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

[Kevin Kenny]

Oops: Just realized I originally sent this reply privately: meant to 
send to the list.


On 02/27/2016 05:18 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

An import is great if it enables a community to go further, or forms the
basis of solid work in the future. An import is great if it is one
ingredient that makes OSM the best map of the region. But it sounds to
me as if your proposed import is hardly more than a small time saver for
people who want to make maps of the Adirondack - they *could* go to the
original source at any time, and the likelihood of OSM hydrography being
*better* than the official data is very low.

In my view, a good import is a catalyst for future OSM data improvement.
But you seem to say quite clearly that such is unlikely to happen with
the data you are planning to import. Your main point is that it'll look
better on the map, which for me isn't good enough.

Can you point to areas where your import would encourage mappers,
including yourself, to add more knowledge and surveyed data to OSM?
My personal interest is mostly from the standpoint of improving OSM as a 
resource for hikers - and recruiting citizen mappers to the task. 
Available databases of hiking trail alignments are pretty poor. The USGS 
maps, once stellar, have not been updated since the first Bush 
administration, and keeping them up to date is no longer in the USGS's 
charter. They have neither the mission nor the funding to map hiking 
trails, shelters, campsites, privies, viewpoints, and similar amenities. 
Mapping them falls on the shoulders of private companies such as 
National Geographic, and they are happy to sell us maps - even ones in 
electronic format if we are extremely fortunate - of obsolete data of 
the most popular areas. The less popular areas are entirely neglected. 
If trail data are to be collected, it will have to be citizen mappers 
that do it, and OSM is an obvious repository for it. And none of that 
data is what I propose to import.


Why, then, should I import what I don't plan to improve substantially? 
When I've tried to recruit my contacts in the hiking community to 
mapping for OSM, when they see the state of the tiles at 
openstreetmap.org, they are put off immediately. "Why should I bother?" 
they say, "there's nothing there!" Particularly before the import of 
lakes and ponds was done - an import to which your argument equally 
applies - this entire area simply appeared entirely featureless, with no 
hope of using OSM to produce a map that could be helpful for anyone.


When, on the other hand, I show them 
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232=-73.9804=15 
, they see a map that's already useful for navigating the region, 
although deeply flawed in many ways. I can point out that trails shown 
in magenta with their names in UPPER CASE are from a State data set that 
is digitized at an inappropriately large scale (and for that reason 
alone, even before license concerns, I wouldn't propose importing it). I 
can point out that a good many of the trail shelters, privies, parking 
areas, register kiosks, viewpoints and similar amenities are missing. I 
can tell hikers that they can improve OSM by capturing that information. 
I can point out that if enough of us do it as a community, we'll have 
up-to-date maps that we can maintain as a community.


The approach has worked for me. For instance, I was able to persuade a 
contact who was hiking the route shown with the overlay in 
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232=-73.9804=15 
to capture GPS data and contribute it. (The uploads show my ID because I 
handled conflating it, simplifying the tracks, vetting alignment against 
orthophotos, and similar administrative tasks.)


OSM is really the only place where the data about trails and associated 
amenities can be assembled properly, as far as I can tell. The 
government agencies in the US have not had the funding or authority to 
collate those data in over twenty years. Web sites like alltrails.com 
are great for sharing your experience with a single route, but don't 
really make any effort at all to assemble a map. And the companies like 
National Geographic and DeLorme are more than happy to sell our own data 
back to us at a premium price, burden it with usage restrictions, and 
make it available in formats that we cannot annotate and improve.


I don't have a good way to address your argument that data whose 
authoritiative source is not OSM should not be imported
into OSM - and frankly, I mostly agree with it. I tend to believe that 
the underlying problem is not what we choose to import or not to import, 
but what we show to newcomers. I believe that the maps we present to the 
public would be improved if they included (at least optionally) layers 
derived from government data sources that we taxpayers have the right to 
use. You can see in the maps that I've presented that I'm also using 
(and do NOT propose to import) National Land Cover Database, National 

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

[Elliott Plack]

I would argue that importing land-use that is difficult or tedious to trace
would encourage local mapping for the following three reasons:

1. It shows others that an area of the map has received some attention.
2. It produces "gaps," i.e. places where there are no wetlands or water
thus leaving a gray "hole" on the map, thus a mapper might look there to
add something, such as a camp site or some unknown settlement.
3. It exposes inaccurate TIGER roads and tracks, as these typically are on
embankments through wetlands.

Importing landuse adds visual beauty to the map in places where it would
take hordes of volunteers to trace wetlands, and experts to determine the
wetland classification. I think this is a good idea.

I've fiddled around with NWI data and OSM and usually the result is great.
While I'd concede that landuses do change, so to do other features that are
imported often (buildings and such). A map is always a snapshot in time,
and for the most part land use within a protected area is not subject to
much in the way of change.

I too enjoy mapping things related to wilderness areas. I've done a lot of
work around my area mapping trails, park boundaries, and hydrology. I think
it makes for beautiful and useful maps.

Examples:
Patapsco Valley Stake Park, Maryland:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/39.23160/-76.73002
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/38.3810/-76.0343
Martin National Wildlife Refuge:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/38.0001/-76.0247

Best,

Elliott

On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 5:19 PM Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Kenny,
>
> On 02/27/2016 06:10 AM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
> > Given the
> > difficulties inherent in getting changes made by local mappers working
> > independently (the data are a bit difficult to verify in the field),
> > it's arguable that we should always use third-party sources to make
> > our maps and have it be Someone Else's Problem. That said, we
> > unquestionably do have hydrography in OSM, and it doesn't in fact
> > require a lot of updating - these natural features are quite stable,
> > particularly in a remote area such as I'm considering here.
>
> Is there not the danger though of the data rotting away in OSM,
> precisely for the reasons you outline - difficult to map in the first
> place, Adirondack being huge, and all this being a too big project for
> one or even a handful persons?
>
> IMHO you'd be scratching an itch for now and making it easier for people
> to make maps with OSM, but a few years down the line, people will again
> have to turn to the (regularly updated, presumably?) government data and
> say, just like you said, that OSM is "among the poorest of what I have
> available"?
>
> An import is great if it enables a community to go further, or forms the
> basis of solid work in the future. An import is great if it is one
> ingredient that makes OSM the best map of the region. But it sounds to
> me as if your proposed import is hardly more than a small time saver for
> people who want to make maps of the Adirondack - they *could* go to the
> original source at any time, and the likelihood of OSM hydrography being
> *better* than the official data is very low.
>
> In my view, a good import is a catalyst for future OSM data improvement.
> But you seem to say quite clearly that such is unlikely to happen with
> the data you are planning to import. Your main point is that it'll look
> better on the map, which for me isn't good enough.
>
> Can you point to areas where your import would encourage mappers,
> including yourself, to add more knowledge and surveyed data to OSM?
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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>
-- 
Elliott Plack
http://elliottplack.me
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