Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
Fred, I think it is a great idea to focus on trails. In my opinion, this would be a great use of OSM. In my area OSM already has data that in many cases is better than publicly available data. Best way to get this data is to turn on the GPS and go for a hike or bike ride. One area we could work on is improving tagging. In many cases the only tag is "highway=path" Has anyone tried to work with local hiking/mountain clubs on mapping trails? Mike On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Fred Gifford wrote: > Hi all, > > I am starting the process of pulling together a group to focus on updating > and expanding trail data in OSM. The initial focus would be in the US > but we are hoping the model could expand to other areas as well. > > Initially the project would have two main focus areas – > - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to > update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload > methodology. > - Build a custom version of Potlatch focused on trail mapping > - Building trail mapping communities in the US. > > Here is where things get a little different than other similar efforts > – I want much of the work to be done by paid interns and I want to > fund it initially through Kickstarter and later though donations. > > I’d be interested to hear anyones thoughts, concerns, etc, and of > course would love to know if anyone is interested in participating. > > Thanks. > > Fred > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Fred Gifford wrote: > Hi all, > > Initially the project would have two main focus areas – > - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to > update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload > methodology. > please no bulk upload. public data isn't always up to date and really needs a review. if a trail is missing it's not a big deal when you have an additional option. But if you plan a long hike and a trail is no passable anymore it can be really dangerous. And special tags have to be verified on the ground. There is no way to do that as an armchair mapper. essentially quality is more important than quantity. Here is where things get a little different than other similar efforts > – I want much of the work to be done by paid interns and I want to > fund it initially through Kickstarter and later though donations. > > I recommend to search in the archives of t...@openstreetmap.org about opinions and experience with paid mapping. It's not very positive. > I’d be interested to hear anyones thoughts, concerns, etc, and of > course would love to know if anyone is interested in participating. > > I think it's important to get more people interested. especially from other outdoor related groups like Sierra club and other mountaineering clubs, geocacher. mountain biker ... These people understand the requirements. A paid intern with no hiking experience is of little use. > Thanks. > > Fred > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
Fred Gifford writes: > I am starting the process of pulling together a group to focus on updating > and expanding trail data in OSM. The initial focus would be in the US > but we are hoping the model could expand to other areas as well. You should first assess how things are; OSM trail data is generally better than most other maps . > Initially the project would have two main focus areas – > - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to > update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload > methodology. I am skeptical. I am in Massachusetts, which has good public state GIS data, and there doesn't seem to be trail data. I think these data sources should be used with human guidance. > - Build a custom version of Potlatch focused on trail mapping I really don't get this comment - what are you trying to do that is currently awkward? I use JOSM for editing trails (to avoid bad karma From nonportable and proprietary Flash), but I don't find trails to be particularly special in terms of editor support. Put another way, what do editors do or not do about trails that you want to change? > - Building trail mapping communities in the US. Indeed, that is the key point. You might consider sending interns to give presentations at conversation groups, etc. But that sounds a little like Community Ambassadors :-) > Here is where things get a little different than other similar efforts > – I want much of the work to be done by paid interns and I want to > fund it initially through Kickstarter and later though donations. It's really hard to tell what your primary goals are and what decisions are driven by those goals pgpzHqsM5Ji75.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Mike Thompson wrote: > > Has anyone tried to work with local hiking/mountain clubs on mapping > trails? > > I know one guy from the sierra club. He is organizing hikes for the club year round and turns them into mapping parties for anyone interested. They go for a drink after the hike and he will show how to record tracks and add them to osm. It's mostly bay area and nearby. ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Greg Troxel wrote: > > Fred Gifford writes: [ ... ] >> - Building trail mapping communities in the US. > > Indeed, that is the key point. I think this is the best way to success. You could even leave out the "trail" and it will have a positive effect on your trails. If you inspire a new mapper to add parking lots and water fountains, some of those may intersect with the interests of your trail users. I can't think of a good substitute for a motivated local mapper. Daniel Begin said this recently on talk-ca: "You'll find that there is nothing better than an active community to find odd features in authoritative data!" Daniel knows of what he speaks, he works at the Canadian National Mapping Agency and has been participating in OSM for several years. He publishes authoritative data collected by paid professionals, with what I presume is top notch equipment. And the OSM community of enthusiastic amateurs finds and fixes odd features and errors. I don't think that you can get that nearly obsessive attention to detail across a large area. It takes a _personal_ interest in the data. I think of that area of obsessive interest and perhaps encyclopaedic knowledge as the natural range of a mapper. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
