actively maintained airfields with a clearly 
> visible outline.  Otherwise the observable feature of an airfield is 
> the runway - mapping this is much better defined and more useful 
> information-wise than the airfield itself.
> 
> So the challenge would IMO make more sense if it would encourage mapping 
> runways if they are visible rather than removing an aerodrome based on 
> the fact that it is not visible on imagery.
> 
> See also here for a different angle on the problems of aeroway=aerodrome 
> as it is currently mapped:
> 
> https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/1143
> 
> -- 
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
> 
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