Hi Jannis Deeleman,

Did you physically record this boundary marker? I only ask as I am interested in the markers along this border.

The list goes on. In Zambia and Zim, and possibly Malawi a dambo is a very prominent feature that could be a seasonal wetland but also a grassland depending on the time of year but is not a wet meadow. On many Zambian maps they are shown as wetlands but may have names that include the word plain in them. A dambo with a seasonal pond of water in it is called a pan, this is usually a waterhole in game parks. Many 'swamps' in Zambia are not true swamps but are in fact an ecosystem with their own classification, Zambesian Flooded Grasslands, this includes the Okavango.

This is the problem with a worldwide map with a mainly Western dominance in the classification system.

I have been thinking about slimes dams and tailings ponds. I think landfills more accurately refer to waste dumps while mine waste should have a separate tagging system, tailings ponds being just one of the possibilities. The term tailings I think refers specifically to mine or quarry waste. Tailings ponds are where the waste is a liquid or slurry, that may dry out over time but other waste is in a dry form and may be just heaped, more like a landfill. I will contact the proposer of tailings pond and see what he thinks.

Hi

I will get on to the mapper that created the tags and see how we go from there. I agree that in Africa they are not called 'ponds', usually slimes dams or mine dumps. In fact we use the term 'dam' to refer to the water held back by a dam wall whereas the technically correct term is 'dam' for the wall and lake or reservoir for the impounded water. In parts of the world the 2 can have 2 different names, Lake Mead in the US is held back by the Hoover Dam for example. Here we say Lake Kariba is impounded by the Kariba dam wall.

Hi,

I am not suggesting we leave the landscape blank. The best would be to try get tailings pond officially rendered, otherwise we are tagging for the renderer, ie providing a tag to make sure the feature shows up on the map even if it is not an entirely correct tag, this is a big no no in OSM . OSM data is not only used to render the map and can be accessed by many data users in a number of ways. As an example if an organisation wanted to plot the position of all mine tailings dams they would have to filter the data for landfill sites and manually filter for tailings dams by reviewing the available imagery. If the tailings pond tag was used it would be a one step operation. I will contact the proposer of the tailings pond tag to see about rendering, elsewhere I have seen this could be a drawn out process but worth doing in the long run since, as you say, they are a significant feature all over Southern and Central Africa. In todays environmentally conscious world I am sure they are of considerable interest.

Hi KwaXoloXolo,

Is 'slimes dam' not a uniquely South African term for a tailings dam or tailings pond? Either way it is not the name of the dam or pond. Furthermore I don't think the tag landuse=landfill adequately describes the feature, a better tag would be man_made=tailings_pond. Unfortunately this is not rendered by OSM and would require a campaign to have it rendered, possibly in a similar fashion to a landfill site.

H Martini,

Just want to point out that way/1226630102 is probably not connected to way/903013604 but a track that runs parallel to it. You will notice there is a large area of unorganized tracks bordering an area of very obvious squared off organized ways, this is because this is a block of what is known as small scale or peasant farms (disorganized tracks) and a block of what are known as commercial farms. There will be a fence running along way/903013604 and the only reason it looks like it may be a more substantial highway is because there will be a cleared firebreak along the track along the fence line. This is the reason there may be 2 tracks running parallel, actually 1 either side of the fence. There is generally no connecting track but may be paths. If you go to node/8486642578, where way/1226628594 connects to way/903013604, you can see the parallel tracks and see that there is no connection. At node/6442890251 there is a unfenced area to give access for the utility company to the substation and there is an unclassified way where there is a connection to the the D176 and on into the small scale farms.

Hi Martin,

As you say it depends on soil type. Often circular areas of vegetation in obvious fields will also be very large anthills that have not been cleared of trees and bushes. Just a hint, it is very rare for there to be a single isolated hut or building in rural Zambia. If there is one near a field it will probably be an open sided thatched structure that is temporary, it will be used as a shelter for someone guarding against monkeys or baboons and will be in really remote areas. Collections of buildings, maybe 4 or 5, with a patchwork of fields around will be small scale family farms. In remote areas the collection of buildings will be greater in number and the fields will surround them extending a fair distance, these are villages and usually have a few larger trees in the centre. A note, you may come across areas where people have mapped buildings a number if years ago and there is nothing obvious in current imagery, because many remote houses are built with unburnt mud bricks they don't last long and a new building is built elsewhere, sometimes quite a distance away, whole villages can dissappear as a slash and burn agricultural practice is followed which is very bad for deforestation.