> please no bulk upload. public data isn't always up to date and really needs > a review. if a trail is missing it's not a big deal when you have an > additional option. But if you plan a long hike and a trail is no passable > anymore it can be really dangerous. +1 >And special tags have to be verified on > the ground. There is no way to do that as an armchair mapper. essentially > quality is more important than quantity. Agreed! Didn't mean to imply that armchair mappers could/should be doing this, although I realize I wasn't clear.If we are going to work on improving trail data by building the community, working with hiking/biking/etc groups, improving tools (not sure if this is needed), then I recommend that tagging be at least a small part of the focus. As already observed, in many cases the trail geometry in OSM is already better than any other source. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
> - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to > update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload > methodology. Just and idea for the community's consideration: as an avid trail user and mapper, the one type of bulk upload that would interest me would be the balance of the NHD data. It appears that this has not been completed. I am too busy hiking trails gathering GPS traces to do this myself, and I am not sure I want to venture into "bulk upload land." Mike ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
HI All, Thanks for all the great comments and input. This is what I was hoping for. It seems like the biggest concern people have expressed is the idea of doing some bulk loading of trails. I am with you on those concerns and think that the primary rule for bulk loading should be "first do no harm". Lots of people have made great edits and additions to OSM and you don't want to mess those up. That being said I live in Montana and that is primarily where I have been reviewing trail data. The vast majority of the trail data here came from Tiger bulk loads and is very incomplete and out of date. I know that there are trails data from the USFS, BLM, and various state agencies that are much better. I'm not suggesting those should just be dumped into OSM but I don't think they can be part of a strategy of significantly upgrading and extending what is there. The other issue that was technical in nature that I have also been thinking about was mentioned by Brett and that is coding of trails for different uses. From what I can see this is pretty lacking and not very standardized and that really limits the usefulness of the data. I would really like to get a discussion going on this issue and hear peoples recommendations. My general thoughts are that it Brett's suggestion that there needs to be both classifications for activities and difficulty (or quality) is what is needed. I know that there are some classifications for activities but they don't seem to be widely used or very standardized. The other associated issue in my mind is a better trail head feature type. Fred On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Fred Gifford wrote: > Hi all, > > I am starting the process of pulling together a group to focus on updating > and expanding trail data in OSM. The initial focus would be in the US > but we are hoping the model could expand to other areas as well. > > Initially the project would have two main focus areas – > - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to > update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload > methodology. > - Build a custom version of Potlatch focused on trail mapping > - Building trail mapping communities in the US. > > Here is where things get a little different than other similar efforts > – I want much of the work to be done by paid interns and I want to > fund it initially through Kickstarter and later though donations. > > I’d be interested to hear anyones thoughts, concerns, etc, and of > course would love to know if anyone is interested in participating. > > Thanks. > > Fred ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On 07/20/2012 09:27 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
I can't think of a good substitute for a motivated local mapper.
Daniel Begin said this recently on talk-ca:
"You'll find that there is nothing better than an active community to
find odd features in authoritative data!"
Daniel knows of what he speaks, he works at the Canadian National
Mapping Agency and has been participating in OSM for several years.
He publishes authoritative data collected by paid professionals, with
what I presume is top notch equipment. And the OSM community of
enthusiastic amateurs finds and fixes odd features and errors.
I don't think that you can get that nearly obsessive attention to
detail across a large area. It takes a _personal_ interest in the
data. I think of that area of obsessive interest and perhaps
encyclopaedic knowledge as the natural range of a mapper.
I'd argue that this is entirely the right model. I'm sure all will
agree: it's hard to recruit individual mappers - although that has
to be a primary goal, because only someone with detailed local
knowledge can do the fixes just mentioned.
