Re: [Talk-ca] Ongoing Canadian building import needs to be stopped, possibly reverted

[Alan Richards]

Along the lines of what Jarek said, sometimes silence just means tacit
acceptance, or that it's not that controversial. There's quite a bit of
government data here that is supposedly "open" but unavailable for OSM, so
I'm very glad Stats Can was able to find a way to collect municipal data
and publish it under one national license. I was surprised myself it hadn't
got more attention, but I'm firmly onboard with more imports if done with
care.
Manually adding buildings - especially residential neighborhoods, is about
the most boring task I can think of, yet it does add a lot to the map.

I'll admit I hadn't looked at the data quality myself, but I just did
review several task squares around BC and they look pretty good. Houses
were all in the right place, accurate, and generally as much or even more
detailed than I typically see. Issues seemed to be mostly the larger
commercial buildings being overly large or missing detail, but in general
these are the buildings most likely to be already mapped. To a large
degree, it's up the individual importer to do some quality control, review
against existing object, satellite, etc. If we have specific issues we can
and should address them, but if the data is largely good then I see no need
to abort or revert.

alarobric

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 7:41 PM Jarek Piórkowski 
wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jan 2019 at 21:46, OSM Volunteer stevea
>  wrote:
> > Thanks, Jarek.  Considering I am a proponent of "perfection must not be
> the enemy of good" (regarding OSM data entry), I think data which are "darn
> good, though not perfect" DO deserve to enter into OSM.  Sometimes "darn
> good" might be 85%, 95% "good," as then we'll get it to 99% and then 100%
> over time.  But if the focus on "how" isn't sharp enough to get it to 85%
> (or so) during initial entry, go back and start over to get that number
> up.  85% sounds arbitrary, I know, but think of it as "a solid B" which
> might be "passes the class for now" without failing.  And it's good we
> develop a "meanwhile strategy" to take it to 99% and then 100% in the
> (near- or at most mid-term) future.  This isn't outrageously difficult,
> though it does take patience and coordination.  Open communication is a
> prerequisite.
>
> Thank you for this commitment. I wish others shared it. Unfortunately
> the reality I've been seeing in OSM is that edits which are 90+% good
> (like this import) are challenged, while edits which are 50+% bad
> (maps.me submissions, wheelmap/rosemary v0.4.4 going to completely
> wrong locations for _years_) go unchallenged or are laboriously
> manually fixed afterward.
>
> --Jarek
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Terminating British Columbia Mosaic imagery

[Alan Richards]

Thanks for providing this great service for the Lower Mainland for so long
Paul! It's been an invaluable resource for mapping in the area.

I would note that Richmond still does not have very good imagery from any
provider. BC Mosaic is far clearer and has better angles, but as you
mentioned, it's getting quite outdated in some areas of heavy construction.
I suppose this is more a fault of Richmond City not opening up any of their
orthophoto data. I've been tending to use ESRI or Bing to compare what's
actually on the ground, but fall back to BC Mosaic for fine detail if
possible.

Alarobric

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 9:58 PM, Paul Norman  wrote:

> I will be shutting down the "British Columbia Mosaic" imagery in the near
> or medium future. I set this up in about 2011, and the system has been
> running without many updates since then.
>
> When I started hosting it, we had access to Bing and Yahoo. Between the
> two of them, we had acceptable for the time imagery in Vancouver, and poor
> imagery in Burnaby and east. Living in New West, this was a problem for me,
> so I put together the layer. My main sources were 10cm 2009 imagery
> covering Vancouver, 2009 20cm imagery for Burnaby, 2011-2012
>  10cm
> and 40cm for Surrey, and a few other minor sources.
>
> The accuracy and colour range of the Surrey imagery was exceptional for
> the time, and remains exceptional by today's standards. The accuracy of
> other sources was also good, but colours weren't the best. This allowed an
> imagery layer that could be assumed to have accurate positions without
> checking GPS traces everywhere, and its accuracy was ahead of the data in
> OSM at the time, as well as being recent enough.
>
> Times have changed, and we have more imagery hosts. In particular, we
> normally have commercial imagery hosts who will host the open imagery that
> is available, and handle any legal matters about its usage. I remember
> trying to get Bing, Mapbox, or anyone to use the Surrey imagery in Surrey,
> which was better than what they were using in every way and free, and
> having no luck. The data in OSM is frequently more recent than the imagery.
>
> Before deciding to shut it down, I reviewed the available imagery in a few
> areas, and recommend defaulting to ESRI imagery in all of the Lower
> Mainland, with the exception of some cloudy parts of Ladner.* In Ladner,
> and if slightly more recent imagery is needed elsewhere, I recommend
> DigitalGlobe Standard Imagery as a lower quality but more recent source.
> Both have excellent alignment. I would not recommend Mapbox Satellite or
> Bing anywhere in the region.
>
> Instead of shutting down, why am I not moving it to a different server?
> Time, mostly. With all of the sources I had used out of date, I'd have to
> find new ones. This would take a lot of time to find and process sources,
> and a lot of time to sort out the legal mess that is open data in Canada. I
> would also probably take a different approach, with multiple independent
> layers that the editor software picks between.
>
> I believe there is still a place for user-hosted imagery, but at least
> here, it will never offer such an increase in quality again, because the
> commercial hosts are offering a much better "baseline".
>
> * Alignment in Hope was possibly worse, but I haven't done extensive
> research into the accuracy of BC Mosaic in that region. I couldn't find any
> good objects to compare with in Whistler, I kept finding stuff had changed
> on the ground, which is a good reason in itself to avoid BC Mosaic.
>
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Building Canada 2020 OSMGeoWeek Mapathons

