Good Morning Frederik - I guess I owe Carol a beer.
-----------------
Randal Hale, GISP
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
423.653.3611 [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
twitter:rjhale
http://about.me/rjhale
On 12/03/2013 02:38 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
Hi,
couple general comments:
On 11/30/13 18:23, Randal Hale wrote:
Union County Georgia made their buildings (as well as roads) accessible
through a public domain license - they've asked myself (rjhale1971) and
Carol (geocak) to upload them into OpenStreetMap.
What's your assessment of the OSM community in Union County Georgia? Do
you know the people who are active there, have you been in touch?
My goal is to build a community there - Right now there isn't one to
speak of as you point out throughout your email - but since I've become
known as the guy who constantly says "OSM is a good thing" - I've gotten
some attention and a reputation to uphold. The GIS department approached
me a year ago to import their roads which are infinitely better than the
current tiger roads - but I had a theory on any upload we would attempt
past the Athens dust up and buildings were the lowest hanging fruit.
Plus the road data (while being much better geometry wise) doesn't have
any attribution past a addr:street so I've got a lot of work to do to
get that into any presentable shape. It almost going to be easier to fix
the existing roads.
Just to avoid any misunderstandings, we are talking of this right:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/532213#map=11/34.8316/-83.9919
Absolutely wonderful area - Not terribly far from our own slice of
Germany. Heh. Come over one day and we will horrify you with Helen
Georgia. I owe you a beer anyway.
Looking just at the name of the user who have last edited any object in
this county, only the following people have more than 100 edits in the area:
71555 jumbanho
50903 woodpeck_fixbot
20677 Liber
6589 sadam-AT
2274 bot-mode
1671 EdLoach
1175 DaveHansenTiger
789 Le Fou
530 rh3662
508 ksamples
299 iandees
226 BeauMan
140 egore911
137 42429
Zooming in a bit, it becomes immediately clear that there seems to be a
problem with fixing bad imports in Union County Georgia - e.g.
Yes - I would love to rip all the landcover out of Georgia. Probably the
NHD and do it right. It is sad that a bot (are they actual robots or SQL
scripts? Ha. ) made it into your list. Not unexpected though. Once we
have a well planned out edit day in Athens I am inviting the guys from
Union county down. Hopefully we hold an OSM meetup there also.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/532213#map=15/34.9172/-84.0614
shows clearly overlapping water and wood areas from USGS and NHD - only
one can be right (and Bing imagery claims a third way in some areas I
have looked at).
Bing Imagery is hit or miss since it's a combination of data sources.
Since I don't know the vintage or quality of Bing (my general feeling is
only use it if it's the only thing available) but my gut feeling is
don't use it until it's investigated more - which is why I stopped at
two edits. If they have imagery I could ask that they share it - it is
always going to be better than bing. My worry as a GIS person is the
ready acceptance of Bing imagery in OSM.
In addition to that, there's TIGER data that is totally unrelated to
things on the ground.
These three imports seem to have been there for years, unloved and
unfixed. Do you have any ideas/action plans to remedy that, to get more
people interested in doing the work that needs to be done to make the
map good in Union County Georgia? You say you'd like to get the GIS dept
to get involved more but they're unlikely to be able to fix this without
help from the population at large.
My current argument is that OSM is a great compliment to a GIS
department. The general population can be more places than the GIS
department. I was able to at least keep momentum here with no import
(well - I did a NHD import back when that was cool) -
http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Chattanooga%20Tn#map=16/35.0560/-85.3041
. I personally believe it will take an import with people going "Hey
where is my house" to get this area kickstarted. I could be wrong - I'm
guessing you would weigh in on the wrong side. I would gleefully go in
the other direction. I want to go up and kill a saturday making edits. I
want the people in the county to get excited and start making edits.
This is my first attempt. Which will (is currently) be documented for
the benefit of others.
If you import building footprints here, they are
* (almost) guaranteed to conflict with old imported never-fixed USGS
data (buildings in forests etc.)
My plan is to look at the data and decide based on it's merit. If it's
existing data and looks good - it stays. If it's existing data and is
not good - it goes. I expect more deletion than addition.
* (almost) guaranteed to conflict with old imported never-fixed NHD data
(buildings in lakes and rivers etc.)
Yeah - I've been trying to decide how to fix the NHD (continue using my
grid perhaps). My guess is it's going to make the building import slow.
Landcover is going to make everything slow. If only OSM were more like
GIS and I could clip and remove the landcover easier than I think I
could. Hopefully someone will tell me how that can be done.
* (almost) guaranteed to conflict with old imported never-fixed TIGER
roads (buildings sitting on top of streets etc.)
Yeah - Tiger data. The bane of GIS people - that's why we hardly ever
use it until the last version was released.
Just to be clear, when you say
o This isn't a scripted import. Each grid will be checked in JOSM
and validated before it's uploaded.
does that mean that you will fix the existing data to not be in conflict
with your buildings, are you planning to only check for errors within
your building data set?
Well - I will no doubt end up fixing more than that - but that will be
my main concern. I would absolutely love to clip and cut all the landuse
out of union as a first attempt at this. As you can see someone has
removed (and I would love to take the credit) 80% of the landcover in
Athens-Clarke County.
You write that you and Carol have been asked to do the import. I note
that you have 2 (two) edits in that county and Carol has zero. Would you
consider yourselves members of the OSM community in Union County
Georgia? If so, have you never noticed the above broken import and felt
the urge to fix them, at least one tiny bit?
Thanks for pointing that out. I hope you at least fixed some things
while you were generating these statistics? My goal is to stir up
interest. I think my best way to get that done is to start here. With
any hope I continue teaching the URISA/OSM class that myself and Carol
help author and we start holding regular meetings in the area. My goal
is to involve the general population to make edits on the ground - it's
how I've gotten 99% of any OSM task I've started. With the exception of
the High School where I regularly taught OSM - their edits were all by
armchair. It's going to be a task with no clear end as these things
alway are. Given our involvement with the local GIS community we have at
least a path to beginning that. Carol is excited about the community in
Athens - my goal will be to push in other areas. If I get one more
mapping that wasn't - that's one more than we had. The general feel
here is that OSM is too cryptic - so I'm attempting to remove that
impression and show the benefit to my local area.
Just to clarify, when you say you have been "asked to do the import",
does that mean that you or your company has been contracted to do the
import, i.e. will you be receiving any benefits from this other than
seeing the map improved, or is this a hobby activity for you?
Does it matter? For the record the answer is no. If it were yes - does
that mean the import gets blocked? Is it a hobby or a business for you?
We see this as a community effort. That's why Carol has been hammering
on everyone to define community. My thought are that you can't/won't -
because it is too bloblike with no definition and defining it sets up
more questions that no one wants to answer. My personal feelings is that
it is small and localized. I think at one time I was rated somewhere
towards the top of some list for edits - which would mean that the total
community is rather small (given there are well over 1,000,000
registered accounts). So small communities tend to move in an unhealthy
direction (IMO). I hope this action starts new people coming in.....I
hope when they make mistakes that they are helped.
So how does GeoFabrik make money off OSM? I've used your downloads quite
a bit. I would love to incorporate OSM into some sort of business case
as mapbox/Geofabrik has done.
and I guess I should say - thank for volunteering to help in Union
County? Please start deleting landcover - it's terrible.
Or
You could have proven your point in a lot fewer sentences. So please
help fix the data? or does Union County extend outside your community?
Bye
Frederik
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