But by the same token, it would be foolish to discard the work -
often of extraordinarily high quality - that has been done at
taxpayer expense to curate the large data sets. For the most part,
it's better than what we'd get from a horde of novice mappers.
In any case, the government agencies that administer our public
lands are the ultimate sources of information like "{horses,
mountain bikes, skiing, snowmobiles, ATV's} are/are not
not permitted on this trail," or "camping is permitted on this
trail only 200 feet or more from the trail at elevations below
3500 feet."
So I'd argue that selling the OSM model to the authorities is
just as important as recruiting OSM mappers. If we can get the
odd features and errors fixed upstream in the official data, we've
essentially recruited the professionals as mappers. We need both:
the professionals who have boatloads of high-quality data (with,
of course, the inevitable errors and omissions) at their disposal,
and the enthusiastic amateurs who will find and fix the errors.
I wonder if the people who argue that all the work has to be
done by individual mappers have simply despaired of ever getting to
the point where corrections can flow into the official sources.
I could argue that in many localities, that's the reason that
imports are problematic: they can happen once only, because the
public data are set in stone. The result is that when the public
data are improved - as with the latest version of TIGER - there's
no way to reimport without a tremendous manual patchwork to merge
the new data into the work that individual mappers have done.
--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On 07/20/2012 11:22 PM, Mike Thompson wrote: - Focused effort to gather public domain trail data and use it to update existing trail data in OSM through hybrid editing \ bulk upload methodology. Just and idea for the community's consideration: as an avid trail user and mapper, the one type of bulk upload that would interest me would be the balance of the NHD data. It appears that this has not been completed. I am too busy hiking trails gathering GPS traces to do this myself, and I am not sure I want to venture into "bulk upload land." I got started on this, too, and got a fair way along (in a personal mirror) on doing New York south of the Mohawk. I stumbled when I asked a few people that I'd met here to review the work. There were a couple who had a problem that the imported data (obviously) crossed ways with the highway network; they were at best reluctant to accept the import until and unless the individual crossings were tagged appropriately as bridges, culverts, fords or whatever, with an appropriate rendering layer assigned. Having no way to get that information short of driving to each individual stream crossing, I put the project on hold, and simply use NHD as one of the layers that I render in my personal map. TopOSM takes the same approach. Lars and I simply discard OSM hydrographic features in favour of NHD ones. I think I want to follow up on this issue, because I'd still like OSM to have the data. I'll continue in a separate thread, rather than hijacking this one. -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
On 07/22/2012 10:19 AM, Fred Gifford wrote: It seems like the biggest concern people have expressed is the idea of doing some bulk loading of trails. I am with you on those concerns and think that the primary rule for bulk loading should be "first do no harm". Lots of people have made great edits and additions to OSM and you don't want to mess those up. That being said I live in Montana and that is primarily where I have been reviewing trail data. The vast majority of the trail data here came from Tiger bulk loads and is very incomplete and out of date. I know that there are trails data from the USFS, BLM, and various state agencies that are much better. I'm not suggesting those should just be dumped into OSM but I don't think they can be part of a strategy of significantly upgrading and extending what is there. I agree 100%. I have a good bit of data from New York State on trails that is surely incomplete and imperfect but better than anything we have in OSM. I've not uploaded any of it because I've not convinced myself that it's "doing no harm". But most of it would slot into areas of the map that today are nearly blank. I don't foresee any real difficulties with conflation; the chief technical difficulty I'd see is managing a repeat upload as the government files are updated. (I still haven't opened discussions with the state agencies about redistributing the data; there are some licensing hurdles to overcome.) And the effort of doing the trail network without the help of the government (essentially, it gets mapped by rangers carrying GPS as they patrol) would be little short of heroic. One of the files that I have describes over eight thousand miles of trail, some of which is more than a day's walk from the nearest roadway. (The Adirondacks have places that remote.) The other issue that was technical in nature that I have also been thinking about was mentioned by Brett and that is coding of trails for different