[Alan Richards]

The ESRI layer in BC is now pretty good as well, and has the latest
orthophotography from all the cities with open data (and a few that don't).
Much easier than manually collecting from each municipality. Generally this
is still the urban cities and town, and not rural areas of course though.
Unless the regional districts every collect orthophotos I'm not sure we're
likely to get any high-resolution outside of the bigger cities.

Alan

On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 1:37 PM, Stewart C. Russell 
wrote:

> Hi Julia
>
> > I would like to know if you have any suggestions on
> > cities/towns/communities in Canada to focus on, particularly rural
> > regions that are not mapped and have high resolution imagery.
>
> I'd be pleasantly surprised if there was much intersection between
> "rural" and "high-resolution imagery" in Canada. Our rural population
> density is very low.
>
>  Stewart
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Using City of Vancouver Open Licensed Data?

[Alan Richards]

There is some information on the wiki here. https://wiki.openstreetmap.
org/wiki/Canada:British_Columbia:Vancouver#GIS_sources_by_city. Special
permission was obtained from the city for certain datasets only.

On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 6:09 AM, john whelan  wrote:

> I understand Paul Norman arranged for something for the city of Vancouver
> Open Data so the data might be imported into OSM.  This is independent of
> the normal licensing route.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 2 October 2017 at 14:15, keith  wrote:
>
>> Hello Canada list,
>>
>> I am interested in using some of the data provided by the City of
>> Vancouver under the "Open Government Licence – Vancouver" (
>> http://vancouver.ca/your-government/open-data-catalogue.aspx#tab19099).
>> According to the OSM wiki this is compatible with OSM's licence (
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors#Vancouver), is this
>> accurate?
>>
>> I want to do small imports of building traces, manually checking the
>> imagery against the Imagery. I guess this should still be considered to
>> finish off the section of Vancouver that does not have the buildings
>> traced. The quality of the data from the City of Vancouver is OK, not
>> amazing, in fact slightly lower than the average for Vancouver building
>> traces, but not outside the range. It would be trivial to improve the
>> traces to be better than average, and I would do so for what I import. It's
>> for a relatively small area, about 2km by 4.5km, and I would be doing lots
>> of manual fixes and inspection. So many that I'm not really sure that it's
>> exactly an import.
>>
>> If the building traces goes smoothly, and has general acceptance, I might
>> use other data from the listed datasets.
>>
>> What do the folks on this list say? Am I good to go ahead with this?
>>
>> Thanks for any input.
>>
>> Keith
>>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Stats Canada building project

[Alan Richards]

It's still a different license for each city, province, or organisation,
and the current opinion is that each different license needs to go through
the same multi-month review to be approved for OSM.

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 3:48 PM, john whelan  wrote:

> T.B. have what they call a Municipal Open Data kit which basically has the
> same license as the city of Ottawa uses plus how to use it.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 27 September 2017 at 18:40, Stewart Russell  wrote:
>
>> But they can't use OGL-CA v2 cos municipalities aren't federal. And
>> anything but the actual few already approved licences need a multi-month
>> review.
>>
>>  Stewart
>>
>> On Sep 27, 2017 18:28, "James"  wrote:
>>
>>> other then have them change their license from say ogl-ca v1 to ogl-cav2
>>>
>>> theres not much we can do from a legal stand point. ogl-ca v1 puts too
>>> many restrictions
>>>
>>> On Sep 27, 2017 6:21 PM, "Matthew Darwin"  wrote:
>>>
 How do we want to move this discussion forward?  Do we need to set up a
 time to talk on the phone? I am willing to help coordinate logistics.

