At 09:19 AM 8/18/2006, Bill Thoen wrote:
On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 08:39:09AM -0400, B.K. DeLong wrote:
>
> And, in theory, with an open source, community-contributed dataset
> there'd be more people to fix mistakes and keep it more updated due
> to various construction and repair activities.
>
I imagine that a community effort to maintain a data set that represents a
road network would operate in a way similar to a wiki, but how do you
ensure that additions and "fixes" are done with the appropriate precision
and accuracy (and who decides?)
There'd have to be a standard to which the data would have to reach
before allowing anyone to use the dataset - perhaps using legal
disclaimers. The site would also need to set a series of guidelines
and requirements for degrees of accuracy and required information
needed to meet those standards. Who decides? Hopefully as the site
grows there will be a Wikipedia like hierarchy of editors and
decision makers who choose when an area has met that threshhold.
Who interprets road classifications and
other attributes that mean different things to different people?
Those standards are already set by the government/civil bodies who
oversee the roads. Use those classifications where possible.
Finnally,
what sorts of legal issues are involved in producing a data source that
might be used in public safety applications? Can a community effort
"certify" a certain level of accuracy for use in such applications?
Perhaps that will be based on the laws and requirements that govern
such data in various locales.
Nevertheless, the idea of "open source" spatial data sets sounds pretty
interesting to me.
I can't TELL you how disappointed I am with traffic reports on the
radio. Not to mention the fact that they only cover the major
roadways and the delay is insane. Not to mention the fact that we
could feed in data from other sources such as gaspricewatch.com so
you can find the closest, least expensive gas nearby. Or setup a VOIP
box with an 800 number that people could call into while in traffic
and report an issue which would get immediately entered by one of the
many editors on the "Geopedia". Or even groups of people who agree to
have GPS and sensors on their car to provide anonymous data on live
traffic speeds . We could write our own algorithms to easily re-route
based on the number of traffic lights, how fast traffic is moving or
the nearest, least expensive gas.
Something to think about - perhaps we could chat with Wikipedia and
borrow their infrastructure as a spinoff.
Just some random brain-streams.....
--
B.K. DeLong (K3GRN)
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