[OSM-talk] Some guidelines on Africover data?

[Joseph Reeves]

Dear all, I would have emailed Robert Soden directly about this, but I
read that he's in Haiti at the moment and probably has enough to keep
himself occupied already. As such I thought I'd email the list.

I've read on the wiki that the Africover import for Tanzania is
complete [1], but I have seen a few areas that look as if the data has
been imported, but without any OSM tags. See Tabora, for example [2].
There is no source tag on the data that exists, only an AUTO_ID tag;
an example way can be seen in 37424303 [3], although many more exist.
I'm guessing that the AUTO_ID refers to a Africover reference system
that has survived the import, whilst OSM specific tags need to be
applied.

Is there any reference available for telling what such ways should be
tagged as? I'm worried that some may be rivers, in some cases possible
dupes [4]. With a list to refer to, could ways such as this be tagged
as highway:road or waterway:river, source:Africover when found?
Leaving the AUTO_IDs would seem to be a good idea for now.

I'm keen to help improve OSM's Africa coverage and this seems like a
simple way of helping out, if it's the appropriate way of doing so.

Cheers, Joseph



[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Africover
[2] http://osm.org/go/l2pzYzJ
[3] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/37424303
[4] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/37423971