 On 2017-09-17 10:55 AM, Stewart C. Russell wrote:

> On 2017-09-17 10:40 AM, john whelan wrote:
>
>> They'd like to extend it across Canada so now might be the time to
>> think
>> about the project.
>>
> That sounds good. Despite some prodding, the Licence Working Group
> (LWG)
> hasn't got back to me with any updates on how they want to handle the
> Toronto or Ontario licences. I first contacted them in March, so if it
> takes them six months or more to look at the licence, then this import
> is a multi year (if not multi-decade) project. Remember, LWG has
> decided
> that *every* Canadian licence variant needs their sign-off.
>
> Denis Carr (open data lead) from Toronto has been on board since the
> spring, and I hope hasn't forgotten us.
>
> Toronto has nice building outlines (embedded in the 3D Massing data
> set,
> so we can pull out base elevation and height). We also have address
> points already in the middle of buildings.
>
> It also is of great help that the Esri Community Imagery includes some
> very nice municipal air photos for verification.
>
>   Stewart
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Esri Canada Community Maps

[Alan Richards]

Neat. Thanks Stewart.

I see this pulls in a bunch of the local city open data for orthography
that I'd been using. Easier than trying to look them up yourself and you
don't have to worry about the license either.

alarobric (alan)

On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 10:19 AM, Stewart C. Russell 
wrote:

> On 2017-09-15 12:40 PM, Bernie Connors wrote:
> > Esri Canada publishes several maps showing the status of data updates
> > for their Community Maps Program. One of the maps shows all of the areas
> > where ‎the imagery has been updated. All of the maps are available here
> > - Esri Canada Community Maps Status
> > - http://maps.esri.ca/updates/tracking/
> > ‎
> >
> > Check the map to see if the Esri World Imagery basemap has Community
> > Maps imagery in your neighbourhood.
>
> They've got the City of Toronto imagery, which we couldn't previously
> use due to the licence. In my neighbourhood at least, it's accurate and
> up to date. Looks like it's from earlier this year: you can make out the
> hole in my deck that really needs repairing …
>
> This is really good!
>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Ferry durations

[Alan Richards]

Are there any ferry routes without duration left? That overpass query shows
all the common ferry routes I know offhand in the province.

Alan

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 11:57 AM,  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Just to let you know, my map team colleagues have been adding a few
> `duration` tags to ferry routes in BC yesterday. Since this was already
> established practice, I am only mentioning it now. I am crossposting to
> talk-us because I wanted to see if folks there have given any thought to
> ferry duration tagging? The documented practice is to add duration=hh:mm to
> the way that makes up the ferry route. If you think this is fun to map I
> could add ferry routes without duration to MapRoulette.
>
> Here is the current state of duration tags in BC:
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/qlE
>
> Martijn
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Multipolygon problems

[Alan Richards]

Thanks for a good workflow - I cleared up 8 so far pretty quickly around
Hope, BC. There's a bunch in a cluster around Merritt too. I'm guessing
it's certain imports or import authors vs others that makes the difference.

alarobric

On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 3:40 PM, Stewart C. Russell  wrote:

> On 2017-07-02 04:41 PM, Begin Daniel wrote:
> >
> > However, since the same translator was used for all the polygons, the
> > problem should also appear on water bodies, etc. The problem may have
> > been related to the complexity of the polygons to convert.
>
> Hi Daniel - yes, I'm seeing a bunch of water relations with the same
> problem, such as on the Grand River
>  and also parts of the
> Speed near Guelph. Some of these data were imported from Canvec 10.
>
> > I also found that JOSM had similar problems with tag transfers a few
> > years ago (1). Maybe some of the problems found result from merging
> > nearby wooded areas?
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> > (1) https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/9832.
>
> Interesting, but I'm seeing a lot of the problem water relations
> worldwide (well, Scotland and Germany) where JOSM wasn't involved. So
> while the JOSM issue might have contributed a little, there were other
> factors in play. Indeed, I've even seen changesets (such as 5735148 from
> Sep 2010) where the editor had to duplicate the relation tag in the
> outer way to get the inner features to render!
>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] importing data requiring attribution

