Re: [Talk-us] Recent Trunk road edits

[Brian May]

I'm Florida based, have seen Floridaeditor's changes and noticed an 
eagerness to change a lot of road classifications. I didn't pay a lot of 
attention until now. Of course, trunk can be a tricky one, but if you 
got one lone guy on a mission who is arguing with everyone along the 
path, reverting any differences of opinion, etc - that is getting 
abusive and needs to stop. It is certainly NE2ish behavior. Other than 
NE2s behavior towards people who didn't agree and subsequent banning, he 
taught me a good bit, did a lot of good for FL and was actually 
inspirational in the beginning of my OSM journey showing what was 
possible and the impact a prolific editor could have. Sucks that he 
couldn't play well with others. Pretty sure he was based out of Orlando. 
Floridaeditor started editing in the Melbourne area not far from 
Orlando. His editing behavior is somewhat similar to NE2 in that they 
are / was editing a fairly wide variety of feature types. Also a focus 
on highway types in many other states and forcefully arguing with others 
in other states / local stomping grounds.


Anywho, seems like collective wisdom should rule the day with most 
things OSM, right? Especially long-time editors who have been through 
the wilderness and put a lot of thought into how features be mapped and 
tagged. And importantly are engaging with others in a respectful way.


An example unhelpful comment:

    "YES GEORGIA IS BADLY-TAGGED TRUNK FREE! Control is provided by 
floridaeditor; i.e., if anybody tries to change one back I will review 
the edit and keep/revert as needed."


WTF

Brian aka grouper

On 9/28/2020 7:29 PM, Evin Fairchild wrote:
I totally support reverting Floridaeditor's changes in order to 
restore all these divided highways to trunk status. I believe that 
floridaeditor has been given the opportunity to participate in this 
discussion, right?


On Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 3:54 PM Jack Burke > wrote:


On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 3:15 PM Evin Fairchild
mailto:evindf...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> We've always tagged non interstate freeways as motorways. They
are often designed to interstate standards and there is literally
no distinction between them and interstate freeways except that
there's no interstate shield.
>
> As for Floridaeditor's edits, I noticed him doing this awhile
ago, but didn't really feel like doing anything. Glad someone is
sending him and trying to get this resolved. Many of his
downgrading from Trump to primary were completely unjustified.


Throughout this entire discussion, it sounds like there's pretty good
agreement that trunk is perfectly acceptable to use as a road
classification in OSM for the eastern US, and at least some general
agreement that the examples I cited are reasonable examples of trunk
roads?  Am I mis-interpreting anyone?

And also, that I'm not the only one who's very much disturbed by
floridaeditor's changes?

Does anyone have a strong problem if I continue going through Georgia
and reversing most of his trunk-to-primary changes?

--jack


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Re: [Talk-us] Address data for Miami Florida United States

[Brian May]

I would like to help as well. I've been mapping in Florida for many 
moons, live in SE FL, and would like to get involved in imports. I think 
we should consider merging the addresses with the Microsoft buildings. 
As Leif mentioned, buildings from Miami-Dade county have been imported, 
but they are incomplete.


Some of the condo buildings have over 100 units. When searching for an 
address, IMHO, unit is not important when dealing with a tall building. 
My vote is to not consider units because it just clutters the database.


Data in FL is public domain, unless exempted by FL Statutes. Refer to 
Chapter 119 - 
www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute=0100-0199/0119/0119.html


I've also been thinking about how to get more POIs into OSM in bulk 
utilizing existing government data that "theoretically" should be pretty 
accurate. For eample, Florida requires every business submit a tangible 
tax return. What this means is every single business in FL has a record 
in the tangible tax file that includes a site address, NAICS code, owner 
name, etc. Some have parcel IDs as well.  At the very least, we could 
map NAICS codes to OSM feature types like amenity=restaurant. In 
addition, I have all parcels for the state of Florida which include land 
use types. This could be used to add land use info to buildings as well, 
if its residential or not a business listed in the tangible file. We 
could go even further by referencing other GIS layers available from 
Miami-Dade like schools, hospitals, fire stations, etc. Basically, look 
into utilizing more data sets and some overlay queries to add to the 
known information about each building. A first step may be to merge all 
the relevant various Miami-Dade point layers into one master POI data set.


So just thinking out loud here. I've been a manual mapper for years, but 
focused mostly on road improvements, water, and a few other basic 
things. But I'm a GIS guy and have been wanting to put the power of GIS 
and existing GIS data to use for a while to go beyond the "basic" import 
for POIs and buildings.


I know there's a lot of existing OSM data to contend with and this 
should be a two step process, e.g. don't blindly place data on top of 
data, but rather first pass is greenfield where no buildings exist and 
second pass is manually conflate to existing data.


Brian aka grouper

On 9/12/2018 4:17 PM, Leif Rasmussen wrote:

Hi Mango,
I have quite a lot of experience with address imports, and would love 
to help with Miami.  I have visited Miami several times, and have 
grown a liking for it.  Adding addresses there would be a real pleasure.
There appears to be two address data sets - one with "addr:unit", and 
one without.  The one with "addr:unit" addresses 
 has 1,166,445 
points, and the one without 
 
has 586,171 points.  Both of these should be considered.  I would 
suggest importing the one with condos, or "addr:unit" features if the 
quality is good.  Otherwise, I think that the dataset without 
addr:unit should be imported.
Also, the license seems OK.  According to the Miami-Dade County 
Buildings Import 
, 
the license is public domain, which they claim is true of all 
government produced data in Florida.
The only issue I see with the data is the size.  My laptop took 5 
minutes to open the address points (including addr:unit, so 1,166,445 
nodes) and more than 20 minutes to edit a single key.  This could be 
worked around, though, by splitting up the data.
I created a wiki page for the import 
, 
which is a step of the Import Guidelines 
. Sending a 
proposal to the local community and imports mailing list will also be 
needed.

I hope that this import will end up working out!
Leif Rasmussen


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Re: [Talk-us] NYC Name Vandalism

[Brian May]

Alan,

Your phrase "The name tag of New York City should be an obvious example 
- what would  cause it to change" - That makes a lot of sense. To 
further expand on this thought, identify and prioritize features in OSM 
that theoretically should not change much at all over long periods of 
time. Others have probably already thought of this, but it does seem 
like a really good idea to prioritize high-profile / large features and 
have the QA tools out there score these very highly for review ASAP. 
Like out of thousands of small "potential issues" to look at in a day, a 
name change to New York City is priority #1 four alarm fire to respond 
to right away, because its scored very highly as a prominent feature 
that should not change. Recent Great Lakes name changes also come to mind.


Brian

On 9/4/2018 9:36 PM, Alan Brown wrote:

Hi -

I haven't commented on this forum for several years, but this event 
did catch my attention.


There are some uses of OSM map data which would not allow for frequent 
updates - offline uses - and therefore, a way of catching such 
vandalism immediately - less than a day, even - would be very helpful.


The thought that occurred, is that certain attributes of certain high 
profile objects should be caught - or even stopped - very early.  The 
name tag of New York City should be an obvious example - what would  
cause it to change (short of us selling it back to the Dutch, or 
similar event)?  A new user, offensive language (one of the new street 
names in  the changelist had the word "fuck", and "Adolf Hilter") - 
these should be immediate red flags.  In principle, changelists could 
be submitted to some sort criteria that could trigg moderation, 
instead of automatically checking it in.


Granted, it would be nearly impossible to make this criteria perfect: 
there's  not offensive about the word "Jew", but it was applied in an 
offensive way in this situation; I'd have no idea what would be 
offensive in Hungarian, much less Thai; someone could draw something 
offensive (like a peeing Android) that would be very hard to catch; 
there are places like "Dildo, Newfoundland" that are legitimate.  But 
I don't think it would be all that hard to flag a changelist like this 
last vandalism, without interrupting legitimate edits by very much.  
At very least, you can force your vandals to be clever to succeed.


In our usage, we will scan the names of significant objects for 
potentially offensive changes.  But it would be good to have some sort 
of gateway in the OSM database itself.  I don't understand any of the 
details of the OSM check-in process, if there is any monitoring for 
potential vandalism.


-Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[Brian May]

On 8/15/2018 1:47 AM, OSM Volunteer stevea wrote:

Again, one of the most important things that might be said (in talk-us) about "State Open 
Data" is that there are at least fifty different sets of rules.  "Check your state laws 
and county practices" remains excellent advice.  Yes, it can be complex, but if in a state 
like California, we're in pretty good shape.  In New York, it's different.  Et cetera (48 different 
other ways).

Documenting state-by-state "rules" and legal state-data copyright 
practices-as-they-apply-to-our-ODbL could turn into a WikiProject.  (And then traffic in this 
mailing list might diminish yet more).  Yet, it's a rapidly moving topic and notice how everyone is 
so careful to say "I'm not a lawyer, but..." and gets the bright idea that OSM's 
seriously-busy Legal Working Group might spend time double-checking things, which simply is not 
practical.  So I don't see how a wiki could realistically keep up in real-time, even with a team of 
well-paid top lawyers, unless they fall from the sky like rain and I don't see that in tomorrow 
morning's forecast.

I don't know a good solution to this except to keep open good dialog, even if it means we repeat 
ourselves.  This isn't like a hard math problem that got solved a few centuries ago, like orbital 
mechanics.  It is a very up-to-the-minute legal edge that we walk here, out on the hairy precipice 
of "do I or don't I enter these data?"  "Is this a good idea or could it jeopardize 
the project?"

We can be both bold and careful, but it isn't easy.  Ask.  Dialog.  Read.  
Discuss.  It is getting better.

SteveA
California


All good points.

