On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 2:40 PM, Adam Franco <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello all, > > After doing a bit of hiking and canoeing in the Adirondacks this summer I > noticed that OSM has very poor coverage of campsites & lean-tos, something > I'd find particularly useful. The New York DEC POI shapefile > <http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/inventories/details.cfm?DSID=1258> has the > locations and details of these available and regularly updated. > > Before going down the road of putting together an import proposal I wanted > to find out if anyone has information about usage grants for the DEC data > sets. From following this list I've heard that Kevin Kenny has imported > other DEC lands shapefiles for the park and area boundaries: > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2016-May/016290.html > > Do you Kevin [or anyone else] know if permission to use DEC lands also > applies to other DEC data sets or if additional permission would be needed? > > I've added an entry about this data souce to the OSM Wiki's Potential > Datasources page > <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potential_Datasources#New_York> and > would like to update it with more concrete information either from > usage-grants already received or by making a new request to use the data. > > Any info or feedback on this datasource would be appreciated. > Thanks for taking an interest in New York! We surely have a massive mapping problem/opportunity here: a park that's larger than some European countries, with a population of only 130,000, most of whom have no Internet access. Hard to get it mapped, to say the least! Please do NOT import the DEC PoI file; not from a legal perspective, but from a data quality perspective. I do use it as a data source in my personal map because of spotty OSM coverage (as you observe), but as OSM has been improving, I'm about to discard it. A typical example of what I'm talking about is visible at http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=42.0966&lo=-74.5095&z=14 - showing Rider Hollow in the central Catskills. I show point-of-interest icons from both OSM and the DEC PoI file, and trails from both OSM and the DEC Roads and Trails file. The 'parking' icon at the end of the county road from Mapledale is in OSM and is correctly spotted. The 'campsite' icon that underlies it is data from the PoI file. I've been in there a few times and never spotted a designated campsite anywhere near the trailhead. There's a private house no more than fifty feet outside the state's property line, and DEC surely would not have placed a campsite so close to it (ordinarily they're at least a quarter mile from habitation). There's probably a marked campsite in there somewhere. I've never tried too hard to find it. There are a couple of splendid spots for 'at large' camping in among the hemlocks up in Mine Hollow, and I've just stayed up there. The 'information' icon refers to the trail register, comes from the PoI file and appears to be correctly spotted. The lean-to and associated privy are within sight of the bridge, are from OSM, and look to be right. The outline from the building import that Tom Hynes did http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/304800815 is kind of questionable - either it's some distance from the lean-to, or it represents some other building that's long gone. The parking icon to the south of the lean-to and privy at the 2400 foot level is from the PoI file and is obviously wrong. I suspect it is supposed to represent the parking where Rider Hollow Road enters the Big Indian Wilderness and is digitized from a map at an inappropriate scale (1:250000 or even smaller). There's a similar problem with the Lost Clove parking areas on the NE flank of Balsam Mountain. The lean-to at the confluence of the three streams is from the PoI file. The file names it, so I know it's supposed to be the one by the bridge and is placed on the wrong stream junction. The trails shown in magenta are clearly misaligned. OSM has them right according to my GPS. DEC Roads and Trails has them wrong. The Pine Hill-West Branch trail definitely follows the ridge through the col between Balsam and Haynes Mountains. The Mine Hollow trail makes a wide switchback away from the stream to where it joins the Pine Hill-West Branch, which does fall off the ridge to the west in the area between Balsam and Belle Ayre Mountains. Not shown on my map, but present in OSM, is a spring http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2845338153 . The PoI file has the spring also, incorrectly sited on the east side of the ridge. I see similar issues in any area where I have (literal!) 'boots on the ground' knowledge of the terrain. In my opinion, the file simply isn't accurate enough to bother with an import. I've been trying, instead, to use it as a 'to do' list - identify PoIs that I want to be sure are in OSM if I happen to pass them with a GPS. Lately, in the Catskills, others have been beating me to it. Given that I'm just getting back into hiking after over a year off with a foot problem, and that I'm starting slow so that I don't just wind up back in rehab, I've been focusing on easier hiking in the Helderbergs, trying to fill in the gaps in New York Long Path and do some more of the little nature preserves along the escarpment. It could be that there are regions that the DEC has paid better attention to - everyone knows that DEC tends to neglect the Catsills. I noticed that the agreement with GPS was much better when I thru-hiked the Northville-Placid Trail and collected GPS tracks. The major disagreements were the relocations at the southern end and the places where our friend Castor canadensis has decided that the trail is interfering with one of his projects. The worst data problems there were missing campsites and shelters. I'd need to see more comparison with data in the field to be convinced. Did you collect tracks and waypoints on your outings that we can compare with the DEC data? As far as the legalities go, I was relying on the original permission that Russ Nelson got to import the DEC Lands data. I haven't reviewed them in detail myself, since all I was doing was to repeat an earlier import to tidy up some problems.
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