[Alan Richards]

For reference, here's the full email and response I got, in case it helps
others with similar requests:

Hi,
> I tried sending this through the feedback form on the Open Data site, but
> it was too long for the form and my shorter inquiry was never responded to.
> Given the upcoming HackOurCity and InnovationWeek, I'm hoping that this can
> be passed along to the appropriate people.
> Dear New West Open Data,
> Thank you for making open data available to the public.
> I am a resident of New Westminster, but also a contributor to the
> OpenStreetMap project [1], a collaborative open project to create a global
> geodata set freely usable by anyone [2].
> We respect the IP rights of others and I write to ask if we can use your
> data. OpenStreetMap (OSM) uses the ODbL license [3]. The OGL-City of New
> Westminster is based upon the OGL-BC, which in turn is based upon the
> OGL-CA. As I understand, the OGL-CA has been deemed compatible with the
> ODbL, but the OGL-BC has slightly modified wording introducing an exemption
> for the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (B.C.). Given
> the goals of most municipal Open Data projects, I imagine you would happy
> for the data to be used by OSM, but we would ask for a statement clearing
> the use.
> At the most simple, I would seek a statement like this:
> "Data available in the Orthophotography, Landuse, Address, Building
> Footprints, and Park Benches datasets location of the City of New
> Westminster's Open Data site under the following location:
> http://opendata.newwestcity.ca/datasets is released in accordance with
> the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act of British
> Columbia."
> Such a statement was provided by the City of Vancouver for their own
> datasets for inclusion in OSM.
> An alternative statement that would work in a more general sense is the
> following:
> "The City of New Westminster has no objections to geodata derived in part
> from the Orthophotography, Landuse, Address, Building Footprints, and Park
> Benches datasets being incorporated into the OpenStreetMap project geodata
> database and released under a free and open license".
> Alternatively, releasing the datasets under a Public Domain, CC0, PDDL, or
> ODbL license would satisfy our license requirements.
> I also ask that whatever statement you are prepared to make can be made
> public for information purposes.
> Below is a fact sheet. If you would like any more information, I will do
> my best to help or can ask our project's License Working Group to get in
> touch with you. I've also included a couple links to discussion on license
> compatibility in Nanaimo and Vancouver.
> Regards, Alan Richards (alarobric)
> Fact Sheet
> [1] The OpenStreetMap project currently has over 750,000 registered
> contributors worldwide. Our main website is http://www.openstreetmap.org
> [2] We are mandated to make our geodata available in perpetuity under a
> free and open licence. We are not allowed to use a commercial license, but
> commercial organisations are allowed to use our data under similar terms.
> [3] Our data is currently published under the Open Database License 1.0,
> http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/
> [4] Most of our geodata is contributed by individuals. However, we are
> very grateful when able to incorporate or derive from other geo-data datasets
> where license terms are compatible.
> [5] We formally attribute all such sources at http://wiki.openstreetmap.
> org/wiki/Attribution, using any specific wording if you request. We also
> try to provide a link to this page with any extract of data from our
> database. However, for reasons of practicality, we do not require end-users
> to repeat such attribution since it runs into hundreds.
> [6] We also keep a public track of third party data use at
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Catalogue and usually have a
> project page for each dataset, describing how we use it and whether there
> are any license restrictions to be aware of.
> [7] If you have any specific legal questions, the OpenStreetMap
> Foundation's License Working Group can be reached at
> le...@osmfoundation.org and will be glad to help.
> [8] Nanaimo licensing discussion: https://lists.
> openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2013-December/005974.html
> [9] Vancouver discussion: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/
> talk-ca/2014-February/006037.html




 Dear Mr. Richards,
> Thank you for your very clear email.  We really want to facilitate your
> and other open data users work.  We have therefore added a statement
> above our license that all data sets in the City’s open data collection
> are released in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection
> of Privac

Re: [Talk-ca] importing data requiring attribution

[Alan Richards]

>From what I've seen so far, the opinion seems to be that the OGL-BC devived
licenses like this one require a statement about the Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy Act. This was done for the City of Vancouver
license, and I've just recently recieved an update from the City of New
Westminster along the same lines. They were very happy to adjust it after I
contacted them though.