If a billionaire is reading this list and wants to put their money 
towards doing a lot of public good and good for the economy in general 
(data is the new oil), they could make the sky rain lawyers!  Here's an 
idea for said billionaire: Create or fund an existing non-profit that 
hires a band of lawyers to roam the country and challenge these public 
records laws that put restrictions on public data, etc. And lobby 
legislatures to change the laws to make the public records more open to 
the public and free from copyright and exorbitant fees. There are a lot 
of individual organizations and people working on changing the current 
situation in their corner of the world, but the effort could use more 
organized and sustained activity to speed up the process of opening up 
data around the country. Its also an economic equality issue. I'm sure 
many of the biggest (and boldest) corporations already have their hands 
on data like parcels and tax records for every county in the US, even 
where data is supposedly copyrighted and sold for tens of thousands of 
dollars per county. So, like you said Steve, until that magical 
billionaire appears to save the day for public records laws, we just 
need to just keep the issue alive by discussing, sharing info, 
educating, etc.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[Brian May]

On 8/12/2018 4:26 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 1:05 PM OSM Volunteer stevea
 wrote:

I'm not an attorney, though were I to attempt to sharpen focus on these two replies, I'd say that in 
California, it's more like this:  data produced by state agencies (by our state government personnel "on 
the clock") publishing them as "produced by the state of California" cannot have onerous 
copyright terms/restrictions put upon them.  They simply "belong to the public."  (This is 
especially true of GIS data, as in the County of Santa Clara and Orange County/Sierra Club cases).

So when you say "copyright...owned by the government," that is effectively equivalent to "copyright owned by the People of the state" 
because of California's Open Data laws and stare decisis (law determined by court precedence/findings).  Whether "public domain" is the correct legal 
term I'm not sure, but if there is a distinction between the legality of California-produced data and "the data are in the public domain" it is 
either very subtle or completely non-existent; I consider California-produced data "somewhere around, if not actually PD" and "fully 
ODbL-compatible" for OSM purposes.  So, (and I hope this dispels any confusion and answers your question, Pine), "created by the government" 
means they can't put "onerous copyright" on it, meaning it is effectively owned by the People for any purpose for which We see fit.

TL:DR: The closest answer to Clifford Snow's original question for New
York is http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/inventories/details.cfm?DSID=932
which is virtually certain (the law, as always is muddy) to be
ODBL-compatible (and in fact, there is a colourable case that it is in
the Public Domain.) The digital raster quads available from
https://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/quads/ (these are State, not USGS!) are
also a potential data source for tracing, and again, aren't deeply
mired in the legal swamp.

Of course, as people like Frederik Ramm are quick to point out, no
imported data are truly safe! (In the US system, a deep-pocketed
plaintiff can simply bankrupt the defendant before the conclusion of a
civil suit, and the law is particularly murky in the
copyright-friendly Second Circuit, which comprises New York, Vermont
and Connecticut.)



I already sent Clifford Snow a reply in private email, but this
deserves to be elaborated more in public, given how the conversation
has turned.

I am not a lawyer either, but as a scholar I have had to learn some of
this stuff.

I live in the Second Circuit, and the situation with respect to State
and local government works is complicated here. The confusion stems
from a decision rendered by the Second Circuit in the case of _Suffolk
County v First American Real Estate Solutions_ (261 F. 3d 179 (2001):
https://openjurist.org/261/f3d/179/county-v-first). First American was
a real estate multiple listing service that had acquired Suffolk
County's tax maps under New York's Freedom of Information Law, and was
republishing them without license to its participating realtors.
Suffolk County, motivated by the desire for cost recovery for the
maintenance of the tax rolls, sued for copyright infringement. First
American moved to dismiss, on the grounds that the Freedom of
Information Law extinguished any copyright interest that Suffolk
County might have had in the product. The district court initially
denied the motion. On petition to reconsider, the district court
agreed with First American that the Freedom of Information Law
requires that Suffolk County may not use whatever copyright subsists
in the tax maps to restrict their republication.

The Second Circuit held that the Freedom of Information Law is fully
satisfied as long as the public has the right to inspect the
copyrighted records, and that FOIL does not extinguish the possibility
of a copyright claim. Since it was ruling on a motion to dismiss,
there was no ruling on the facts of the case, so the judicial opinion
did not reach the argument of whether the maps had sufficient
originality to survive a claim under the _Feist v Rural_ (499 U.S. 340
(1991) - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.)
standard. Suffolk's initial argument appears to have been crafted to
follow the 'sweat of the brow' standard. Nevertheless, the Second
Circuit accepted that the originality claim was sufficiently pleaded.
Nevertheless, the opinion recognized that 'items such as street
location and landmarks were "physical facts"-and thus not protected
elements" (_Suffolk_ at 24) and that in an earier case it had 'thus
focused on "the overall manner in which [the plaintiff] selected,
coordinated, and arranged the expressive elements in its map,
including color, to depict the map's factual content."' No deference
was accorded to a contrary advisory opinion from the New York State
Committee on Open Government.

The appellate decision remanded the matter to the district court for
further proceedings; the 

Re: [Talk-us] Apalachicola National Forest rendering problem

[Brian May]

Thanks Clifford! I must have hit some keyboard combo and ignored the 
JOSM validator when I uploaded it. My bad.


Brian

On 5/15/2018 11:23 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:

Brian,
There was a duplicate outer boundary of the large polygon. I found it 
using JOSM validator and removed it.


Clifford

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 6:24 AM Brian May <b...@mapwise.com 
<mailto:b...@mapwise.com>> wrote:


I fixed up some boundaries for the Apalachicola National Forest
southwest of Tallahassee and seem to have broken the rendering of the
forest boundary and I'm not sure why. I didn't change tags, just
moved
ways around, created new nodes, etc. But I did break some
multi-polygon
ways and put them back together again. Can someone experienced with
multi-polygon relations please take a look?

Thanks,

Brian aka grouper



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--
@osm_seattle
osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us <http://osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us>
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch


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[Talk-us] Apalachicola National Forest rendering problem

[Brian May]

I fixed up some boundaries for the Apalachicola National Forest 
southwest of Tallahassee and seem to have broken the rendering of the 
forest boundary and I'm not sure why. I didn't change tags, just moved 
ways around, created new nodes, etc. But I did break some multi-polygon 
ways and put them back together again. Can someone experienced with 
multi-polygon relations please take a look?


Thanks,

Brian aka grouper



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Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Brian May]

I have spent a very large amount of time cleaning up TIGER in rural 
areas of Florida. I agree with others that the vast majority of 
untouched TIGER ways in un-populated rural areas classified as 
residential are forest roads for logging trucks at best and pure fantasy 
at worst, with tons of barely grass paths all over the place. Many of 
these roads are on private lands that you can't (or shouldn't) access 
anyway. Spatially accuracy is often horrific. I've reviewed a decent 
amount of 2017 TIGER and many areas have not been fixed. The best 
secondary source of data I have found are county streets from the county 
GIS departments, but those vary widely in quality. At the very least the 
county data shows you where all the forest tracks, farms tracks and 
imaginary TIGER streets are, because they are not there in the county 
data sets. Many times, a residential street having no name is a strong 
tip as well that it is not a residential street.


Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is 
somewhat unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data 
in it, see a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and 
think, OK, that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few 
navigable roads in there somewhere, I just need to find them, record 
what I found and make some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are 
going to think this data is junk. If they don't know the area and they 
head into it they will then figure out pretty quickly the data is junk. 
I agree with others that these roads should probably not be in OSM at 
all - let the locals add the real roads and tracks. But we are living 
with the old TIGER, and there is some potential usefulness that can come 
from it. So as others have said, we are willing to leave them there, 
downgrade them to track without a grade assigned for now, maybe make 
some spatial corrections, delete roads that are obviously pure fantasy, 
etc.


I don't think there should be any requirement to cover a certain size 
area when reviewing these areas. We need to be thankful that someone has 
taken the time to look at even a small area of rural areas that don't 
get much attention normally at all, especially private lands.


Brian

On 2/12/2018 6:02 PM, Kevin Broderick wrote:
If you can cover an entire area (which I'd define as a swath between 
the nearest state highways), I agree that downgrading to track absent 
other clues is one reasonable solution. One of my key points is that 
anyone who's spent a fair bit of time trying to use GPS maps (of any 
origin) in poorly-mapped areas will quickly recognize an area that is 
clearly an unverified TIGER import, which signals both (a) that the 
data is clearly questionable and (b) that it might be an interesting 
place to explore to find out if the roads do go through or not. The 
questionable map data can be very useful, especially in conjunction 
with other data sources, in attempting to piece together a route 
through an area that lacks fully maintained roadways. If a track 
doesn't actually exist, yes, then it should certainly be deleted, but 
I've ridden right-of-ways that were damn near impossible to see with 
leaf-on imagery and also found other routes that looked more road-like 
via the same imagery impassable, so I definitely wouldn't delete 
anything unless you can get there in person and look for evidence of a 
roadway, perhaps one that hasn't been maintained in decades (e.g. 
Class IV roads in Vermont and Class VI roads in New Hampshire).


Downgrading some ways to tracks without doing so to a whole localized 
network creates the appearance of a higher level of data accuracy than 
actually exists, which IMO is more likely to bite someone in the ass 
than having a localized network of roads that are mislabeled. I know 
it would make some of the exploring I've done via on/off-road 
motorcycle more difficult.


I'd also suggest that leaving tiger:reviewed at no is appropriate if 
you haven't been able to travel the road/track in question and 
determine whether it is really an unclassified road or a track, so it 
remains flagged for further review if someone has the time and 
proximity to do so.


On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:39 PM, Martijn van Exel > wrote:


I am very happy to see this rekindled interest in TIGER cleanup!

Having done a fair amount of backcountry exploring, I know that
there is a wide range of road grades and aerial imagery alone is
not enough to decide how navigable a roads is for a particular
type of vehicle. Or, for that matter, what its access limitations
are. I do agree with Clifford that leaving them as poorly aligned
'residential' roads is the worst possible situation. Yes, worse
than deleting the road altogether. What I usually do is mark the
road as track without a track grade tag. This seems to me to be
the most acceptable generic solution for a remote mapper:

Re: [Talk-us] Integrating our open source data into OSM

[Brian May]

Its critical to know where the lat/longs came from. For example, if they 
came from Google Maps - then its a no go, because Google's licensing is 
incompatible with OSM. Their geocodes are not public domain, etc. Same 
thing applies to many / most other commercial geocoding services. If you 
don't know how the lat/longs were derived, then that is probably a show 
stopper as well.


