Adding missing airport holding position markings from FAA sources

Communities United States
1

Hello all,

I want to give notice of some airport surface editing before I do any more
of it, and to ask whether anyone has concerns with the approach.

Background: I work at uAvionix, which makes avionics and software for
airports, ATM, drone operators and manned aircraft. We use OpenStreetMap
airport data as guidance for some products, and comparing it against our own
FAA and survey derived maps I found holding position markings missing at most
of the airports I checked, including towered fields, and taxiway designators
often years out of date relative to the current FAA airport diagram.

To be explicit about licensing: our internal survey data is not a source for
the edits. It is only what showed me the two disagreed. Everything written to
OSM comes from the public-domain FAA airport diagram and FAA Airport Mapping
Database, positioned against imagery.

I have started fixing that, beginning with KRIC (Richmond International),
where I added 21 holding position ways, corrected 14 taxiway refs, added
two connectors shown on the FAA diagram, and tagged the runway thresholds.

What I add, per airport:

  • missing aeroway=holding_position, drawn as ways along the painted
    marking, tagged runway or ILS, named @
  • taxiway ref corrections where the FAA airport diagram and the FAA
    Airport Mapping Database disagree with OSM
  • missing taxiway connectors shown on the FAA diagram
  • aeroway=threshold with per-end refs on existing runway end nodes

Nothing is deleted. Holding positions for decommissioned runways are
untagged rather than removed, so the node stays. Taxiways that have come off
the current published documentation are retagged disused: or abandoned: where
the pavement is still there, not removed.

Sources are the FAA airport diagram for the current cycle and the FAA
Airport Mapping Database, both public domain, with Esri World Imagery for
positioning, plus on-site surveys we conduct together with the airport
authority. The survey data is our own first-hand observation, contributed
with permission; no third-party proprietary data is involved.

On method, and this is the part I would most like comment on. The geometry
is machine-assisted: candidate lines are computed from the imagery, the
angle fitted and the position measured. But every single line is then
rendered at roughly 60 pixels per metre with four candidate positions drawn
on it, and I pick the correct one by eye, one at a time, before anything is
written. At KRIC that review changed the computed answer on 18 of the 21
lines — 6 were on the wrong painted line, 12 were rotated by 1 to 3.5
degrees. So it is not an unattended import, but it is not hand-drawing
either, and I would rather over-disclose than under-disclose.

Method page: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_edits/ckronenburg
Activity page: Organised Editing/Activities/uAvionix airport surface markings - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Changesets carry the hashtag #uavionix-airport-markings.

Next up are KJAC (Jackson Hole) and KSAV (Savannah/Hilton Head), then
further airports at a few per month.

If a local mapper or an airport operator does not want this at their
airport, say so and I will drop that airport and revert anything already
there. Questions and objections welcome, here or by email.

Cyriel Kronenburg
uAvionix (personal email deleted by moderator)
OSM: ckronenburg

5 Likes
2

Sounds cool! As the “South Dakota Guy”, feel free to move our airports up in the list.

I looked at RIC, and noticed that iD had the following tagging error listed for these:

Aircraft Holding Position E@02/20 should be a point, not a line

  • Ignore this issue

Most features are limited to certain geometry types.

Is this something to be concerned about?

3

Thanks, i noticed the same

I guess that is a basic piece of the design thag doesnt add up to me as a hold short bar is always that, a bar (line). The only official option on OSM is a single point, which leaves it useless if you actually want to draw ut, hence the drawn line in this case.

Maybe something the community might want to change, not sure where to start with that one though :)

4

If there is a discrepancy on how to tag something that is better to be discussed before you continue with your project.

But in this case you will be good, as holding positions are defined as node and way: Tag:aeroway=holding_position - OpenStreetMap Wiki

5

That was exactly what I was looking for but couldn’t find, one of the reasons I posted here

Much appreciated, thanks

I’ll update those now for my first pass so they don’t trigger anything

6

Btw. at the moment that page is blank.

7

In that case

Should be reported as an iD bug?

2 Likes
8

Thanks, I thought I had updated it, will look at where that’s stuck

9

Updated, let me know if you have further suggestions / thoughts

The methodology is fairly unique to the US only given our deployment of airport surface systems there and the presence of public reference data, though certainly not impossible to expand

10

Looks good to me :+1:

Maybe for folks not so deep into the matter, a couple of screenshots from the steps you describe might be great and might get you some fellow mappers support :wink:

As you mentioned, you are not using third party data (except aerials and FAA data) is there a chance your automatism gets published, so others can use it as well?

11

I will try to do that, for us it starts with the airport itself as we know things are incorrect from our deployment of systems for the FAA

I’d say the automation is 80% correct right away and 20% needs “guiding” and 5% ends up with a manual finishing touch on JOSM

I’ll do a few more to get to a repeatable methodology and publish that here.

I don’t think I can technically publish a second (KJAC) set until Sept 17 when the notification period ends.

12

Done: aeroway=holding_position · Issue #12825 · openstreetmap/iD · GitHub

3 Likes
13

I suspect this is borrowed from the highway model, where the tagged point MUST be a member of a traversable way (the taxiway that passes through the hold short line).

But I think it’s reasonable to download all objects in the airport area and do spatial checks for whether the lines cross.

14

& it turns out that there’s an issue!

which relates to false positive with ```aeroway=holding_position``` (ways only) · Issue #572 · openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema · GitHub

Which, is in turn waiting on Proposal talk:Aeroway=holding position line - OpenStreetMap Wiki to be resolved one way or the other!

1 Like