"Data available in the blah blah blah datasets location of the City of New
Westminster's Open Data site under the following location: http://opendata.
newwestcity.ca/datasets is released in accordance with the Freedom of
Information and Protection of Privacy Act of British Columbia."




On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 8:16 PM, Stewart C. Russell  wrote:

> On 2017-03-05 09:44 PM, Brent Fraser wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> >   I've had a request to improve the stream and trail data around Gibsons
> > BC using data from the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD
> > http://www.scrd.ca/data-download).  Their license
> > (http://www.scrd.ca/scrd_disclaimer) permits this
>
> In addition to James's link, you'd need to have the SCRD licence
> approved by the Licensing Working Group. Takes a couple of months. I see
> a glaring error in the text: they copypasta'd North Van's licence, but
> didn't find and replace properly, leaving the attribution as “Contains
> information licensed under the Open Government Licence - North Vancouver.”
>
>  Stewart
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Crowdsourcing buildings with Statistics Canada

[Alan Richards]

Exactly. Local governments are using this license presumably because the
federal government has gone to the work of creating it. The intention of
all these bodies is to release the data for public use, the license is to
cover them from lawsuits.

In New West in fact, they are having an innovation week and hackathon in
February with the goal of hacking together interesting projects around the
Open Data the city releases. Sadly at the moment it seems I can't use this
data for OSM without getting explicit permission from the city.

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 2:54 PM, James <james2...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The only differences I could see is with the province of quebec (OGL-QC),
> but they publish their data under CC-BY 4.0 so we just need to ask for
> their approval to mark refs on contributors page (indirect reference which
> CC-BY requires)
>
> I think it would be logical for other provinces(excluding Quebec, because
> they do their own thing) to follow what the federal goverment has put in
> place in terms of open data. Obviously they need to replace federal with
> municipal, but this shouldnt change the license in itself that allows us to
> copy, create, distribute and derive.
>
> If cities are putting their data on public portals it's obviously so the
> public will use it, instead of it sitting there doing nothing.
>
>
> On Jan 25, 2017 3:30 PM, "john whelan" <jwhelan0...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm under the impression that we are talking about two things.
>>
>> The first is the Open Data licence which I think we are agreed is roughly
>> the same except that BC governments reference the BC privacy law, the
>> Ontario ones the Ontario privacy law and the Federal Government references
>> the Federal Government privacy law which is what you might expect.
>>
>> The differences to me are minor.
>>
>> The second is Paul's letter from a Federal Government civil servant that
>> I shall call a letter of interpretation, and it's this letter that makes
>> Paul very comfortable with the Federal Government Open Data.
>>
>> Unfortunately we have been talking licence so the assumption was made
>> that the BC government /Vancouver Open Data licence was also acceptable and
>> my understanding is some data has been imported and accepted.
>>
>> I do not believe the differences between the BC and Ontario privacy laws
>> are that great that one is acceptable and one is not.
>>
>> If all the Canadian Open Data licences are deemed to be unacceptable what
>> do we do about the data that has been imported?  This includes the CANVEC
>> data.
>>
>> My interest is in the Ottawa Bus stops and I have been working with the
>> City of Ottawa for some years to make them available off line on a tablet /
>> phone.  Somewhere in the City of Ottawa's official web site is a link to
>> this work.  My concern is what will tomorrow bring.  Based on the
>> discussions in talk-ca and on the work done analyzing the Federal
>> Government's Open Data licence before the Metro link address import my
>> impression was we had accepted the Canadian version of the Open Data
>> licence.  These Ottawa Bus stops are now based on OSM data and have been
>> since the discussion on talk-ca last year.
>>
>> Are we seriously saying the data that Metrolink imported should now be
>> removed?
>>
>> The uncertainty, the on / off on acceptence of the Open Data side of
>> things does make life difficult.  Should we be using a different platform
>> for Open Data?
>>
>> If I sidetrack to the Ottawa import process essentially the building
>> outlines are brought into a JOSM layer then using the Bing image layer to
>> confirm they are brought into OSM manually.  My understanding is any
>> building outlines that clash with an existing building in OSM daily dump
>> have been removed from the import file.  Any added in the previous 24 hours
>> can be handled by the manual process.  This is quite different to an
>> earlier import.
>>
>> Thoughts and clarification please.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Cheerio John
>>
>> On 25 Jan 2017 2:43 pm, "Alan Richards" <alarob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Most BC cities seem to be using a version of the OGL-BC now as well.
>>> This is similar to the OGL-CA with references to BC privacy and FOI laws,
>>> similar to the Ontario changes mentioned earlier.
>>>
>>> This business of having to get explicit permission for each dataset from
>>> each government entity is a bit ridiculous when the intent of this license
>>> in the first place was to avoid this.
>>>

Re: [Talk-ca] Crowdsourcing buildings with Statistics Canada

[Alan Richards]

Most BC cities seem to be using a version of the OGL-BC now as well. This
is similar to the OGL-CA with references to BC privacy and FOI laws,
similar to the Ontario changes mentioned earlier.