Brian

On 11/8/2017 1:53 PM, Sean Lindsey wrote:


We have open sourced our US POI data, it may not be ready for a direct 
import into OSM, but we'd be willing to try to get it there.


Its a national directory of 59 million US businesses, that has been 
updated as of this summer. And should be getting another refresh shortly.


What process is there to discuss and work to integrate this data?

The data is available under a creative commons attribution license at 
https://omniplaces.cybo.com/


I would be willing to waive and/or clarify certain aspects of the 
licence if needed however.


* I asked this same question in help.openstreetmap.org 
, 
and was referred to these mailing lists


Regards,
--
Sean Lindsey
Cybo Company
LinkedIn 
541-912-2505


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Re: [Talk-us] Dakota County, MN

[Brian May]

Joe,

Try whodidit. http://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/

It shows who edited areas by tile and when. Default is a week, but you 
can set different times, filter users, etc.


I have a bookmark set to start at my home town location like: 
http://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/?zoom=12=27.20942=-80.28027=BTT


Brian

On 10/10/2017 12:47 PM, Joe Sapletal wrote:


At work, my manager wants to explore using and contributing to OSM in 
a more official capacity beyond my personal Building Import project.  
He has a few questions that I can handle, but there is one that is 
actually something that I’ve been thinking about too.  How much 
activity is happening in Dakota County, Minnesota?  And Where?  Is 
there a data or web map resource that one can map change by date?


Thanks,

Joe Sapletal



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Re: [Talk-us] dubious church node

[Brian May]

On 9/29/2017 11:06 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 9:33 PM, Mark Bradley 
> wrote:



In the course of my mapping in the American Midwest, I have come
across several small country churches of GNIS origin that no
longer exist.  Often there will be a nearby cemetery, but the
church facility is gone.  I simply delete the node.  In one case I
know of, the church building was converted into a home, so I
remapped it accordingly.


Of course, if the cemetery is there on the ground, then it should be 
mapped. But deleting the node for a demolished church is entirely 
appropriate. For a church converted to a private home, consider:


building=detached historic:amenity=place_of_worship historic:name=* etc.

if the building still resembles a church.


For any arm-chair mappers out there, you cannot assume the location of 
the original GNIS point is accurate at all, unless you have up to date 
evidence it is. So if you see a church point sitting on what looks like 
a house in a residential neighborhood on the aerial, then either delete 
it,  mark it as a FIXME or leave it alone. The person working for the 
Feds who originally mapped the point may have been miles off.


A few thoughts:

Churches from GNIS seem to be one of the biggest "map noise" features 
for areas I look at. Sometimes the locational accuracy is spot on, 
church is still there and everything is great. Sometimes the church is a 
mile and half down the road on a different block. Sometimes its in the 
middle of the highway. Sometimes in the water, etc. When I am quickly 
reviewing an area and I see a church point in the water or on a road, I 
usually just move it to a halfway plausible location without doing more 
research. It would be nice to have a fairly solid process for reviewing 
these with external data that is of known high quality.


I did a little playing around with the new USGS Map VIewer [1] and it 
has a Structures layer.  This appears to be part of the volunteer corps 
thing w/ USGS, which was (is?) a national program to provide higher 
accuracy points focused on buildings and structures.  I found this [2] 
from 2012 that provides an overview. Looks like they intended to 
contribute back to OSM - but no word on that in the doc. Found this site 
as well [3], but out of time to dig into it for now. Anyone know more 
about this Structures layer?


In the USGS Map Viewer, you can click on a structure and see details 
about it. Some say source=centroid - to me this means parcel centroid. 
Many have addresses as well. The map viewer allows you to switch the 
base map to OSM. So then you get a nice QA tool to check OSM features in 
an area. The structures layer doesn't include churches, but cemeteries 
are included. Other features include Post Offices, State Capitol 
Buildings, Hospitals / Medical Centers, Police Stations, Prisons, 
Colleges, Technical Schools, Schools, Campgrounds, Trailheads and 
Visitor Information Centers.


I have a statewide parcels layer that just shows church polygons and 
labels that I use sometimes use as well for checking churches - others 
are welcome to use it if interested.


[1] https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/advanced-viewer/
[2] https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1209/pdf/ofr2012-1209.pdf
[3] https://nationalmap.gov/TheNationalMapCorps/#

Brian
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Re: [Talk-us] dubious church node

[Brian May]

On 9/30/2017 3:19 AM, Mark Wagner wrote:

Second, many entries have their coordinates specified using the old NAD
27 datum, but somewhere along the line, that fact was lost and the
coordinates were assumed to be in either NAD 83 or WGS 84.  This
results in an offset that increases the further you go from central
Indiana; the offset in Alaska is upwards of a hundred meters to the
west.


I found this [1] page that says:.



9. What datum applies to the geographic coordinates in the GNIS Database?
All coordinates in the database are in NAD 83. They were converted from 
NAD 27 in September 2005.




And this page [2] which appears to be official metadata that doesn't 
mention a datum - but it was written in 1994 (see very bottom of page).


[1] https://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/faqs.htm
[2] https://geonames.usgs.gov/metadata.html

Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Post-Harvey Event Imagery

[Brian May]

Hi Andrew,

Are you on the OSM US slack channel? Tasks are being discussed there 
among other things.


https://osmus-slack.herokuapp.com/

Thanks for helping with the tasks, too!

Brian

On 8/31/2017 11:09 AM, Andrew Matheny wrote:
NOAA has released some post-Harvey event imagery [1] in Rockport and 
along the coast that was hardest hit. It also includes a WMTS tile 
server in the "About" tab.


Would this be a good candidate for a task in the OSM-us tasking manager?

Thanks,

Andrew

[1] https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/harvey/index.html


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[Talk-us] Hurricane Harvey Dickinson, Texas Buildings

[Brian May]

@kevinbullock and I have started a new OSM US Task to help add buildings 
to the areas around Houston hit hard by flooding. Dickinson is SE of 
Houston.


#105 - Hurricane Harvey Dickinson Texas Buildings at 
http://tasks.openstreetmap.us/project/105


The idea is to have some level of coordination for adding buildings to 
OSM in and around Houston. The whole area has been and is being 
devastated by flooding, but we wanted to just start somewhere, complete 
this area, and then move on to another area that was hit particularly hard.


Thanks for any contributions.

Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] TIGER fixup for Hurricane Harvey potential impact areas

[Brian May]

Cliff,

Thanks for pointing out the png issue. If you choose png format, JOSM 
will automatically make it transparent, because it adds transparent=true 
to the generated WMS URL. And best to choose image/png; mode=8bit to 
reduce the size of the image generated on the server, which helps with 
speed on slow connections.


Also, if anyone has suggestions on the styling, please chime in. The 
labels are a bit large, but they stand out.


Brian

On 8/28/2017 10:00 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:
Brian if I may - adding transparent=true on to the end of the URL will 
allow the street layer to be transparent so satelite imagery can be 
used along with the streets.


The URL would be 
http://maps.mapwise.com/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=maps/fmo-base-osm-texas.map=true


After selecting the layer using the Get Layers, change the image from 
image/jpeg to image/png


Then you are good to go.

Clifford

On Sun, Aug 27, 2017 at 3:47 PM, Brian May <b...@mapwise.com 
<mailto:b...@mapwise.com>> wrote:


There is now a task in the OSM Task Manager to help coordinate the
effort at http://tasks.openstreetmap.us/project/104
<http://tasks.openstreetmap.us/project/104>

There is also a WMS layer of Texas statewide streets available at
http://maps.mapwise.com/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=maps/fmo-base-osm-texas.map;
<http://maps.mapwise.com/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=maps/fmo-base-osm-texas.map;>
- use that URL in JOSM.

Adding WMS layer to JOSM tutorial here:
http://learnosm.org/en/josm/josm-adding-imagery/
<http://learnosm.org/en/josm/josm-adding-imagery/>

The streets are from:
https://tnris.org/data-catalog/entry/txdot-roadways/
<https://tnris.org/data-catalog/entry/txdot-roadways/>

Brian

On 8/25/2017 10:02 PM, Hans De Kryger wrote:

Thanks for letting me know, i'm on it!

*Regards,**
*
*Hans*

    On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 1:56 PM, Brian May <b...@mapwise.com
<mailto:b...@mapwise.com>> wrote:

Calling all TIGER fixup junkies. I've been poking around the
coastal areas of Texas where Hurricane Harvey is expected to
make landfall and seeing a lot of TIGER fixup needed. More
and more websites depend on OSM so it would be nice to
provide more accurate and updated info than what is there
now. Maps and GIS are going to be heavily relied on
especially after the storm.

Common issues:

- Streets that aren't there

- Tracks marked as residential. Many tracks are barely
visible or edges of farms and should be deleted.

- Driveways marked as residential streets (should be service).

- Streets needing realignment.

- Streets not connecting properly.


An interesting site using OSM is
https://livestormchasing.com/map
<https://livestormchasing.com/map>

Storm chaser locations are shown on OSM in real time and
there are video feeds from some of them. So that means you
can get real time video of what the ground looks like! Lots
of flooding already happening along the coast.

Brian aka grouper



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--
@osm_seattle
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OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch


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Re: [Talk-us] TIGER fixup for Hurricane Harvey potential impact areas

[Brian May]

There is now a task in the OSM Task Manager to help coordinate the 
effort at http://tasks.openstreetmap.us/project/104


There is also a WMS layer of Texas statewide streets available at 
http://maps.mapwise.com/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=maps/fmo-base-osm-texas.map; 
- use that URL in JOSM.


Adding WMS layer to JOSM tutorial here: 
http://learnosm.org/en/josm/josm-adding-imagery/


The streets are from: https://tnris.org/data-catalog/entry/txdot-roadways/

Brian

On 8/25/2017 10:02 PM, Hans De Kryger wrote:

Thanks for letting me know, i'm on it!

*Regards,**
*
*Hans*

On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 1:56 PM, Brian May <b...@mapwise.com 
<mailto:b...@mapwise.com>> wrote:


Calling all TIGER fixup junkies. I've been poking around the
coastal areas of Texas where Hurricane Harvey is expected to make
landfall and seeing a lot of TIGER fixup needed. More and more
websites depend on OSM so it would be nice to provide more
accurate and updated info than what is there now. Maps and GIS are
going to be heavily relied on especially after the storm.

