Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada building import

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

On Jan 26, 2019, at 12:37 PM, john whelan  wrote:
A history of building data released by Stats Can and how these were entered 
into OSM via an Ottawa pilot project, with some success and some lessons 
learned.  Good for OSM!

> The other complicating factor here is a lot of people are very interested in 
> using the data one way or another.

No doubt it's a factor, though I fail to see how it complicates — unless there 
is a rush to enter the data before they are fully vetted.  (That won't work).  
Should the data be used "from OSM," they must enter OSM with our community 
consensus, standards and practices.  That is beginning to be achieved:  
https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Canada_Building_Import improves, related Task Manager 
tasks appear to get closer to being "opened again" as Nate's four steps of what 
might be accomplished reach wider consensus and are implemented (or not, or 
something else happens...) and discussion continues right here on talk-ca.  
Yes, "broad philosophical discussions" are included:  they are helpful, likely 
to some more than others.

> The take away, have fun if you can.

"Have fun" is "OSM tenet #2" (#1 is "Don't copy from other maps.")  As we're 
not violating #1 here, I enthusiastically agree with John's "take away:"  
please do have fun (yes, you can, yes, many do).  Yet, as we are a data 
project, we must also be a community who cares deeply about data quality, that 
our data "pass muster" as they enter (especially when via a nationwide Import). 
 I speak for myself only, but others in this project concur.  Canada gets 
there, I'm delighted to see.  Yes, it's taking a bit of thrashing to do so, but 
that's all for the greater good, as the ends justify the (polite, patient, 
correct) means by which we do.  We're many steps into this 10,000-kilometer 
journey, let's keep going, as the goal is worthy.

Now, who is rolling up their sleeves and addressing Nate's four steps?  Those 
discussions can take place here, though I think the Discussion tab ("Talk 
page") of the link above seems more appropriate.  (And, I'd prefer to "get out 
of the way" here, if anybody were to go so far as to feel "get lost, already, 
SteveA," I wouldn't be offended, though I remain watching this Import for that 
greater good).

SteveA
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Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada building import

[john whelan]

Bringing building outline Open Data into OSM has taken some years.  The
first problem to overcome was knowledge of OpenStreetMap by various levels
of government.  An early contact with the City of Ottawa was made by two
students aged around twelve who used OpenStreetMap to build an Open Data
App for a competition.  It didn't win first prize but it was the only one
that could be used off-line.  One is now a qualified schoolteacher by the
way so you can tell how long ago it was.

The head of OC Transpo was heard to say don't worry about the license we
want you to have the bus stops.

So the next step was the Open Data license.  Somehow or other I was invited
to some sort of round table with Treasury Board about Open Data and raised
the issue of license compatibility with OpenStreetMap.

It took them five years of consultations etc before the license was changed
to the 2.0 licence which both they and I thought was compatible.

It took about another year or so to have the City of Ottawa formally adopt
the new license.  Stats Canada played a role in persuading the City of
Ottawa to adopt the new license and to make a file of the building outlines
available to OSM.  Initially they weren't sure if they had one that could
be made available, the file for property taxes is held by a separate agency
in Ontario that is very jealous of its data.

The license was questioned and eventually made its way to the OSM Legal
Working Group where it was confirmed to be acceptable.  Going this route
can add considerable time to an import by the way so if you can use a
license that has already been approved its a lot faster.

For Ottawa we had the data from a single source, we had a local group of
mappers who knew the area and thoroughly discussed the import over coffee
for some months before deciding to do the import.  We were exceptionally
lucky in the skill set of the local mappers and their ability to work as a
team.

What was really interesting was what happened next and that was the
building outlines were enriched both with the type of building and
additional tags with address information, quite a few commercial buildings
had websites etc added.  The added tags was exactly what Stats had been
after.  Many of those tagging were mapping for the first time in response
to a Stats Can Web page.  So OSM gained some mappers.

Stats had funding for the pilot until March 31st.  Anything done after that
needed more funding or would be done in spare time if there was any.  Hence
the 2020 project.  The idea was that mapathons would accurately map
buildings across Canada.  It did generate a lot of interest from University
GIS departments and schools however and a number of government departments
and agencies expressed an interest in the data. A comment from Treasury
Board was about 60% of the government Open Data consumed was by other
government departments which surprised them.  This use of Open Data
consumption by other government departments is worth mentioning to
governments by the way.

" Yea, we had pretty good success having highschool students add in
attributes for buildings using walking maps!"

Unfortunately the accuracy of the buildings mapped in iD left something to
be desired.

So licensing is big.  Stats released some building outlines under the
Federal Government's 2.0 licence and that's what this import is all about.
How should it be handled?

