Lights

First encounters

After mapping street lights and poles and then Seamark lights I looked deeper into how to map light mostly light that is made my man and is in a consistent location. The addition of mapping lighting in Street Complete made this question greater with a tag like lit=yes this is great and all but not very descriptive if talking about a street or a way that may have puddles of lights at each street light.

Beyond

This has taken me to the point of looking at adding night lighting to the tops of power poles or rotating beacons on top of airport towers. These sorts of things could be found it mapping seamarks but for the most part is not appropriate for Open Sea Map. This is the line between it exists and there is a standard to make the light show and to add the correct tags to describe its sequence of flashing but it is not a seamark light but there is overlap between. There are power pole or tower lights that do show on nautical charts.

Thoughts and reflection

Are we mapping with enough detail, is it easy for a first time mapper to contribute, and are we mapping for the renderer? Anything I missed below?

Lit:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:lit

Highway:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:flashing_lights https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtraffic_signals https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:crossing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dstreet_lamp

Railway:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Dlevel_crossing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Dsignal

Man_made:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dlighthouse

Seamark: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Seamarks/Lights https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Seamarks/INT-1_Section_P

Complicated Light mapping. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Seamarks/Sectored_and_Directional_Lights

Aviation: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Aviation_Obstacle_Light

I am following ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ as they are leading the way with a diary entry. This will be a work in progress entry until the end of May.

• Mapping OSM
  • I continue to map railroads and railroad infrastructure. I keep an eye on the North American railway editing as I hope to use the data some time in the future.
  • seamark, I slowly add more to seamark with lights and lit infrastructure.
  • lit, with the above light mapping I have started to look at the lit key on the wiki.
  • I have done some local data shifting to align with import data from buildings.
  • started using Street Complete which has brought on more mapping of sidewalks and parking infrastructure.
  • working on mapping the local community with better on the ground data from the Street Complete app.
• Mapping OHM
  • Continue to add data to the greater Seattle area thanks to 1936 through 2021 imagery from King County and older TOPO maps from the federal government.
  • added some historically news worthy data to OHM. Always interested to see currently history also included on OHM
  • added more of I-90/route10/sunset highway leading out of Seattle.
• Discussions

  • Railway

    • Always discussions railway related on the slack us. Most recent was one on switch locks. So railway:switch:lock=yes or railway:switch:lock=no or railway:switch:lock=dispatcher.
    • discussion on traffic signal operated level crossings
    • discussion on tagging disused and abandoned crossings as they are different depending on imagery.
    • discussion on use of railway=signal_box for North American bungalows and signal cabinets. this includes any dispatcher controlled boxes track side or crossing boxes.
    • discussion and looking to connect with other about how to tag signals meaning lighted signals in North America. Still looking for input here or on the OpenRailwayMap mailing list.

  • General Discussion

    • discussion on the use of acronyms in general communication and how it limits communication by others. How it might create a limited or exclusive communication. Lots of users on the Slack channel when I brought it up were against my perspective.
    • discussion on slack about the lit key. Use of tagging suggested by the ID editor and the inclusion of those tags on the wiki. Discussion of the “Data Item” on the left and the “tag info” on the right. Got an introduction to the tag info list option for the wiki and further discussion on how to implement that on the wiki.
• Wiki Changes
  • Railway changes with the addition of railway:switch:lock=*
  • Lit changes to include other recommended tags within the ID editor and try to describe them so that others will make similar edits in the future. Please change the formatting or list depreciated or not recommended tags instead of deleting them.

Always making edits surrounding edits of railroads with gps traces and Tiger Road data on. I often find data that has not been entered this way.