In obvious deforested areas mud covered rectangular charcoal kilns can be seen. These are also temporary. Charcoal burning in Zambia is a very destructive practice and has resulted in very large areas being deforested.

Regards,
Dave

Hi martinairmaps,

way/1224989540 is not a building but a large anthill. AI is not very good at differentiating between anthills and actual buildings, neither are remote mappers for that matter. Zambia is littered with thousands of anthills mapped as buildings.

As per the act The Laws of Zambia
Copyright Ministry of Legal Affairs, Government of the Republic of Zambia
The letters and figures T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 used herein refer to Inter-territorial Main Roads Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
respectively, specified in the Appendix to the Act.

Examples

From the wiki highway=trunk

Note that highway=trunk is classified by its importance in road network, not by its quality (though in given area these two will correlate extremely strongly).

In one place multilane double carriageway can be highway=primary or lower - and in another part of the world, with poor road quality highway=trunk may be single lane road surfaced with gravel.

While it may not look like a trunk road it is designated as a trunk road by the authorities here in Zambia hence the 'T' prefix

Revert bad mass import changeset/143955349. Data imported included non existent amenities such as amenity= health post - rural as well as being tagged with population figures . Many data points were clustered in small areas with different names and different district addresses which is not possible.

Hi,

I have reverted this mass import as many of the buildings have already been mapped. Agricultural Camps are not farms, they are government vet stations. Please do not mass import data, it is not recommended by OSM without discussion. Also you are using information from the Zambian Statistics office that is at least 3 years out of date.

Thank you

Hi,

Did you check these before you uploaded them? Some have already been mapped, some are way out of position and Kobil no longer operates in Zambia and have not done so for over a year now. Please don't upload a large amount of data with out first checking it. Mass imports are not recommended by OSM.

Hi Icem4k,

I notice you have been updating some of the new road developments in Lusaka and creating dual carriageways. While many of these roads have been widened and extra lanes added they are not technically dual carriageways as they are not separated by an island, ie not 2 separate carriageways. Examples of dual carriageways are obviously Cairo Road and Addis Abba Drive among others. Many of the new widened roads just have a painted line separating the lanes in opposite directions so a single carriageway. The way to tag these roads is to indicate the number of lanes ie 4 or 6, this is 2 lanes in each direction for the former and 3 for the latter. I have reverted some of your changes for this reason. I am not sure as to the status of Alick Nkhata so have not reverted it as I have not traveled on this road recently and it is not clear form the satellite imagery but I suspect it is not a dual carriageway.

For more detailed explanation see osm.wiki/Dual_carriageway and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_carriageway.

This is a major fault with AI mapping

Hi Uwaina,

These objects you have mapped are not buildings but charcoal kilns, they are temporary, being constructed from clay. They are built by local people clearing the forest and are a major problem in deforestation in Zambia

AI has the same problem, it tags smaller ones as buildings. Well everyone in Africa lives in a mud hut don't they?

Maxar was more recent than Bing so alignment as per Maxar was probably more accurate. These roads are more tracks than any other form of way, joining small family farms and will vary from year to year, season to season. The farmer will probably not own a vehicle, note absence of vehicles on the surrounding roads, but he will probably have a cart pulled by oxen and will probably use oxen to work his fields around his house. He may be able to hire a tractor from one of the more well off farmers in the area. Regular circular patterns in the fields are anthills some still have trees and bushes on them. Ruts in field are caused by rains and removal of the vegetation cover.

Will correct it. I note you have Maxar as a source for the original way, not the changeset, how are you accessing Maxar imagery as it is no longer available for use by mappers?

Did you ever consider that when these roads were first mapped they were under construction but it was never completed. Happens often in Zambia.