Basically the problem becomes one of who are the local mappers since these
are the ones who say if an import should go ahead or not.  Canada is big.
Ottawa was small enough that issues could be talked through face to face.
We had a short discussion on talk-ca before starting the import and a
suggestion was made that a single import plan was the way to go.  The other
complicating factor here is a lot of people are very interested in using
the data one way or another.

The take away, have fun if you can.

Cheerio John

On Sat, 26 Jan 2019 at 13:55, Javier Carranza 
wrote:

> Hi there to all,
>
> Really interested in this thread as we are precisely a community in
> contact with National Statistics Offices (NSOs) like Stat Can and we see a
> growing interest in OSM's geodatabase.
>
> I can tell the interest will remain in the coming years and we need to be
> prepared. As NSOs are planning their censuses for 2020 (and onwards) like
> in the case of Uganda: https://opendri.org/uganda-open-mapping-for-resilience/
> , the geo open data concept will prevail.
>
> Other insights, anyone?
>
>
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada building import

[Danny McDonald]

As I said before, I'd like to hear about specific problems that need to be
fixed,  For instance, the issues Nate raised before about large retail
buildings and buildings in buildings were helpful to know about, and I
believe I have fixed those issues in the areas I imported.  I have also
done "human" verification, and corrected a few imported buildings with
wonky footprints, as well as fixing churches and garages that were
improperly not tagged as buildings.

I don't think broad philosophical discussions are helpful to this
discussion - there has been all too much of that on this list (which is why
I have tried to not comment, until now)

P..S. James, could you upload the simplified data to data.osmcanada.ca ,
and point the tasking manager there?  That makes it easier to examine
snippets, and will need to be done anyway if we're using the simplified
data going forward.

DannyMcD
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Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada building import

[Javier Carranza]

Hi there to all,

Really interested in this thread as we are precisely a community in contact
with National Statistics Offices (NSOs) like Stat Can and we see a growing
interest in OSM's geodatabase.

I can tell the interest will remain in the coming years and we need to be
prepared. As NSOs are planning their censuses for 2020 (and onwards) like
in the case of Uganda: https://opendri.org/uganda-open-mapping-for-resilience/
, the geo open data concept will prevail.

Other insights, anyone?

Regards
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On Sat, Jan 26, 2019 at 11:49 AM OSM Volunteer stevea <
stevea...@softworkers.com> wrote:

> I'm changing the Subject to delete "Stats Can" as this is an import into
> OSM, not a Stats Can import.  True, they published the data, so "thanks for
> the data," but Stats Can isn't a part of this conversation, they merely
> published the data.  I say it like this to emphasize that OSM is quite
> aware of a good analogy:  the US Census Bureau, who published the TIGER
> data which was imported massive road and rail data into the USA (roughly,
> many agree), had nothing to do with the import, nothing to say about it and
> don't to this day:  they merely published the data into the public domain
> (as the federal US government do all their/our data, except when it is
> "classified") and OSM chose to import the data.  OSM wishes in retrospect
> we had done a better job of it, as we improve it to this day (and will for
> years/decades, likely) and OSM has learned from this.  Please, Canada, see
> this import as the opportunity it truly is:  do NOT be in a rush to import
> lower-quality, not fully community-vetted data, or you will be quite sorry
> at the mess you'll have to clean up later.  Doing that would be much more
> work than the dialog we are having now to prevent this.  It is worth it to
> have these dialogs and achieve the consensus that the data are as we wish
> them to be.  Are they yet?  It sounds like they are not (Nate's four
> points).
>
> On Jan 26, 2019, at 7:49 AM, John Whelan  wrote:
> > Currently we seem to be at the point where some on the mailing list feel
> there wasn't enough discussion on talk-ca before the import.
>
> MANY agree there wasn't enough discussion.  But that was before.  Rather
> than looking back (though there is nothing wrong from learning from
> missteps), we are in a "now" where that is changing.  So, we continue to
> discuss.  That's fine.  That's actually excellent.
>
> > Quebec I think we should put on one side until the Quebec mappers feel
> more comfortable.
>
> OK, so we await Québécois suggestions / improvements to the process to
> their satisfaction, their input that they are (widely amongst themselves)
> with "comfortable to where it has finally evolved" (but I haven't heard
> that yet), or both.  Usually in that order, but certainly not "well, enough
> time has elapsed, yet we haven't heard much, so let's proceed anyway."
> That doesn't work, that won't work.
>
> > Nate I feel has been involved in a smaller import before and in that
> case there was benefit by simplifying the outlines.  In this case verifying
> nothing gets screwed up adds to the cost.
>
> Nate has done a lot of things in OSM, including a very
> positively-recognized (award-winning?) Ohio bicycle map that included very
> wide coordination with other OSM volunteers, the academic world and local
> community.  (It is absolutely delicious; take a look at it).  Another
> example of what a single person in OSM who reaches out to the community
> with a vision and a plan can achieve — 

Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada building import

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

I'm changing the Subject to delete "Stats Can" as this is an import into OSM, 
not a Stats Can import.  True, they published the data, so "thanks for the 
data," but Stats Can isn't a part of this conversation, they merely published 
the data.  I say it like this to emphasize that OSM is quite aware of a good 
analogy:  the US Census Bureau, who published the TIGER data which was imported 
massive road and rail data into the USA (roughly, many agree), had nothing to 
do with the import, nothing to say about it and don't to this day:  they merely 
published the data into the public domain (as the federal US government do all 
their/our data, except when it is "classified") and OSM chose to import the 
data.  OSM wishes in retrospect we had done a better job of it, as we improve 
it to this day (and will for years/decades, likely) and OSM has learned from 
this.  Please, Canada, see this import as the opportunity it truly is:  do NOT 
be in a rush to import lower-quality, not fully community-vetted data, or you 
will be quite sorry at the mess you'll have to clean up later.  Doing that 
would be much more work than the dialog we are having now to prevent this.  It 
is worth it to have these dialogs and achieve the consensus that the data are 
as we wish them to be.  Are they yet?  It sounds like they are not (Nate's four 
points).

On Jan 26, 2019, at 7:49 AM, John Whelan  wrote:
> Currently we seem to be at the point where some on the mailing list feel 
> there wasn't enough discussion on talk-ca before the import.

MANY agree there wasn't enough discussion.  But that was before.  Rather than 
looking back (though there is nothing wrong from learning from missteps), we 
are in a "now" where that is changing.  So, we continue to discuss.  That's 
fine.  That's actually excellent.

> Quebec I think we should put on one side until the Quebec mappers feel more 
> comfortable.

OK, so we await Québécois suggestions / improvements to the process to their 
satisfaction, their input that they are (widely amongst themselves) with 
"comfortable to where it has finally evolved" (but I haven't heard that yet), 
or both.  Usually in that order, but certainly not "well, enough time has 
elapsed, yet we haven't heard much, so let's proceed anyway."  That doesn't 
work, that won't work.

> Nate I feel has been involved in a smaller import before and in that case 
> there was benefit by simplifying the outlines.  In this case verifying 
> nothing gets screwed up adds to the cost.

Nate has done a lot of things in OSM, including a very positively-recognized 
(award-winning?) Ohio bicycle map that included very wide coordination with 
other OSM volunteers, the academic world and local community.  (It is 
absolutely delicious; take a look at it).  Another example of what a single 
person in OSM who reaches out to the community with a vision and a plan can 
achieve — given planning, the time it really takes and wide consensus.

> Buildings not absolutely square, yes but different GIS systems use different 
> accuracy so if the incoming data has a few more decimal places then rounding 
> will occur which can lead to minor inaccuracies. I feel the simplest is just 
> to leave them.

Others seem to feel that these inaccuracies are too rough (data quality too 
poor) to enter OSM.  And "different GIS systems" only matter in a historical 
context (as in, for example "these data came from QGIS" or "these data were run 
through GDAL and turned into a shapefile" or many other workflows).  The only 
"GIS system" that matters is OSM.  Each individual contributor who enters data 
into OSM is responsible for entering high-quality data, or risks having those 
data redacted by the community (though that means the process was broken to 
begin with) — that's simply how OSM works.  Again, this is an OSM project:  a 
data import, which follows rules and community standards judging its quality as 
much as the individual entering the data itself.  If the data should and can be 
improved before they enter (especially with a "data-wide" application of some 
algorithm), like "this squares buildings and we want to do this" or "this turns 
a true rectangle into four nodes instead of eleven and we should do this to 
reduce the amount of data and simplify future edits" then we should.

This isn't being "anti-import."  It IS about "data which ARE imported must be 
high-quality," so let's discuss what we mean by that in the case of these data. 
 That's what we're doing now.

> Selecting everything and squaring is really a mechanical edit and you can get 
> some odd results which again would need to be carefully compared and adds to 
> the workload.

Sometimes "mechanical edits" are OK, sometimes they are not.  It seems John is 
saying "these are not."  Whether this adds to the workload or not is moot, the 
workload will be what it takes for high-quality data to enter, and "what that 
means" is achieved by the discussions we have had, have now and what