OpenStreetMap
In Ethiopia most of the population lives in rural areas outside of towns and villages. The existing OSM road tagging is inadequate to adequately document the functional use of a road.
The Africa Highway tags are a good start but do not have a tag that is appropriate for rural residential roads.
At the State of the Map Africa 2017 http://sotmafrica.org/ we will be discussing the tagging for roads in an Africa context. #SOTMAfrica
Discussion
Comment from Warin61 on 26 April 2017 at 07:02
I think there are enough varieties of highways. It is a mater of getting the right one.
For ‘rural residential’ that are ‘dead ends’, then I would use highway=unclassified.
For ‘rural residential’ that continue from one hamlet/village to another, then I would use highway=tertiary.
Comment from Palolo on 26 April 2017 at 21:57
@Warin61 Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Since you have very limited OSM experience in Africa I believe you don’t understand what the conditions are like here. Please take a look at this location The functional class is rural residential, they are not designed or engineered and could be used to go from one place where people live to another, but they would never be called tertiary which would be very misleading for relief routing efforts. The tag typically used for the fourth level of roads implies connectivity, not a dead end. Here in Ethiopia most of the population lives on dirt roads that might not even be classified as tracks in the developed world, it is, however, important to capture and classify these roads to ensure adequate mapping for humanitarian work. If you would like to be a part of the discussion in Uganda in July please join us.
Comment from bgirardot on 26 April 2017 at 22:50
Hi @Warin61, thank you for the comment. To some extent that is how I classify them now, as unclassified, but it just does not quite fit the description in the standard osm highway key or the highway tag africa guidance that has worked quite well.
But I think @palolo has this right. As someone who has classified many km of roads using Highway Tag Africa, which basically mirrors https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway there is a functional, meaningful, recognizable and understandable missing classification.
There needs to be something between Track and Unclassified and that is what palolo is suggesting, that the community of OSM Africa and individual OSM groups can discuss this topic. Is this a thing? Is it important? Is this a needed and agreed upon classification from their view on the ground?
Those are some of the questions I have.
With some luck I hope to sit in, looking forward to it!
Comment from rab on 27 April 2017 at 19:08
Hi, we can discribe any possible road condition with existing tags. When a road is not suitable for normal traffic, it should be tagged as track. You may want to invent a additional tag, like we do with service roads (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:service), but certainly no new road type
Comment from Palolo on 27 April 2017 at 21:18
@rab, I appreciate the input from an experienced mapper. I’m sure it is possible to describe road conditions in Germany with existing tags, unfortunately Africa is not like Europe. Please look at this [area] (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/6.9491/38.4413) near where I live. The majority of the roads in areas like this do not fit the [Africa tagging scheme] (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa).
Here is why each of these tags don’t work:
Residential - These roads are in agriculture areas, and are almost never paved
Unclassified - These roads do not connect villages
Track - These roads run through rural residential areas and do not dead end
Path - Often these roads are used by vehicles not just foot traffic
We could create a tagging scheme like this : highway=residential + surface=ground + rural=yes The problem is that not all rendering tools (and users) look at multiple tags. Additionally we don’t have the luxury of existing linework, there are millions of kilometers of roads that need to be added to OSM, we don’t have time or people to fiddle with tagging, we need a simple, understandable tag.
highway=rural, or highway=rural_residential is a fairly minor addition to OSM tagging.
@rab I would encourage you to join us in Uganda for SOTM Africa and participate in the discussion.
Comment from Warin61 on 28 April 2017 at 00:25
The present wiki on highway=unclassified is very confused. It comes from the UK use of taking the OS mapped road types into OSM . in this case ‘unclassified’. Works well in the UK. But is not well defined for elsewhere in the world! People have been grappling with it for many years.
I take a ‘guide’ not a ‘rule’ from the wiki. In this case I take highway=tertiary to be a connection between villages. A connection from a village through to several homes is highway=unclassified., a connection to a single home .. usually highway=service. Do remember the word ‘guide’.
Adding another road type into OSM? where do they fit between the present road types? will there definition be significantly different from the present road types? … how will they be rendered differently from the present OSM road types? Is there not already enough road variety within OSM?