Common issues:

- Streets that aren't there

- Tracks marked as residential. Many tracks are barely visible or
edges of farms and should be deleted.

- Driveways marked as residential streets (should be service).

- Streets needing realignment.

- Streets not connecting properly.


An interesting site using OSM is https://livestormchasing.com/map
<https://livestormchasing.com/map>

Storm chaser locations are shown on OSM in real time and there are
video feeds from some of them. So that means you can get real time
video of what the ground looks like! Lots of flooding already
happening along the coast.

Brian aka grouper



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[Talk-us] TIGER fixup for Hurricane Harvey potential impact areas

[Brian May]

Calling all TIGER fixup junkies. I've been poking around the coastal 
areas of Texas where Hurricane Harvey is expected to make landfall and 
seeing a lot of TIGER fixup needed. More and more websites depend on OSM 
so it would be nice to provide more accurate and updated info than what 
is there now. Maps and GIS are going to be heavily relied on especially 
after the storm.


Common issues:

- Streets that aren't there

- Tracks marked as residential. Many tracks are barely visible or edges 
of farms and should be deleted.


- Driveways marked as residential streets (should be service).

- Streets needing realignment.

- Streets not connecting properly.


An interesting site using OSM is https://livestormchasing.com/map

Storm chaser locations are shown on OSM in real time and there are video 
feeds from some of them. So that means you can get real time video of 
what the ground looks like! Lots of flooding already happening along the 
coast.


Brian aka grouper



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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Brian May]

On 7/26/2017 4:05 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Bryan Housel  wrote:

2. contact state GIS agencies for permission, if the website does not make
license clear

I have contact information, which I'm not going to share here.
A template for the letter requesting permission would be very helpful,
since it's not immediately clear how to describe the intended use to
an agency. It would be even more helpful to be able to have contact
information for a resource person to answer any legal questions that
the agency might have. Surely someone's done this before, for the
specific case of a state's orthoimagery with this being the intended
use!


As for legal use and permissions, always look to the state statutes that 
specifies handling of public records requests. That is always going to 
override anything at the county / local level. For example, in Florida, 
the state statute says no agency within Florida can ask for the reason 
of the request or even who is requesting the data (although it has to be 
sent somewhere!). No agency can exert copyright, etc. Any exceptions are 
spelled out in the statutes.


What would be great is a breakdown of each state listing any potential 
restrictions spelled out in state statutes. The big restriction is 
usually a state allowing a local agency (i.e. county) to exert copyright 
over specific data. Some states have specifically targeted GIS data as 
copyrightable by local agencies in an attempt at "cost recovery" for GIS 
data. If there are no restrictions on data, then you are wasting time 
asking for permission, etc at the local level.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] Use without Attribution

[Brian May]

That did the trick. I never thought to try and close that. So its hidden 
by default, whereas on the weather forecast map that you see first, it 
is not. And Mapbox is prominently displayed on the lower left, so I 
figured that was the attribution.


Thanks,

Brian

On 6/12/2017 8:01 PM, joe.saple...@charter.net wrote:


If you close the All Layers window it appears in the lower right, just 
like on the other implementations on their site.  Is this what you are 
looking for?


Joe

*From: *Brian May <mailto:b...@mapwise.com>
*Sent: *Monday, June 12, 2017 9:38 AM
*To: *talk-us@openstreetmap.org <mailto:talk-us@openstreetmap.org>
*Cc: *hans.dekryge...@gmail.com <mailto:hans.dekryge...@gmail.com>
*Subject: *Re: [Talk-us] Use without Attribution

I used that MapBox form a couple months ago to notify missing OSM 
attribution for the WunderMap at wunderground.com, e.g. 
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap?lat=27.17=-80.29=1


Just checked and no changes. I'm pretty sure its an OSM basemap due to 
checking features I have added that aren't on other maps.


Brian

 On 6/9/2017 5:50 PM, Hans De Kryger wrote:

Report it here
https://www.mapbox.com/blog/report-attribution-problems/


*Regards,*

*Hans*

On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Mike Thompson <miketh...@gmail.com
<mailto:miketh...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Looks like I am no longer a member of the "Talk" mailing list,
so I will try here:

https://mapnoco.org/results-intersection-quality

The above site uses OSM as a basemap.

Looks like the tiles come from Mapbox:

https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/uis.map-561ra9g7/15/6814/12356.png

I was unable to find any attribution that credits OSM.

1) Did I miss the attribution? Is it somewhere on the page?

2) Does someone have a nicely worded template that uses all of
the proper terminology which I could adapt and send to the
site owner?

Thanks,

Mike


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Re: [Talk-us] Use without Attribution

[Brian May]

I used that MapBox form a couple months ago to notify missing OSM 
attribution for the WunderMap at wunderground.com, e.g. 
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap?lat=27.17=-80.29=1


Just checked and no changes. I'm pretty sure its an OSM basemap due to 
checking features I have added that aren't on other maps.


Brian

 On 6/9/2017 5:50 PM, Hans De Kryger wrote:

Report it here https://www.mapbox.com/blog/report-attribution-problems/

*Regards,**
*
*Hans*

On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Mike Thompson > wrote:


Looks like I am no longer a member of the "Talk" mailing list, so
I will try here:

https://mapnoco.org/results-intersection-quality

The above site uses OSM as a basemap.
Looks like the tiles come from Mapbox:
https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/uis.map-561ra9g7/15/6814/12356.png

I was unable to find any attribution that credits OSM.

1) Did I miss the attribution? Is it somewhere on the page?
2) Does someone have a nicely worded template that uses all of the
proper terminology which I could adapt and send to the site owner?

Thanks,

Mike

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Re: [Talk-us] Help needed, Babcock Ranch near Fort Myers, FL

[Brian May]

On 5/15/2017 7:37 AM, Eric Ladner wrote:
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 2:59 AM Frederik Ramm > wrote:


Hi,


Maybe someone in the area fancies a fact-finding mission ;)


Some of it actually shows up in the Charlotte county GIS system[1] 
(the stuff south of Lake Timber), and constructiononthe round-a-bout 
is visible on other *cough*Google[2]*cough* satellite imagery (just 
below Lake Babcock).  Construction on the now deleted roads to the 
left of Lake Babcock is also visible (as of Feb imagery).


Most likely it's not vandalism or somebody using OSM for urban fantasy 
but some very early county GIS or planning data that was uploaded.  It 
likely should have been tagged at least as "proposed," though.  Some 
of it is at least a solid "construction" now.


The imagery availble in JOSM via Bing looks pixel-for-pixel identical 
to imagery available elsewhere from 2010.


[1] http://agis.charlottecountyfl.gov/ccgis/
[2] 
https://www.google.com/maps/@26.7872318,-81.7380132,2180m/data=!3m1!1e3 



Bye
Frederik


Eric

This area is being actively developed and is basically a new town, so 
there is and will be a lot of new construction that is seeming popping 
out of nowhere. The mapper probably put in a mix of built, under 
construction and proposed roads. When built out, it will cover 18,000 
acres with an estimated population of 50,000 by 2050 [1].


The new Digital Globe Standard imagery shows some of the new 
development. I haven't take a look yet, but the latest Sentinel 2 
satellite imagery may provide a clear enough look as well for major road 
construction and land clearing. Its being made available pretty quickly 
these days - last clear image of that area is 5/9/2017. [2]


Also the mapper in question is a very active and detail oriented mapper 
focusing on the Fort Myers area.


[1] 
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20170102/babcock-ranch-with-model-homes-soon-to-open-will-have-big-impact-on-charlotte-county

[2] https://remotepixel.ca/projects/satellitesearch.html

Brian
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Re: [Talk-us] reporting Pokemon Go related vandalism

[Brian May]

Been following the thread - my two cents on what I'm seeing around Florida.

1) Seems like a major increase in new mappers and edits in just the past 
two weeks, and before that an increase overall since the pokemon / osm 
connection was publicized.
2) Many /most of the influx of new mappers are adding footways, parks, 
meadows, and water.

3) A decent number of are completely fake - 15%?
4) Some are a mixture of real and fake.
5) Most are small edits, like adding a few features in one or two 
changesets, but some are very prolific adding hundreds of features in 
many changesets.

6) Many edits are not very spatially accurate, but some are really great.
7) A few mappers are breaking every rule in the book and making really 
bad edits.
8) Overall its a net gain, but its a lot of work to try and review these 
edits, make contact, do reverts if necessary, cleanup, etc.


In some cases, I'm not sure what to do. For example, one mapper is 
really prolific, but just mostly wrong in they way they are mapping things.


Another case, looks like a mapper mapped a large paved area next to a 
road as a park, and named it whatever he wanted (he has also named many 
paths and lakes what appear to be fantasy / fake names). I asked him if 
there was really a park there and the reply was there was street art 
displayed there, so its a park.


Another mapper converted a section of a primary road running through 
South Beach Miami to a footpath and extended a park to cover it. The 
changeset comment was something like "making the park look more like it 
does in real life." Another mapper and I commented on his changeset, he 
didn't respond, I reverted and cleaned it up, and he appears to be doing 
more edits that are tied to reality.


Another one said "a park is here" and put the park over relatively new 
single family houses.


Overall, its really interesting to see such a large and focused group 
descending on (embracing?) OSM so quickly. So now I'm thinking how do we 
get large numbers of other sub-groups as interested in adding to the map 
as the pokemon people? Is this a one off random thing? Or is it possible 
to influence and steer large focused groups towards OSM? And at the same 
time provide enough guidance so these new groups are adding useful 
features to the map with a minimal amount of mistakes and fake features.


Brian

On 1/30/2017 7:09 PM, Will Senechal wrote:
I do in fact know one of the areas that he edited quite well.  He 
added "Mission Koi Pond" at a location that contained a large building 
(shown on the Bing imagery) that I can confirm was still there 
yesterday.  It is the site of Mission Neurology, at 890 Hendersonville 
Rd #200, Asheville, NC 28803, see 
http://www.mission-health.org/the-nervous-system.php#locations. I 
would guess the edits are this person's home and work addresses, again 
to try to cheat at Pokemon Go.


