[OSM-talk] redundancy problem

[Joerg Ostertag]

Am Dienstag, 25. September 2007 07:56:40 schrieb Andreas Winckler:
> Hi all,
>
> this is a question from german discussion group:
>
> There's a recycling company which is willing to provide GPS-tracks to
> OSM. They have 4 or 5 trucks to collect chemicals and old batteries on a
> daily basis. The trucks are equipped with telematics and will drive all
> over south eastern Germany.
>
> Now we're discussing the problem that the trucks will generate massivly
> redundant tracks, especially nearby their home base.
>
> As far as I know there are bicycle couriers in London which also provide
> GPS-tracks. They should have the same problem.
>
> Is track redundancy a problem? If so, is there already a solution for it?

I personally would vote for uploading all the Data with as much detail level 
as possible. This will include (if possible) dop, number of satelites, ... As 
I prefer to quote, it's easy to remove data later, but you won't have any 
chance to recreate the data completely after you once deleted them.
And there are far more things which can be done with complete data. Just think 
of things like creating an average daily speed statistic, traffic jam 
statistic, ... If you only upload new trackpoints, you'll loose all this. And 
Disk Space is no real long term issue on the OSM Servers.
As already stated in an earlier Post, Reception quality of single satelites 
can be used to estimate Building height and distances near the street.

-
Joerg