this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023

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Temporary (mid-term) closure for forest-fire not allowed? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by MrMusAddict@lemmy.world to c/openstreetmap@lemmy.ml

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Hey guys.

There's a highway that connect the coast to inland, and without it drivers have a 4-hour detour. It has been closed for the past month while a forest fire has been fought by lots of fire crews. It's been burning since August 15th, so over a month now actually.

They've finally mitigated the fire enough that they are temporarily re-opening the highway, however it's remaining closed 8am - 4pm Mon-Fri so that the firemen are not blocked by congestion. When it's not closed between those hours, only 1 lane is open and traffic is led by patrol cars. There is no ETA for a full re-opening.

I went to go apply a condition, when I realized that no one had actually closed the road in the first place. So I added something like "conditional=no @ (Mon-Fri 8:00-16:00)" (I forget the exact syntax).

A day later, someone came in and reverted the change saying "the consensus is that only changes lasting 3 or more months should be made. There are people who download these maps for offline use. So no temporary closures."

But, the DOT of both states this fire is affecting are begging drivers to stop using GPS to the coast on this route - people are driving into active fire zones.

Does concession for offline users actually supersede safety?

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[–] pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Our map data is often downloaded and used offline on various devices for several weeks or months. For offline data to be useful, it should at least be expected to remain unchanged in the next few weeks when you map it.

yes, by this blurb, concession for offline users does supersede safety.

i'm an editor active enough to have been granted foundation membership but hadn't known this rule; it indicates a view of osm as analogous to a paper map rather than for real-time navigation. if a change of less than weeks' length is discouraged, i can't in good conscience steer my friends away from google maps, as navigation is not a primary use case.

[–] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hmm, OSM is perhaps the biggest base for alternative navigational software. Seems like a huge design flaw.

I'm obviously oblivious to the implementation difficulties, but it seems like it should be extremely simple to add something akin to a "temporarily closed until" field, so that uses can set and forget, and it'll resolve itself without a secondary edit.

That way, offline users can ignore this field, and nav software must use it.

[–] pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 points 1 year ago

i am not sure it's a flaw at all. the conditional tag syntax is based on opening_hours, which should be able to express 'closed at these times until that date'. there are ways to finesse this. but as long as the published guideline is 'don't do this', there's little point pondering practical solutions.

[–] amapanda@en.osm.town 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@MrMusAddict @pootriarch within OSM, it's easy to add a tag like that. Alas, it's getting data users to _use_ that tag can be tricky...

[–] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Not too difficult, I imagine. Especially if it's a default field in the UI under Access.

As for the companies making the nav software itself, I'm sure they'd love to implement temporary closures.

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You think about present users, but you should also think about the future. I found "temporarily" closed roads on osm which were forgotten. The road block lasted for a month irl, the editor forgot it and it remained closed for 6 years on the map. I found while debugging why a router was sending me a longer route.

Map software can add additional data, e.g. I know Magic Earth knows current road closures and traffic situations from different sources, it display them alongside the osm map, and considers them for routing.

It's also documented as a best practice: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Don't_map_temporary_events_and_temporary_features

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It would be nice if we could map these temporary closures with an expiration date so that it goes away by itself.

[–] pietervdvn@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even then, it should be resurveyed as the road closure might have ended sooner or might be delayed. It's the resurveying that is the tricky part.

[–] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really tricky at all. Especially if they limit the expiration date to be within the gap of the current closure logic (min 3-6 months).

Especially "especially" if they made the expiration date a new field, one that offline users could ignore, and navsoftware could use imperatively.

[–] pietervdvn@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Well, please give it a shot then! 9ne can write a script that does this maintainence automatically.

[–] tallwookie@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

which fire?

[–] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Smith River Complex @ Gasquet Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest (SRF) - #SmithRiverComplex https://share.watchduty.org/i/10468

[–] tallwookie@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

that's a relatively high level of containment for a complex of that size - but safety is paramount. rerouting around the complex is probably the best option unless you're familiar with driving in/near forest fires.