[OSM-talk] Planned revert of added surface and tracktype tags without local knowledge in various countries

Rory McCann rory at technomancy.org
Sat Jul 18 14:09:29 UTC 2020


In addition (I can't find the link now but) I recall reading about the 
death of a hiker or climber who used some app which used OSM data, and 
the app didn't distinguish between track_types (or there was no 
track_type data for that route), so the hiker presumed it was OK to go 
on, and subsequently died.

On 18.07.20 16:01, Andy Townsend wrote:
> On 18/07/2020 11:53, Michael Reichert wrote:
>> I do not believe that one can add reliable tracktype=* information from
>> satellite imagery without having some ground truth knowledge in order to
>> know how to interpret the imagery in that region.
> 
> I think that "without having some ground truth knowledge" is the key 
> part there.  I know from personal experience that if I was to try and 
> add tracktype or detailed surface information based purely on imagery 
> I'd get it wrong lots of the time.  Very often when I'm updating OSM 
> I'll add the details that I recorded while I was there, and look at what 
> they say and what it looks like on the available imagery and the two can 
> be very different.
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Andy
> 
> 
> 
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