There have been analysis and strategy about fixing TIGER 'Deserts'[1],
but what is the best way to manage regions that have been thoroughly
updated to match TIGER, and possibly enhanced beyond that with local
knowledge?
Background - An essential task in keeping OSM updated and relevant in
the US has been to compare existing OSM data to the latest TIGER data
and add new roads. This generally means adding the endless new streets
for subdivisions or possibly a single new cul-de-sac development street.
The problem is that once an area has been completely synchronized to
TIGER, what is the best way to update it in the future? The problem
comes when revisiting a completed area looking for new roads. What if
someone had deleted or modified those streets based on local research or
knowledge? The old TIGER street shows up as a 'new' street, and
there's no way an armchair mapper would know what to do.[2] The street
or segment gets added back to the map and OSM becomes a museum relic
holding old TIGER data unless someone knowledgeable happens to notice.
I'm starting to keep an empty way with a note on the old TIGER trace,
but I suspect that almost no one has historically done this in the US.
I propose 2 changes to TIGER challenge tasks -
1. Future TIGER challenges in completed areas should highlight only
changes relative to the previous year, or 2010 and not treat all TIGER
data as authoritative. Roads are sometimes accidentally deleted in OSM
but those could be flagged by telemetry from Scout.
2. Focus on areas that desperately need alignment, but may not have
even updated TIGER. Just aligning streets to aerial imagery will make
the area usable by navigation systems. Admittedly since those areas
are also likely to be low population, there may not be a payback for
paid mappers to help.
This is not meant to be anti-armchair mapping but a way to continue
to make better use of armchair mapping resources.
Mike
---------------
[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup#TIGER_desert
[2] In the past, I demonstrated OSM's local mapping advantage to a
friend by comparing Skobbler's turn by turn to Garmin soon after this
frontage road access was closed for safety reasons. Google and Garmin
finally corrected their routing after some years, but OSM went back to
the old days -
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/30249051
More armchair mapping challenges -
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33549289 !
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/32398213
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/32373023
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