This business of having to get explicit permission for each dataset from
each government entity is a bit ridiculous when the intent of this license
in the first place was to avoid this.

Alan

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 6:18 AM, Blake Girardot  wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 2:38 AM, Paul Norman  wrote:
>
> > The initial answer was that the license would impose obligations on top
> of
> > the ODbL, our distribution license. This would make the data
> incompatible.
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> The above sounds like an interpretation of the answer, not the actual
> answer itself.
>
> Could you share the actual inquiry and response so we can all learn
> from it and understand how it requires additional obligations?
>
> Cheers,
> blake
>
>
> --
> 
> Blake Girardot
> HOTOSM Member - https://hotosm.org/users/blake_girardot
> skype: jblakegirardot
> Live OSM Mapper-Support channel - https://hotosm-slack.herokuapp.com/
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Re: [Talk-ca] Open data in Canada

[Alan Richards]

I've previously documented the Lower Mainland ones here as well:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada:British_Columbia:Vancouver#GIS_sources_by_city
Maybe some of this should be moved to your table.
Note the OGL-BC which many of these cities are based on seems to have some
potential problems with the license that may have to be worked out before
use.

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 8:32 AM, James  wrote:

> I've been looking for open data portals for potential future import into
> OpenStreetMap(why duplicate efforts right?)
>
> I've documented the one's I've found here:
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Canada#Open_Data
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] [Import] Ottawa Buildings & Addresses [Statistics Canada project]

[Alan Richards]

I like it overall. Nice to see more quality data being added, and I'm
personally pretty pro-import generally.

However, just from following this list, I was surprised that the import was
suddenly being done. I recall seeing messages about the possibility of a
project, and it sounded like it was slowly moving forward, but there wasn't
a lot of activity. It is clear now that a lot of the discussion was
happening offline at local meetups. To me this is fine with an active
community like Ottawa has, but perhaps the fact that this was going on
should have been shared back to the mailing list to show the progress that
was happening. The fact that a tasking manager was actually running and
data being imported and verified was quite a surprise, and obviously then
led to the unwanted revert.

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 11:49 AM, John Marshall  wrote:

> Looks good to me.
>
> I only would add if there are multiple buildings and it is not not clear
> what  the correct address are, local survey may be required. Then add a
> note like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/741666
>
>
> John
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 1:57 PM, john whelan 
> wrote:
>
>> A comment the data is of high quality and the building outlines are of
>> particular interest to the Stats Canada Project where Statistics Canada is
>> attempting to crowd source adding tags added to non residential buildings
>> within the City of Ottawa and Gatineau.  These include the number of levels
>> and the use of the building.  They will be suggesting using a customised iD
>> to their general public but given the experience of iD mapping buildings in
>> HOT it was thought that importing the building outlines would give a better
>> quality map at the end.
>>
>> Cheerio John
>>
>> On 19 October 2016 at 13:45, James  wrote:
>>
>>> Seems like a good enough time like any other to talk about the import of
>>> Ottawa buildings and addresses into OpenStreetMap.
>>>
>>> Documentation is available here:
>>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada:Ontario:Ottawa/Import/Plan
>>>
>>> Discussion with local mappers has happened in person for multiple
>>> months(community buy in is very high in these meetings and we all saw
>>> benefit in including this data) :
>>> https://www.meetup.com/openstreetmap-ottawa/
>>>
>>> Once positive discussion of a period of 2 weeks has been met, we would
>>> like to start the import of said data.
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>>
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Re: [Talk-ca] CanVec Reverts

[Alan Richards]

I agree with Frederik here. New imports need to make sure they follow the
import guidelines, including using a dedicated import account.

The wiki information could all be cleaned up, consolidated, and then new
users would know the current status and process for importing new
information.

