Chris Baines <[email protected]> writes: > 1: http://www.rhok.org/problems/granular-health-map > 2: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Catchment
The problem with representing catchment areas in OSM is that it rapidly gets into the "one database, one man's treasure, another's junk" problem, because it leads to objects for things that don't really exist, but are only enshrined in policies of various kinds. I can see the point that in mapping a developing country for health care, these boundaries might be very important to map users and editors relative to other data. But if I think about the area around me, there are probably 5 places that will deliver food, and adding 5 polygons to the map for that already seems unreasonable. My city friends probably have hundreds of places that will deliver. Also, it seems that catchment area is a marketing term, and the concepts of "to where will we deliver, rather than refusing the order" "from what areas (of home address) will we treat patients" "from what areas do we consider ourself to be the hospital of record" are all very different questions. It may be that what's needed for is a more traditional GIS analysis showing distance to facilities from everywhere. I suspect the real discusion will be about adding polygons to be targets of this tag, rather than the tag itself. Some day, OSM may have a concept of different layers, which will allow editors to have a restricted view of only what they want to see, and this will become easier. Of course, you can always model catchment areas in a separate database, and join for analysis.
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