[Talk-us] Mapping for emergency services

[Tod Fitch]

> On Feb 5, 2020, at 12:32 PM, Mike N <niceman at att.net> wrote:
> 
> On 2/5/2020 9:49 AM, Eric Christensen via Talk-us wrote:
> 
>> For the record, my team(s) has many cartographic resources at our
>> fingertips that we can use for search and rescue including, but not
>> limited to: USGS 7.5' maps, National Park Service maps, OSM, Google
>> maps, state and local GIS data, and several options for aerial imagery.
> 
>  It's great to hear from a data consumer!  It would seem to be useful to be able to create some sort of meta-marking about regions of data quality in OSM, meaning that "This area has excellent detail", "this area has road geometry only", and "this area hasn't been detailed and minor roads are known to have poor road geometry", which would somehow be indicated in your app.

As a consumer and mapper, my opinion is that the areas popular with hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers are much better mapped in OSM than in other maps.  Excluding the non-topographic Apple and Google maps, the current computer generated US Topos are the worst (current US Topos credit TomTom for roads, no credit for trails and since nearly all trails are missing I guess it makes sense that there is no attribution). The second best is probably a tie between the current USFS topos and the old manually generated USGS topos. But OSM based topographic maps are by far the best for off road use in my area.

I actually got started in OSM by looking around for a way to create an updated printed backcountry ski map for the forest area I volunteer at. I can assure you that the OSM data for that area is best of the lot.

With respect to search and rescue, I’ve seen that a number of teams that we interact and train with have started using SarTopo [1], both the website and the new smartphone app. If you look, the default layer for the SarTopo maps are using OSM data. So while those teams and the county sheriffs they work with may not know it, they are using OpenStreetMap data. And it is relied upon for many (maybe even most) of the backcountry searches in my area.

I also do a fair amount of mapping for areas I hike and while I usually find a place to improve here and there, it seems that there are other OSM hikers who have done pretty good work before I got there. But things change so I keep making updates. Example: Between last Wednesday and today a “social” or “informal” trail has been blocked off in the Laguna Coast Wilderness area. Noticed that today so I need to make an edit after I send this email.

Cheers,
Tod

[1] https://sartopo.com/map.html#ll=34.37745,-118.05908&z=8&b=mbt



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