[OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: [CrisisMappers] Geo-Locate the Haiti Hospitals Challenge]

[David G. Smith PE PLS]

For my part, I don't think discriminating between footway vs. path tags
really has much relevance to crisis issues, and any crisis tagging shouldn't
be *overriding* OSM tagging - what is relevant to crisis mapping is
operational status, security and practicability of the roads, e.g.
traversable by what means, such as 4WD, what type and weight limit of truck,
by motorcycles, pack animals, human, as well as indicating, via point or
other feature types any roadway obstacles - I would think that these should
augment and complement OSM tagging via additional tags, and not necessarily
*replace* OSM tags.


David G. Smith PE PLS
Synergist Technology Group, Inc.
570.280.6763


-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org]
On Behalf Of David Groom
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:51 AM
To: OSM-talk
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: [CrisisMappers] Geo-Locate the Haiti
Hospitals Challenge]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederik Ramm" <frederik at remote.org>
To: "Jean-Guilhem Cailton" <jgc at arkemie.com>
Cc: "OSM-talk" <talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 3:14 PM
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: [CrisisMappers] Geo-Locate the Haiti
Hospitals Challenge]


>
> Hi,
>
>> AN URGENT NEED in addtion to the hospitals is to clean up the road 
>> type tags to correspond with the humanitarian presets.
>
> Hold it right there!
>
> I think there is a limit to just how much OSM will stretch and bend to 
> match the needs of users. OSM is, first and foremost, a world-wide 
> mapping project, and secondly, something that comes in handy in a 
> crisis. OSM is not primarily a crisis mapping system.
>
> Crisis or no crisis, we have an established system of mapping roads.
> Your presets file contains only the types "primary, secondary, 
> tertiary, footway". OSM mappers are used to a more fine-grained 
> approach and I do not think that just because our approach proves too 
> complex for outsiders we should simply discard it.

+ 1 from me

>
> It is ok for newbie mappers to stick to a small number of road types, 
> but your request to "clean up" existing data to only use these four 
> types does cross a border with me. We'll do a lot to make our data 
> usable, but we will not throw half of it away just because you 
> currently don't see use for it.
>
> There is a tag transform plugin for OSM. If you want data that uses 
> only four different road types, then we can translate OSM road types 
> to your four types; but I am very much against ignoring established 
> OSM practice  just because users cannot be bothered to distinguish a track
from a path.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
> 



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