On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 2:16 PM, Andy Townsend > wrote:


On 27/01/2017 22:49, ajt1...@gmail.com 
wrote:

On 27/01/2017 06:20, Will Senechal wrote:

  I'll try to keep an eye on activity around here, and
will try to continue updating my area.


They've just "edited" again, and I've blocked in
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/1169
 , so I'd be
grateful if people could keep an eye out for other
problematical edits in the area from other names too...


The Data Working Group have just had a mail from the mapper saying
that although the _previous_ ones were fake, their _last_ edit
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/45573753
 was actually
valid (and said "If there needs to be photographs taken I will
gladly"). I replied suggesting that they might want to post here
to explain what happened, and accepted their offer of photgraphic
evidence.  I have to say I'm still somewhat sceptical - the
features in http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/45573753
 were remarkably
Pokemon-friendly, and the "cars parked in something now mapped as
a duck pond" made it seem even more unlikely.

I'd be delighted to be wrong of course - it'd be great if this
really was someone trying to map real things (but perhaps not
making a very good job of it as this is their first non-fake
edit).  If anyone's in a position to check the validity or
otherwise of it please do (you can visualise the change in
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=45573753
 - some things
should be easy to spot like the stream
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/469546360/history
 "Glen
Meadows Subterrain Spring").

Best Regards,

Re: [Talk-us] .... finding areas that are underserved

[Brian May]

A couple ideas:

Start with small rural towns near you. Check to make sure the streets 
are aligned properly to Bing. Check road names against recent tiger, 
county GIS, and of course the best is on the verifying with your own 
eyes. Then clean up tracks (dirt roads, 4wd trails, non-existent trials, 
etc) outside rural towns that may be tagged as residential.


Brian

On 11/12/2016 5:44 PM, Markus Fischer wrote:

Hi,

I am new to this and the area where I live is very well mapped 
(probably due to high density of tech workers). Where do I go to start 
mapping areas that are less well mapped (me aimlessly poking at this 
does not sound like a good approach)?


- Markus



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Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: mapRe: (Second attempt) Potential data source: Adirondack Park Freshwater Wetlands

[Brian May]

I agree with the pro-import comments and say go for it. After re-reading 
your original post, I feel you are very well suited to the task and are 
obviously very contentious about the process. Don't let one strong 
negative comment get you down. OSM needs people like you to help make 
the map better and lay the groundwork for others to build on. And I am 
strongly for importing high quality data sets that have potentially 
thousands of man hours invested in them.


A relatively small number of people contribute a lot to OSM and a lot of 
people contribute a little, which adds up to a lot. As the map gets 
better over time, it sparks people to contribute small but important 
contributions to OSM.  You will also no doubt spark interest from more 
active contributors who will notice that there's major quality 
improvements in your area and pitch in to help - potentially a lot. For 
example, in sections of Florida where I map, I've seen people come out 
of nowhere and start contributing tens or hundreds of changesets to an 
area they know well once the map is looking fairly decent and they feel 
its something worth contributing to, instead of a blank slate. Mappers 
may live in the area of they may be visitors to the area. Either way, 
once the map starts gaining more usefulness in your area, it will 
attract people with local knowledge who want to contribute.


Brian

On 3/14/2016 11:57 PM, Tod Fitch wrote:

Ditto to Mike’s comments.

I’ve been dealing with the clean up of bad imports, usually TIGER but 
others too, where ever I map so I think I understand where people like 
Frederick are coming from.


But I also see the reality in the U.S. of huge geographical areas with 
very few OSM mappers. An all volunteer map will always be years behind 
other offerings here unless we allow and even encourage carefully 
importing high quality data.


The U.S. might be unique in that there are vast quantities of 
excellent geographical data that are public domain. Unfortunately 
there is also a vast quantity of public domain map data of, shall we 
say, lesser quality. Had the original U.S. highway import data come 
from the USGS rather than the census bureau, people probably would 
have a very different opinion about imports.


At least the experience with bad imports has shown there can be 
issues. And there is now a lot better understanding of how the data 
and import procedures need to be vetted. So we are in a better place 
to do imports and we should not shy away from importing high quality 
data when the stars line up (good data, appropriate copyright, 
competent OSM mappers available, documented and tested work flows, etc.).


Tod

On Mar 14, 2016, at 8:36 PM, Mike Thompson > wrote:


I support the careful import of high quality data whose license is 
compatible with OSM. Those appears to be one of those cases. I 
believe the existence of high quality data will aid in the 
recruitment of new mappers and will encourage high quality 
contributions from those mappers. It is much easier, and less 
daunting,  to add  additional detail from an on-the-ground  survey to 
some high quality data than it is to start from scratch. People also 
like to be associated with successful projects, and the more high 
quality data we have the more successful we will be in the eyes of 
potential new mappers.


Mike


On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:46 PM, Kevin Kenny > wrote:


Since I received only a total of three comments about this idea,
one strongly negative (from Frederik Ramm) and two only lukewarm
in support, I'm forced to conclude that this proposal has no
chance of gaining a broad community support. Consider it withdrawn.

I find myself somewhat frustrated about the question of how to
recruit mappers when it appears that the map has such a paucity
of data that it will never become useful solely through the
effort of volunteer mappers. I can demonstrate the map at
http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html, and state that OSM
is one of many data sources that go into it, but when people go
to openstreetmap.org  and look at it,
my experience is that they lose the connection entirely between
the data that OSM has and the map that OSM enables. The huge
blank area is too intimidating for my friends, it appears!

The fact that we apparently cannot use data that are not our own
in presenting our public face, together with the fact that we do
not wish to import data for which OSM will not become the
authoritative source, leaves us with an impoverished public
appearance outside the cities where streets are sparse. Perhaps
this is outside OSM's ambit. It is, after all, Open STREET Map.
It seems to leave, however, very limited pathways for citizen
mappers to build on what the government has done. Few mappers can
manage to 

Re: [Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[Brian May]

On 8/18/2015 10:01 AM, Torsten Karzig wrote:

As mentioned earlier part of the problem is a confusion between tagging what is 
there (landcover) and what it is used for (landuse). In the wiki we actually 
have a consistent approach (Approach 1) to make this distinction. Using 
natural=wood as a landcover tag and landuse=forest for areas of land managed 
for forestry. On top of this we of cause still have administrative boundaries.

For me applying this to National Forests would mean:

Using administrative boundaries to mark the entire National Forest. Remove the landuse=forest tag 
except for regions that are clearly used for forestry. This does not apply to most parts of the 
National forests in Southern California that I have seen. Although these areas are managed in the 
sense that someone administrates it (hence the administrative boundary) most parts of these National Forest 
are largely left alone and the possibility to collect deadwood does in my opinion not qualify as forestry. 
Finally, any larger regions that are covered with trees should be tagged as natural=wood. Other landcovers 
(scrub,water) can also be tagged as appropriate.

The great advantage of the above tagging scheme is in my opinion that it is 
very easy to follow for the mapper on the ground. Knowing whether I am allowed 
to collect deadwood or not in a particular area is not easy to verify on the 
ground, and, in my opinion, not as important as defining landcovers or obvious 
landuses. Moreover, it is very confusing for someone that uses the map if there 
is a large green region marked as landuse=forest and on the ground there is no 
forestry, or obvious management, or trees.

Torsten


Been following the thread and want to say Torsten sums up the issue very well. 
Its an issue of administrative boundary + landcover + land use. And its going 
to get complicated to properly model land use and landcover. Relations using 
multi-polygons may be needed.

Also I think its been mentioned the boundary should be tagged as boundary=protected_area 
which handles the overall mission of national forests is to conserve our forests. 
However, the issue comes up that there are different levels of conservation ranging from 
untouched wilderness to actively managed areas, e.g. sustainable forestry, so 
a blanket boundary=protected_area may not be appropriate. Is there another tag that 
covers a more mixed bag? Is a new tag needed?

Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Brian May]

On 4/3/2015 8:18 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,



I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether
or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could
just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any
legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made).

Bye
Frederik



In the US, literally billions of dollars have been spent collecting 
geospatial data over the past 20+ years at all levels of government. A 
very sizable portion of that data is free of restrictive licensing (and 
getting better at the state and local level every year). That's a lot of 
work done - millions of man hours? I think a lot of people in the US 
look at existing available data and say to themselves, why duplicate all 
that effort? It doesn't make any sense.


I think its more helpful to discuss what types of features lend 
themselves to imports vs. not. There seems to be a strong consensus in 
the US that addresses and buildings are strong candidates for import. 
Why spend hundreds of thousands of man hours to recreate something that 
has already been done by local governments throughout the US? Of course, 
data quality and licensing has to be vetted, but it just simply does not 
make sense to replicate all that work. Especially since we have proven 
methods for importing that data without damaging existing data.


Brian May aka grouper




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[Talk-us] US Government Accountability Report on GIS Data

[Brian May]

Hello,

In researching estimates of expenditures of GIS data in the US, I ran 
across a report [1] that some of you may find interesting. There's 
several bits of insight in there regarding addresses. For example, 
there's tables listing expendatures on address data by different federal 
(and a few state) agencies. The Census Bureau spent $1.4B on addresses 
to support the 2010 census! There's also some insights on the directions 
things may be going as far as opening up access to Census address info. 
And the USPS weighs in on their thoughts. Interesting reading if you are 
into that kind of stuff.


Brian May aka grouper

[1] GEOSPATIAL DATA: Progress Needed on Identifying Expenditures, 
Building and Utilizing a Data Infrastructure, and Reducing Duplicative 
Efforts

http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/668494.pdf


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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Your opinion about SOTM US

[Brian May]

On 3/15/2015 8:53 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:


On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Alex Barth a...@mapbox.com 
mailto:a...@mapbox.com wrote:


Here's a map showing where TIGER is better than OSM:

https://api.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/lxbarth.647bc246/page.html?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoibHhiYXJ0aCIsImEiOiJFVXdYcUlvIn0.bbaHTEWlnAwGgyVwJngMdQ#5/39.724/-99.360


I think the correct phrase is Here's a map showing where TIGER is 
different than OSM. Just because new TIGER data is available, doesn't 
make it better. In my limited experience with just small parts of two 
states, new TIGER data in rural areas is often bad.