For cleaning up the existing information, I like the idea of getting some
MapRoulette tasks going, or maybe writing some new validations in osmlint,
osmose, etc.
Certainly in the BC and Ontario data I've seen, it's not just the forest
that is problematic, but also the water layer. Creeks occasionally flow the
wrong way (a bad very old import I suspect), lakes and wetlands are
mixed/overlaid.

Alan (alarobric)

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 4:30 PM, john whelan  wrote:

> >I think a super good first step would be try and ensure that future
> imports are done diligently and don't introduce new issues.
>
> I think that is a reasonable way forward, and I concur with the rest of
> your post.
>
> I think we need to identify which parts of CANVEC are giving concern, each
> province is a different mixture of data sources, I suspect it is the forest
> and land use that are the most problematic.
>
> The older tiles had a problem in that a highway would reach the edge of
> the tile and there would be a matching highway on the next tile but there
> was no connection.  I spent many a happy hour, too many of them, merging
> nodes so routing would work.  I think the cities have been cleaned up but
> more rural areas still have the odd one or two to do.
>
> Probably what would make a lot of sense as a next step is to grab the
> provincial OSM dumps, chop them up into manageable portions then load them
> up into JOSM and run a modern validation on them.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 1 September 2016 at 19:13, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
>
>> Andrew,
>>
>> On 09/02/2016 12:47 AM, Andrew Lester wrote:
>> > If people from outside of Canada have decided that our data is so bad
>> > that it needs to be completely wiped out in its entirety, then I guess
>> > we're going to have to do something drastic to try to prevent this.
>>
>> I think a super good first step would be try and ensure that future
>> imports are done diligently and don't introduce new issues. (This might
>> be the "better documentation" step that Paul mentioned.) It really
>> shouldn't be too hard to detect whether your planned import causes
>> overlapping lakes and forests, but there needs to be an agreement that
>> these things matter and that you cannot simply upload "because if CanVec
>> says that forest and water overlap then this must be true".
>>
>> Then one could take stock of existing issues and make a plan on how to
>> fix them.
>>
>> Whether fixing existing issues will necessitate the wholesale removal of
>> some imports is something that should be decided down the line; I know
>> too little about CanVec imports to say whether some problems are
>> systemic in the data source, or certain regions, or just introduced by
>> clumsy importers. Any large-scale removal of imported data (perhaps to
>> replace it with new, better-imported data) would also have to take into
>> account potential manual work that has been performed on the imported by
>> mappers with local knowledge and it would be sad to lose that.
>>
>> Bye
>> Frederik
>>
>> --
>> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>>
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Re: [Talk-ca] broken forests in eastern Canada

[Alan Richards]

Generally some of the polygons can be later merged across the boundaries
into less square shapes, but it can be complicated and slow work.

Personally, I'm still unclear on whether CanVec importing is still going
on? Is the data still available and updated? Most of what I can find on the
wiki is old and out of date and no one seems to be doing any visible work
there.

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Gordon Dewis  wrote:

> Forest footprints change over time but not that much in most places. The
> problem is that forest polygons can quickly end up with thousands of points
> and have the added complexity of holes.
>
> There is value to having them in OSM, we just have to find a better way to
> do them, or live with "seams" at the edges of Canvec tiles.
>
>
> On Aug 25, 2016, 13:09 -0400, Stewart C. Russell ,
> wrote:
>
> On 2016-08-25 04:53 AM, Adam Martin wrote:
>
>
> … The polygons will need to be either merged
> or redrawn to conform with the underlying land use.
>
>
> Or, dare I suggest, deleted completely. If they take a huge amount of
> work to fix and they add little value by being based on elderly data, I
> question their need to be in OSM.
>
> I know it's considered politically inexpedient to have huge blank areas
> in your country's map: it gives ambitious neighbours expansionist ideas.
> You can't find anything interesting in these polygons, and they don't
> help you to find anything, either. Maybe we should just have the legend
> “hic sunt sciuri”* every few square kilometres instead?
>
> cheers,
> Stewart
>
> *: “here be squirrels”
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] broken forests in eastern Canada

[Alan Richards]

I believe these are the result of importing Canvec landuse data for some
areas and not for others. Because the data is in square chunks, you end up
with these unnatural looking squares on the map. Really it's just a case of
the other areas don't have detail yet.

Across the border it looks like the US just has parks and national forests,
etc. mapped, and not the general natural=forest that you see across Canada.