uses. From what I can see this is pretty lacking and not very standardized and that really limits the usefulness of the data. I would really like to get a discussion going on this issue and hear peoples recommendations. My general thoughts are that it Brett's suggestion that there needs to be both classifications for activities and difficulty (or quality) is what is needed. I know that there are some classifications for activities but they don't seem to be widely used or very standardized. The other associated issue in my mind is a better trail head feature type. The problem that I see with classifications for difficulty is that there are few standards. Trails that are called 'moderate' or even 'easy' in New Hampshire might be called 'strenuous' or 'difficult' in Virginia. For most of the trails that I have data on, I do have basic regulatory information as well: "foot=yes horse=yes bicycle=yes ski=yes atv=no snowmobile=no" or similar fields. For many of them, I also have waymark information - either the principal blaze colour, or else a description "red horizontal dash on white", "yellow triangle on black", "blue disc", "green-and-white Finger Lakes Trail logo", and so on, which should also be considered for a map. How much does "trailhead" differ from "parking"? I've usually just shown trailheads as parking areas - they usually have space for at least a few cars. Some features that I'd like to see some consensus on is "trail shelter/ lean-to," "register box," and a "perennial/seasonal" tag on springs. Whenever the "shelter" topic has arisen, there seem to be people who jump in rather confused by the difference between a trail shelter, a picnic shelter, and a bus shelter. (Hint: I won't be arrested for vagrancy if caught sleeping in the first.) -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Starting OSM Trail Map Initiative In US
Kevin Kenny writes: > I agree 100%. I have a good bit of data from New York State on trails > that is surely incomplete and imperfect but better than anything we > have in OSM. I've not uploaded any of it because I've not convinced > myself that it's "doing no harm". But most of it would slot into areas > of the map that today are nearly blank. I don't foresee any real > difficulties with conflation; the chief technical difficulty I'd > see is managing a repeat upload as the government files are updated. > (I still haven't opened discussions with the state agencies about > redistributing the data; there are some licensing hurdles to overcome.) If the govt data really is good, then that mitigates a lot of the concerns, especially if a local mapper meets with a park manager and talks about data quality. >> The other issue that was technical in nature that I have also been >> thinking about was mentioned by Brett and that is coding of trails for >> different uses. From what I can see this is pretty lacking and not >> very standardized and that really limits the usefulness of the data. I >> would really like to get a discussion going on this issue and hear >> peoples recommendations. My general thoughts are that it Brett's >> suggestion that there needs to be both classifications for activities >> and difficulty (or quality) is what is needed. I know that there are >> some classifications for activities but they don't seem to be widely >> used or very standardized. The other associated issue in my mind is a >> better trail head feature type. > > The problem that I see with classifications for difficulty is that there > are few standards. Trails that are called 'moderate' or even 'easy' > in New Hampshire might be called 'strenuous' or 'difficult' in > Virginia. I am almost always in favor of OSM finding the relevant professional community or stewardship organization and adopting existing standards. OSM already has sac_scale but I'm not sure how useful that is in the US. For rock climbing there is certainly a classification system. > For most of the trails that I have data on, I do have basic > regulatory information as well: "foot=yes horse=yes bicycle=yes > ski=yes atv=no snowmobile=no" or similar fields. For many of them, > I also have waymark information - either the principal blaze colour, > or else a description "red horizontal dash on white", "yellow triangle > on black", "blue disc", "green-and-white Finger Lakes Trail logo", > and so on, which should also be considered for a map. > > How much does "trailhead" differ from "parking"? I've usually just > shown trailheads as parking areas - they usually have space for at > least a few cars. In my view, parking is parking, and should be tagged as such. trailhead is a designation of cultural importance within the hiking community, meaning a place were a trail can be accessed from roads that is notable as a place to begin or end. Basically, if there were a local club, and they wrote a map and guidebook, it's a trailhead if they would talk about it as such. That said, trailheads tend to have parking. Or are places where parking is banned but there are shuttle buses (e.g. parts of Grand Canyon and Yosemite, at least seasonally). pgp9AAEWCXdit.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