Clifford


--
@osm_seattle
osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us http://osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch



So the yellow is where tiger 2013 is better? In a few areas I checked 
and had updated OSM, its much worse than OSM. And as Clifford notes, in 
many rural counties, new tiger is no better than old tiger, or its 
marginally better than old tiger. In a few cases, a county has seen a 
decent upgrade in quality with newer tiger, but seems to be a small 
minority of cases where I look which is Florida.


And then there is the issue of areas where OSM has not been edited much 
and the original tiger is mostly the same as the new tiger, so there's 
not much yellow. You can see vast swatchs of this in Alabama, Georgia 
and NW Florida - and it lines up to county lines.


Overall, I think the map is somewhat misleading.

Brian
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Re: [Talk-us] what do we mean by geocoding?

[Brian May]

The USPS site referenced below has zipcode polygons and postal delivery 
routes overlaid on an interactive map along with the number of 
residences and business each route serves. Search for a zipcode or an 
address to get started.

https://eddm.usps.com/eddm/customer/routeSearch.action

It looks like the zipcodes may be the Census version, just guessing by 
the field naming convention. You can browse the ArcGIS Server here: 
https://gis.usps.com/ArcSRV/rest/services/EDDM/EDDM_ZIP5/MapServer/0


Brian


On 6/25/2013 4:59 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote:

Part of the reason that the USPS disavows a geographic boundary for ZIP Codes 
is that they often keep residential delivery and commercial delivery and 
high-rise delivery (having apts or suites) separate even when they are next to 
each other on the street.  This can be confusing if you assume a geographic 
basis for ZIP Codes.

Carl.

I've always thought the best way to think of it is that ZIP codes are built 
from delivery routes. In essence they are linear features.

My favorite example is that many National Parks have a DC ZIP code, despite 
being.. well... a long way from DC, because mail is routed through the National 
Park Service headquarters.

d.






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[Talk-us] Google maps source

[Brian May]

I just ran into an area where someone tagged streets with source=google 
maps. Looks like an un-aware new user who only had 8 changesets over two 
days and that was it. What to do about this?


http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Hercumike/edits

Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] H. R. 1604 bill looking to force US government to contract out much of its mapping activity

[Brian May]

On 5/9/2013 9:26 AM, Sean Bartell wrote:

Works by federal government employees are public domain, but works by
contractors are not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government

Sean Bartell


For the kinds of data we're talking about, practically all data developed under 
contract to the federal government is public domain. Exceptions would be data 
like teleatlas or natvtek that they license. For example, the US Census Bureau 
paid over $200M to contractors (mainly Harris Corp) to update the census 
streets and associated data for the 2010 census. Its all public domain, unless 
other restrictions are applied, e.g. the census bureau doesn't release the 
individual address points they collected due to some kind of privacy law. USGS 
has been using contractors for years to update their mapping data, and all that 
data is public domain.

Brian May



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Re: [Talk-us] parcel data next steps

[Brian May]

On 2/21/2013 7:27 PM, Brian Cavagnolo wrote:

Hey guys,

In a previous thread on parcel data, some people expressed interest in
participating in creating some sort of open repository for parcel
data.  I was imagining a conference call or something to discuss next
steps, but I think we can advance with email.  I'm imagining that it
makes sense to separate the data gathering process from the data
standardization/import process.

Regarding the data gathering, the main objective is to gather recent
raw data, licensing terms, and meta data from jurisdictions in
whatever form they make it available, organize it in a dumb directory
structure.  I was just going to set up an FTP (read-write)  and HTTP
(read-only) server to get this going.  Are there any
recommendations/opinions on a longer-term approach here?  Custom
webapp?  Off-the-shelf webapp?  Somebody mentioned a git repository.

Regarding standardization/import, I was planning on setting up an
empty instance of the rails port as a test bed.  Then participating
users could point JOSM and other tools at this alternative rails port
to examine, edit, and import parcel data.  We could also provide
planet-style dumps and mapnik tiles.  The idea is that we would have a
safe place to screw up and learn.  Does this sound like a reasonable
direction?

Oh, and I found this fantastic paper that some parcel data people (Abt
Associates, Fairview Industries, Smart Data Strategies) recently put
together for HUD [1] that examines many of the issues that they faced
building a parcel database.  Timely.

Ciao,
Brian

[1] 
http://nationalcad.org/download/the-feasibility-of-developing-a-national-parcel-database-county-data-records-project-final-report/

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Hi Brian,

I am interested in collaborating on this. So here's some thoughts:

From my perspective (and I think others as mentioned in other email 
threads), the main thrust of utilizing parcels is a source of addresses 
based on parcel centroids where address points or buildings with 
addresses are not available. In addition, several people have mentioned 
they utilize parcels as an overlay to assist with digitizing. The 
current consensus is that parcels should not be imported as a whole.


I think this project needs to dovetail / build upon the work that Ian 
Dees started with finding sources of address data. Parcel polygons are 
one potential source. However, parcel polygons are valuable by 
themselves, so we should be documenting all available sources of parcel 
data as we pursue addresses.


I also think we need a little bit more sophisticated Data Catalog than a 
google spreadsheet. We need to capture more information and a 
spreadsheet gets a bit unwieldy after so may columns. I've got a 
prototype that I am working on getting out in the wild soon, but 
basically its a web form that people register to use and the info sits 
in a database.


A by-product of the effort to identify, catalog, gather raw data, etc. 
would be having a central location for storing raw parcel data that is 
not readily downloadable. For example, someone happens to have a copy of 
X county parcel data that they had to send a check for $25 to acquire, 
they received it on CD, and they would like to donate it to a central 
repository. This is assuming there are no restrictions on the data. It 
sounds like you're willing and able to donate disk and bandwidth to 
support this effort. I don't see a need to make a copy of data that is 
already sitting on the web.


As far as standardization/import and the rails server - I think this is 
not the right path to take. As mentioned above, we shouldn't be 
wholesale importing parcels. Now you could do some standardization of 
parcel data for example to render polygons by land use codes and show 
single family, multi-family, commercial, government, etc land use types 
as an overlay layer for reference, but that is a huge effort by itself. 
Users knowledgeable about parcels in their state or local area could 
serve up something like this as a reference, but the goal is not to 
standardize the parcels and import them.


So, continuing on from the raw data gathering, taking it one step 
further, some organization could gather up the freely downloadable data 
plus the data sitting in this repository and serve up a WMS layer or 
tiles of parcel polygons. And this could be the goto source for a parcel 
overlay for the OSM community members interested in utilizing a parcel 
overlay layer for editing.


Email and a wiki page sounds good to me for coordination. Maybe we can 
bring it up in a Mappy Hour as well. And if there's enough of a need, we 
could do a separate parcels / address oriented Google Hangout. Sounds 
like Serge is already organizing something similar, and maybe we just 
particpiate in that to start, since there's a lot of overlap.


Thanks for sharing the link 

Re: [Talk-us] parcel boundaries and associated data in OSM

[Brian May]

On 2/14/2013 3:43 PM, Ian Dees wrote:
Before this discussion moves forward we should define what parcel 
data is. In my mind it's mostly-abutting polygons representing land 
ownership. Usually it comes with metadata about tax information and 
ownership information, and sometimes it has address information for 
buildings built on that parcel.


On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Brian Cavagnolo bcavagn...@gmail.com 
mailto:bcavagn...@gmail.com wrote:



Is parcel data useful to OSM?


Yes! Parcel data can be useful to help find parks, schools, and other 
public areas. If it includes addressing information we can extract 
that to make it easier to map addresses and/or building footprints.


However, it's my opinion that the parcel polygons themselves should 
NOT be imported into OSM. There's simply too much data, it can not be 
improved by other OSM mappers, and abutting polygons are one of the 
trickiest types of data to get right in the OSM data format.



Can parcel data possibly be kept up to date?


It's possible, but very very difficult. I don't think anyone in OSM 
has created a reliable two-way sync between external and OSM data. 
Such a thing has been on lots of people's wishlists for several years.



Does parcel data meet the on the ground verifiability criteria?


No. I'm sure there will be at least a couple people that argue against 
me, but I have yet to be convinced. Parcel data is surveyed by 
professionals, maintained by the government, and there is very rarely 
a physical manifestation of the actual parcel boundary.



Can tools be adapted to accommodate parcel data density?


Yes, and OSM will have to get there eventually as our data density 
increases, but we're not ready for it now.



+1 on all of Ian's comments.

I think we should start with some sort of nationwide parcel data 
clearinghouse. Ian made a good start with the Google Doc to document 
parcel data sources that could be used for obtaining site address data. 
My thought is we should have some kind of data catalog web app for this 
info, where people can register, create/update metadata records as 
needed, and have a bit more functionality than a google spreadsheet.


There's a good bit of parcel data from govmts out there that doesn't 
have licensing restrictions, its cheap/free, but you have to order it 
and its shipped on DVD or ftp. The next step would be to obtain copies 
of this data and put it on the web for anyone to grab. We just need 
someone to host some space/bandwidth. Is that something the US Chapter 
can do? In addition, updates could be made whenever people get the itch. 
Or strive for an annual update. Updates would just be replacing the raw 
data.


Going the next step into standardization to a common format, etc. is a 
huge can of worms. However, just knowing where to grab the data easily 
and having a central spot to grab data that isn't already sitting on the 
web would be a major step forward.


Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Brian May]

On 12/28/2012 4:47 PM, Phil! Gold wrote:

* Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com [2012-12-28 16:16 -0500]:

So the question is, what should the exact criteria be for including an
open space parcel in OSM. Consider some of the various types of
property.

I've used parcel data as a layer in JOSM to trace from.  It lets me be a
little more accourate about some area boundaries than I could from just
aerial imagery (and walking a GPS along, say, the border between a golf
course and a residential area with private houses is a little out of the
question).

