OpenStreetMap
Just the past 3 years, because of funerals of my family or friends, I have visited 2 different public funeral homes in Taiwan, plus another big public funeral home next to my house, I now know 3 funeral homes in Taiwan, the experience makes me want to dig more about the coverage of it on osm and maybe contribute about it.
At first times I visit there, my grandma was sent to be incremented, so I thought the funeral home is just a crematorium place, so I tag it on OpenStreetMap as amenity=crematorium. However, After the second time I go to another funeral home, I realize not every funeral home has crematorium facility. In funeral home, it’s main function is a morgue and a place for people’s gathering to say some “in memory of our best…” things. Because of the feature of service they provide, public funeral homes are rather be in a easy to reach location. Most of the time, cemeteries are not close to the public funeral homes in Taiwan.
After these discoveries, I am confused. What could I do to tag funeral home? the closest definition I can find is “amenity=place_of_worship”. But it’s very strange if I tag this on funeral homes, since they only worship gods when people’s beloved ones are going to gods’ world.
I keep looking it up on osm wiki. Wow, finally I found out there’s a proposed map feature as “amenity=funeral_home”.
Great relief, I would say.
Discussion
Comment from NZGraham on 1 August 2013 at 07:50
Hi, It looks like the proposal from 2008 to create a tag “amenity=funeral_home” http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Funeral_home has been abandoned. The closest option seems to be tag “shop=funeral_directors” http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop%3Dfuneral_directors
Does this help you? I’m not sure about funeral homes in Taiwan but, here in New Zealand, they offer both religious and non-religious services depending on the beliefs of the families of the deceased person. Graham
Comment from Shangkuanlc on 1 August 2013 at 13:03
Thanks, that helps a lot. I didn’t know the tag was abandoned. The links indicate that funeral directors tag can be used in funeral parlors, which is the exact translation I saw on the official translation on Taipei city government webpage.
So I think I will switch the tag into funeral_directors. It’s very alike your description of funeral homes in New Zealand. Although it’s still a bit different in some sense of the not “shop” character of the funeral parlors in Taiwan. The funeral homes here are mostly public, so I guess less people imagine this place as a shop rather then public facilities.