[Talk-us] mapRe: (Second attempt) Potential data source: Adirondack Park Freshwater Wetlands

[Andy Townsend]

On 15/03/2016 19:00, Nathan Mills wrote:
> That said, without TIGER, OSM would have been useless (and still would be!) in large swaths of the US.

(stating the bleeding obvious) there are divided opinions on this - when 
exactly this topic has come up previously people have said both "I only 
felt able to start because there was something already there" and "I was 
only able to start because there was nothing there - the map was blank 
so I couldn't affect anyone else's work".

Obviously with the imports that have happened we are where we are (as 
Edward O Wilson said in a very different context we have "one planet, 
one experiment").  Some communities (Germany, GB to an extent) are 
mostly import-free and seem happy about it, some (Japan, The 
Netherlands) have lots of imported data and seem happy with that too.

What I am a bit surprised about is that in the Adirondacks there's 
relatively little track data in OSM.  Sure, New York State is big, but 
it's not _that_ big.  It's roughly twice the size of Scotland and 
(excluding New York City) about twice the population.  Parts of the 
Adirondacks are about as far from major centres of population as parts 
of the Cairngorms in Scotland are, and the Cairngorms seem to have many 
more hiking trails mapped*.

One thing to be said in favour of a wetlands import is that these are 
features that by definition it's difficult to map the entirety of from 
the ground (it's a problem I'm familar with as it's the same reason I'm 
only able to map the western part of the Derbyshire Peak District in 
late summer when it's been dry enough for long enough). However a worry 
is that because there's so little surveying done here no-one's going to 
be able to sense-check the data so there's a worry that it'll just "sit 
there" without any future modification. When I've done stream and river 
mapping in e.g. South Wales I've always found it useful to compare all 
of survey, government open data and imagery to see what things should be 
mapped as, where imagery (or GPS data) is offset and where government 
open data is inaccurate.  Do you have any way of sense-testing any of 
the data to be imported?  Maybe it might be useful to create e.g. a umap 
overlay of some of it that's immediately usable and you can start 
collecting feedback from hikers about what they'd categorise the 
features you're suggesting be imported.

Another question - if not OSM, what maps do hikers in the area use now?  
Something from the US Forest Service, or something else?  The reason I 
ask is that in GB the generally excellent "Ordnance Survey" mapping has 
been used by hikers' clubs as a reason not to need OSM. My limited 
experience with US outdoor maps suggests that they're not generally of 
the same quality.

Best Regards,

Andy (SomeoneElse)

* though fewer and with less detail than similar "destination" areas 
that are much closer to major centres of population.