I'd be resistant to the idea of bulk import (pretty much anything beyond
pulling individually-checked polygons into OSM) because I've seen a lot of
places where a naive import of the parcel data available would have made
for wrong or at least weird OSM data.

I've seen a number of places where a single entity acquired its land over
time, so the parcel records show multiple parcels that should be a single
OSM entity.  Similarly, I've seen a lot of places where a public road cuts
through a single entity's land (golf courses especially, but also parks
and residential areas).  I feel it's more correct to make a single polygon
that crosses the road, but parcel data would usually have the road
splitting the area.  I've also seen a few places where parcels were too
broad, where a single parcel needs to be divided into several different
OSM landuses.

This is just my experience with the handful of counties in Maryland that
have parcel data available under an OSM-friendly license.  Maybe other
jurisdictions have data that would provide a more one-to-one
correspondence with OSm features.  Even in those cases, an importer would
need to make sure that the import fits topologically into OSM, interacting
properly with existing data.

+1 on all points. I've seen the same things in FL and use parcels as a 
backdrop in JOSM to help guide hand digitizing boundaries for things 
like parks, golf, schools, hospitals, retail, residential areas, etc. 
And as Phil said, sometimes it doesn't make sense to follow the parcel 
lines exactly, such as if the parcel boundary extends into a road and it 
makes more sense to draw the boundary where the park area appears to end 
some distance from the road.


Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

On 11/29/2012 1:11 PM, Richard Welty wrote:

On 11/29/12 1:03 PM, Steven Johnson wrote:

The
data are copyrighted and Arlington County owns all rights to the data 
and

allows use ...as an acknowledged source to produce maps or analysis but
you may not redistribute, resell, or copy the data (except for back-up
purposes).


the redistribute clause is a real problem, as we don't attempt to control
people taking copies of OSM as long as they honor the ODbL. i'd say this
license is ODbL incompatible (not a lawyer, though.)

richard



Local governments may claim copyright, but whether they can legally is 
another matter. A very quick review of Virginia state law appears to 
show they have liberal open records laws.

http://www.opengovva.org/virginias-foia-the-law

We should probably track these public records problems, e.g. counties 
and cities that claim copyright, etc but the state law says otherwise.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

If Sanborn was just a contractor hired by the govmt agency to help with 
digitizing, data conversion, etc. there should be no copyright issues 
with them. I didn't see a reference to Sanborn in the parcel metadata.


Brian

 On 11/29/2012 2:36 PM, Jim McAndrew wrote:
The city/county of Denver, CO does have a parcels database (in a bunch 
of formats)

(http://data.denvergov.org/dataset/city-and-county-of-denver-parcels)

But it is licensed under a CC BY 3.0 License
(http://data.denvergov.org/dataset/city-and-county-of-denver-parcels)

Is this something that should even be added to the spreadsheet?  It 
looks like all their data is from Sanborn, so the older data should be 
out of copyright by now, if it can be found elsewhere.




On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Steven Johnson sejohns...@gmail.com 
mailto:sejohns...@gmail.com wrote:


That was exactly my reaction as well. My understanding is that
these data are essentially in the public domain. I'll note it in
the spreadsheet.


-- SEJ
-- twitter: @geomantic
-- skype: sejohnson8

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age
eighteen. -- Einstein



On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Brian May b...@mapwise.com
mailto:b...@mapwise.com wrote:

On 11/29/2012 1:11 PM, Richard Welty wrote:

On 11/29/12 1:03 PM, Steven Johnson wrote:

The
data are copyrighted and Arlington County owns all
rights to the data and
allows use ...as an acknowledged source to produce
maps or analysis but
you may not redistribute, resell, or copy the data
(except for back-up
purposes).

the redistribute clause is a real problem, as we don't
attempt to control
people taking copies of OSM as long as they honor the
ODbL. i'd say this
license is ODbL incompatible (not a lawyer, though.)

richard


Local governments may claim copyright, but whether they can
legally is another matter. A very quick review of Virginia
state law appears to show they have liberal open records laws.
http://www.opengovva.org/virginias-foia-the-law

We should probably track these public records problems, e.g.
counties and cities that claim copyright, etc but the state
law says otherwise.

Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] Imports

[Brian May]

On 11/29/2012 9:33 PM, Richard Welty wrote:

On 11/29/12 9:26 PM, Steven Johnson wrote:
Several people have responded with examples of state/local address 
data to

import into OSM. Are these address *points* or address *ranges*?


my plan is to obtain permission to import, where available, the enhanced
911 address _points_ for various counties in New  York State. these data
sets have a very high reputation for accuracy and i intend to apply 
considerable
quality control to the import, as my ultimate goal is to supply 
accurate GPS

maps to first responders in NYS. the quality requirement is very high for
such an application.

richard

To add to what Richard is saying, many local governments use 911 
services as a major justification for creating these address point 
layers. In addition, many government services are tied to addresses and 
gain significant efficiencies by having accurate addresses, both 
spatially and tabularly. A lot of money and sweat equity has been put 
into these efforts. An example describing Lake County FL efforts:

http://www.lakecountyfl.gov/pdfs/gis/case_study_GISAddressingStreetsLayersEnhancements.pdf

Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

On 11/29/2012 9:12 PM, Steven Johnson wrote:


Secondly, about Census data... The Census Bureau publishes ZIP Code 
Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs, as polygons) but they are an approximation of 
US Postal Service data and used for downstream analytical purposes. 
But as far as USPS is concerned, the ZIP code is a point data feature 
that only exists to deliver the mail. The USPS does not maintain ZIP 
codes as polygons.
For points coming from parcel centroids, Property Appraisers store 
mailing addresses, and they need to get that right in order to deliver 
the tax bills. When the owner mailing address and site address match, I 
would bet there is a high degree of accuracy for the city and zipcode 
values in the site address fields (where they are populated).


Where the site address zipcode was not available, and mailing street 
address matched site address, I have used mailing address zipcodes to 
map zipcode boundaries  and obtained what appeared to be good results.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

On 11/29/2012 10:45 PM, Mike N wrote:

On 11/29/2012 10:32 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:

Is there a compelling reason not to get parcels instead?  As parcels
change shape, the centroid can be easily interpolated.  It's not really
possible to extrapolate geometry from centroid, however.


 It would be useful to navigate to address points - properly placed, 
they will lead to the building of interest or driveway. Centroids on 
large parcels will frequently misdirect to a side street with no access.


Right. From what I have seen, an address point layer is rooftop 
points. In the example of Lake County, they centered the points on top 
of residential structures, and for retail commercial, they put the 
points at the store fronts. There may be some variations, as Richard 
pointed out, for rural areas they may put the points at the ends of 
driveways. In Lake County, they put the points on the residential 
structure on large parcels. You can check out the Lake County data by 
looking at the Address Locations layer in the online map viewer: 
http://gis.lakecountyfl.gov/gisweb/


Parcel centroids are a fall-back position if the address points are not 
available. Parcel centroids do work really well for smaller residential 
lots. For large parcels, you can generate centroids that fall within the 
parcel (even for irregularly shaped parcels), but still need to properly 
place the points, And then for condos and multi-tenant commercial, you 
need more points than is in one parcel. For condos, sometimes the 
appraiser maps fake polygons for each condo, and you can use those as 
a starting point. In other cases, appraisers stack the parcel polygons 
on top of each other to represent condos. In other cases, they map 
building footprints and split them up by the number of condos in the 
building. And the list goes on...


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

Here's an interesting exercise so you can see how google is doing 
address geocoding. In google maps, search for: 2109 Lisa Dare Dr, 
Leesburg, FL


Make sure you have the map version turned on so you can see the parcel 
outlines. See the address location? Its the parcel centroid.


Now look at the Lake County FL map viewer at 
http://gis.lakecountyfl.gov/gisweb/default.aspx and search for 2109 Lisa 
Dare Dr

The address location is the house rooftop.

Now search for 3329 US Hwy 441, Leesburg, FL in google maps. The address 
location is now on the street, and its not even in front of the correct 
parcel. Why is that? Because the parcel database does not have a 3329 US 
Hwy 441 address in it, and they fell back to interpolated addresses.


Do the same search in the Lake County map viewer and you'll end up at 
the store front. This is an example of the multi-tenant retail address 
problem and trying to use parcels for that.


So, when we import address point layers, we will be better than Google! 
That's assuming that the data is all that and a bag of chips. And that's 
why we need to be vigilant in heavily QA'ing the data before importing.


Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

On 11/28/2012 6:35 PM, Ian Dees wrote:

Hi folks,

So SteveC's blog post sparked a bit of conversation today:
http://stevecoast.com/2012/11/28/openstreetmap-addressable/

I'd love to see OSM US lead the way on collecting high quality 
addressing data from as many places as possible and throw it in to 
OSM. To that end I started with this spreadsheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsVnlPsfrhUIdEVZTzVFalFYYnlvTkc0R05wcUpsWVE

I think we should crowd-source an effort to collect as much local 
addressing data as possible, convert it to OSM format, and import it. 
Obviously we should do it in a controlled manner and follow the usual 
import guidelines, but a *large* part of the work is in collecting the 
data in the first place and convincing municipalities to license it to 
us in a compatible manner.


Is anyone else interested in this? I could use some help gathering 
volunteers to the cause.


-Ian



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I support this 1000%. 2013 should be the year of the addresses for OSM 
in the US. Addresses are sorely needed in a big way. And there's tons of 
accurate info that local governments have spent millions collecting 
already (could be hundreds of millions). I was just reading an old 
thread from last year on importing address info based on parcels. I can 
help in many areas of Florida. GIS data in FL is essentially public 
domain. We have very liberal open records laws. I already have parcels 
for the whole state, which all include site addresses (many have city 
and zipcode as well) as well as address points for several counties. 
There's a few counties with building outlines as well. For those, we 
could do some pre-processing to attach addresses to buildings and import 
that, at least for the counties where individual address points are not 
available and for parcels with one building. Multiple buildings and 
addresses per parcel are another issue.