Alan (alarobric)

On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Antoine Beaupré 
wrote:

> hi everyone (allo tout le monde!!)
>
> one of the most frustrating experiences I have with Openstreetmap in
> Canada is this ugly forest display:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/45.227/-73.916
>
> Just compare how the forests and parks are mapped between the US and
> Canada. On our side of the border, you got huge chunks of square forests
> that definitely do not reflect the current reality, whereas down south
> you clearly see national parks, forests and no weird square things.
>
> I don't really understand how this happened, but it's been there a long
> time. I feel it's some Canvec import that went wrong, but it's been
> there for so long that it seems people just forgot about it or moved on.
>
> I looked around in the .qc and .ca wiki pages and couldn't find anything
> about it, so I figured I would bring that up here (again?).
>
> Are there any plans to fix this? How would one go around fixing this
> anyways?
>
> In particular, I'm curious to hear if people would know how to import
> *all* the park limits in Québec. It seems those are better mapped in
> Ontario, and I can't imagine those wore drawn by hand..
>
> Thanks for any feedback (and please CC me, I'm not on the list).
>
> A.
>
> --
> We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more
> humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
> - John Perry Barlow, 1996
> A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Bike trail name check - Vancouver area

[Alan Richards]

I believe that's correct. I've seen it as Severed D and C-Buster before as 
well. 





On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 7:45 AM -0700, "Blake Girardot"  
wrote:










Perhaps someone with some local knowledge could look into the name of
this bike trail and some of the surrounding trails:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/402020492

They look likely incorrect to me (crude language), but what do I know.

Regards,
Blake

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Re: [Talk-ca] aerial imagery for missing roads

[Alan Richards]

Most forest service roads in BC are not private. They may be built by private 
logging companies and may occasionally be gated, but the majority are on crown 
land and are open for recreational use. Road conditions vary wildly and roads 
are often unmaintained if active logging is not in progress in the area. 
While I agree that typically these roads should not be used for typical 
intercity routing, they are often used for recreation, hunting, fishing etc. 

Alan (alarobric)




On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 7:59 AM -0700, "Martijn van Exel"  
wrote:










Interesting, that seems to be worth a look! Do you happen to know who these 
open data people are? Do similar open data groups / people exist in other 
provinces?
Martijn
On Jun 25, 2016, at 8:16 AM, Kevin Farrugia  wrote:
Morning everyone,
I was looking at information on one of the Province's imagery programs (SWOOP: 
https://dr6j45jk9xcmk.cloudfront.net/documents/3609/lio-swoop2015-eng-final-2014-05-13.pdf)
 and I had previously assumed that the imagery was paid for by the province but 
the rights still owned by the imagery company, which is the case where I work.  
However, it looks like they might purchase the imagery outright because it says 
the imagery is owned by the Queen's Printer, which is the holder of the Crown's 
copyrights in Ontario.
If that's the case you can try contacting their open data team to see if they 
can persuade the Ministry of Natural Resources to release the data openly under 
the Open Government Directive as a WMS/TIFFs or you can lodge a FIPPA request 
to have it released (I don't know how this affects you or us being able to use 
it in OSM, however).
You can check out what their imagery looks like here to see if it's worth your 
time contacting them: 
http://www.giscoeapp.lrc.gov.on.ca/matm/Index.html?site=Make_A_Topographic_Map=MATM=en-US
 (in Map Layers turn off Topographic Data to see the imagery).
-Kevin (Kevo)



On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 7:52 AM, Begin Daniel  wrote:
Missing access=no and access=private tags I understand...

Daniel



-Original Message-

From: Stewart C. Russell [mailto:scr...@gmail.com]

Sent: June-24-16 22:45

To: talk-ca@openstreetmap.org

Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] aerial imagery for missing roads



On 2016-06-23 10:26 PM, Pierre Béland wrote:

>

> Going north outside of urban zones, there are many tracks for lumber

> areas. Hard to assess the accessibility of such roads for cars.



Most logging roads, certainly in BC, are private. While they look large, and 
make tempting additions to the map, accidentally routing traffic along them 
could be fatal. Logging trucks don't (can't!) stop, and unless you have 
authorization and the right radio to call in the checkpoints, the controller 
won't be able to tell you if there's a truck coming that you need to get out of 
the way of.



CanVec also mistakenly digitized a bunch of private wind farm access roads in 
Ontario, such as https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/39334427 .

While using these might not be life-threatening, it is trespassing to use them.



cheers,

 Stewart



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