In the spreadsheet, would it make more sense to have the records by 
county, and split out into cities where necessary? In Florida, its the 
county govmts and county property appraisers that create / maintain 
parcels and addresses databases. I know that is not the case in some NE 
states, though.


Brian
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Re: [Talk-us] US Addressing

[Brian May]

On 11/28/2012 8:10 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote:
Does anyone have any success stories of asking localities to open up 
previously copyrighted data? I'm going down the just ask nicely for 
*really* open data path here in Seattle, but have yet to hear back 
from the authorities. It seems that having a list of other cities that 
have opened up and shared data would be a good reference tool when 
going to ask for looser restrictions. - Jeff



--
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org http://www.gwhat.org
j...@gwhat.org mailto:j...@gwhat.org
206-676-2347


I have an unfriendly success story for opening up access to data and 
removing any copyright assertions. Florida has strong open records laws. 
Several years ago, a few property appraisers in FL were still both 
charging outrageous fees for data (like $20k for a parcel shapefile) and 
asserting copyright over the data. A small company in Orlando filed suit 
against the Collier County Property Appraiser and won. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdecisions,_Inc._v._Skinner


After that case, the other appraisers who were not following state law 
fell in line with the law. They can still charge a reasonable fee, but 
they cannot assert any copyright or license over the data.


As I understand it, when dealing with local governments, state law takes 
precedence. It appears that Washington State has liberal open records 
laws - after reading through this: 
http://www.waurisa.org/conferences/2012/presentations/09%20Josh%20Greenberg%20Governments%20role%20in%20sharing%20spatial%20information.pdf


I saw on King County's GIS Data website they provide data for free 
download but throw some legalese in front of it asserting some kind of 
limited license, they own copyright, they can take away the license, 
etc. I'm not a lawyer, but my hunch is the license agreement is 
invalid, because state law takes precedence.


Brian
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Re: [Talk-us] TIGER expansion bot

[Brian May]

On 11/27/2012 7:06 AM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:56 AM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote:

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

The tiger.py file contains TIGER specific expansion code, and the
selection process is quite simple. The selector looks for ways which
have a highway key and a name key present in the tag.


Just to be clear (and from glancing at the code), this will only expand
type/prefix/suffix if it has a corresponding tiger:* tag?

Yes.


Another clarification for this use case:
A user changes the original highway name tag from Main St SW to SW 
Main Street, but did not alter the tiger tags.


So - if the street name has been edited and the tiger tags were left 
unchanged (and now do not match the street name), the bot will not 
change the street name value, correct? In other words, the tiger tags 
will not override anything in the highway:name tag if its been edited, 
correct?


Brian



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Re: [Talk-us] TIGER expansion bot

[Brian May]

On 11/27/2012 11:33 AM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Brian May b...@mapwise.com wrote:


Another clarification for this use case:
A user changes the original highway name tag from Main St SW to SW Main
Street, but did not alter the tiger tags.

Brian,

Thank you for your email.

I haven't seen any examples of this that seemed to expand incorrectly
in my surveys of results.

Are you able to point me to actual examples of this in the OSM US dataset?

- Serge

I don't have an example off-hand. I'm not enough of a JOSM searching 
whiz to come up with some examples and the OSM postgres database I have 
doesn't have all the tiger tags. If you look around Broward and 
Miami-Dade counties in FL I am sure you will find some examples.


I just know that with my own editing habits, if I change a name tag that 
originally had unedited tiger info, I do not change the tiger: tags 
(sometimes I delete them). So I am concerned about using the tiger tags 
to over-ride changes that have been made to the name tag.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: [OPC2012] Operation Cowboy - Mission statement

[Brian May]

I agree, but I would suggest we start with larger metro areas that still 
require a lot of tiger cleanup. Not many people are going to notice 
tiger cleanup in rural West Virginia.


In Florida, examples of populous counties that started out with horrible 
tiger with major work still required:

Seminole County
Volusia County
Marion County
Citrus County

Other large counties that have had a lot of work done correcting 
horrible tiger, but still a decent chunk to go:

Osceola
Brevard
Pasco

Some large counties started out with decent tiger or bad tiger that has 
been significantly corrected, but there's a lot of new streets that have 
been traced with no names or haven't been traced at all:

Broward
Palm Beach
Miami-Dade
Hillsborough
Duval
Lee
Sarasota
Manatee

I updated the Florida wiki last year regarding tiger status and will do 
more updates on tiger status in the next few days. And I call on others 
active in FL to chime in and/or update the Florida wiki.


And as far as long driveways in rural areas - that problem is all over 
the place in rural counties, as well as ways marked as residential that 
are dirt trails on private property that may or may not even exist. And 
the rural counties tend to have bad alignment as well. And many have 
totally wrong or partially wrong street names to boot.


Brian

On 11/8/2012 12:00 PM, Charlotte Wolter wrote:

Hello all,

I think that mapping a desert area could be a good way  to get 
people involved, because

1. It's an area that has an urgent need for mapping and
2. Much of it is virgin territory, so even beginning mappers could 
contribute a lot just by correcting TIGER street alignments.
I also think it's a good idea to limit the area, so we have a good 
chance of making a visible impact.
To that end, I would like to suggest West Virginia. I recently 
encountered a rural area of W.V. while doing the Maproulette. Not only 
were the roads badly aligned, but the local TIGER technician named 
every driveway with the same name as the street to which it was connected.


Charlotte



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Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:59:13 +0100
From: Matthias Meißer dig...@arcor.de
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Subject: [Talk-us] [OPC2012] Operation Cowboy - Mission statement
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Hi,
as I don't read any discussions about where and what to map, I would 
like to bring up this essential question again.


Just a few possible ideas (that can be also mixed):
- adding new details (as buildings, landuse, ...)
- fixing TIGER (alignment, classification, ...)
- focus on the coast areas only (big cities)
- focus on the countryside (where no one has been before)
- focus on n states (and making there a huge step)
- ...

cya,
Matthias

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Re: [Talk-us] Remap-a-tron level 2 complete! Suggestions for level 3?

[Brian May]

On 9/29/2012 5:33 PM, the Old Topo Depot wrote:
Statements that we should fix all the unedited TIGER data express a 
Great Idea.  They are, however, rather ambitious statements, and will 
require more than a few weeks to completely realize.  As such, 
cleaning up US TIGER data is a Long Term goal, and does not say 
anything regarding how we might prioritize and coordinate work to 
realize this goal.


Given the size of the effort, it's crucial that work is organized in 
smaller, more bite-sized pieces, so that we can all celebrate the 
completion every few weeks of a portion of the work.


As for prioritization -- from what I have seen, unedited tiger comes in 
different flavors that varies by county. Some counties started out with 
decent tiger and look pretty good even if they haven't been edited much, 
some look pretty good but have some issues like over-noding or braided 
streets, and some counties contain the crazy / borderline junk street 
geometry. And then counties may be in various states of repair, 
depending on the level of activity in fixing them up.


I propose we make a list of say the top 25 crazy counties by 
population, and postpone work on the ones that started with decent tiger 
or have already had significant cleanup efforts done already. For 
example, Broward County FL was horrible, but looks pretty good now due 
to a lot of realignment effort there. Palm Beach County FL started out 
pretty good, hasn't needed huge amounts of work, and a lot of the 
streets are still original unedited tiger. Seminole County FL was and 
still is pretty bad in many spots.


And I will reiterate that I think possibly a precursor to the crazy 
tiger fixup step is focusing on adding street names to the new 
residential streets that have been added with no names. If you look at 
the Geofabrik OSM Inspector Highways View and just look at the Highway 
name/ref - None (major) and None (minor) you can easily spot these. And 
it does not show tiger streets, just new ones added by contributors. 
They are all over the place, especially in high growth areas around 
large major metros where the old tiger did not have the latest 
subdivisions, say from 2003 and later.


Another separate effort could be overlay tiger 2012 with existing OSM 
streets to find areas where there are new streets in the 2012 tiger and 
no streets in osm.


And maybe have different remapatron modes, e.g. crazy tiger mode, 
streets with no name mode, and empty hoods mode.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] Remap-a-tron level 2 complete! Suggestions for level 3?

[Brian May]

+1

Nick, maybe as a step before your suggestion.

1) New streets with no names. In Florida, there's a large number of new 
streets that contributors have added, but did not add a name. The TIGER 
2012 overlay helps make quick work of adding these names. In many cases, 
streets will need to be split on curves where the street name changes. 
An improvement to this process is having a list of names from TIGER 2012 
to choose from, like a pick list of streets within the current bounding 
box. This would avoid retying the names. But people should also expand 
the street name abbreviations, like Ave to Avenue. Maybe try to automate 
much of the abbreviation expansion as well.


Other thoughts:

A lot of counties still have a lot of old TIGER with fairly horrific 
street alignment. Focusing on these areas in the remap-a-tron effort 
would be a huge help. I often wonder if new people look at this garbage 
and think to themselves - Look at these crazy streets! OSM sucks, why 
bother?


And for the Level 4 suggestion - as has been noted on the list before, 
unedited TIGER streets with no names constitutes a very large number of 
ways which are dirt roads that may or may not still be there in large 
tracts of land. Also long driveways. These ways contribute a whole lot 
of noise to the map.


Brian

On 9/28/2012 2:36 AM, Nick Hocking wrote:

Level  3

Tiger 2012 roads, that are named, that don't have a corresponding OSM 
way with similar naming and similar geometry.
This would pick up new 2012 Tiger roads, and unedited original Tiger 
named roads which were of poor quality.

Level 4
Tiger unedited roads that are highway residential and have no name.



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[Talk-us] User cleared out a chunk of streets

[Brian May]

Hi All,

I just noticed in Gainesville, FL user AMPINTERMEDIA 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/AMPINTERMEDIA recently deleted a 
chunk of streets from one section of town. Doesn't look sinister - they 
are a new user and probably didn't realize what they were doing. The 
account name matches a local SEO company in Gainesville. I'm not sure 
what to do about it, i.e. I'm not sure what the protocol is for this 
type of situation and I've never attempted a revert before. Can someone 
review this and revert it?


http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/11624008

Thanks,

Brian May
aka grouper
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