In Sweden we have a collection of civilian bunkers which are sort of air-raid shelters
Problem is that there isn’t a very well defined usage of how we should use this as military=bunker isn’t applicable at all (and also requires it to be in a building)
I raised this before in the name suggestion index but since we do not have a good suggestion for the name I wanted to bring it up with everyone to see what we should be using to tag civilian/air-raid shelters/bunkers
Some have tagged these as bunker_type=bomb_shelter, some as building=bunker. Casper in the Discord suggested a while back something similar to amenity=public_bomb_shelter
Given the sporadic use and it being relatively specific, I find that having something like amenity=civilian_shelter would be best, but would like to hear more thoughts on how we should start using it! In Sweden we have around 65k and they are all labelled in some way and are usually within existing buildings inside cities
As the one who brought it up again I will add my thoughts about it - or at least some, more might come.
The example that started my thoughts about it is tagged as amenety=shelter with nothing more precise as there is nothing that fits.
For me this looks wrong as a shelter should more or less always be “open” for the public and this kind of shelter is only open in case it is needed and after some preparation time.
According to our wiki:
military=bunker
bunker_type=bomb_shelter
Not really happy with it.
military=bunker does not fit for me as this implicates (for me) that this is a installation used by the military (and in the end would be Ok to be targeted in case of a conflict) and actually the places we are discussing are meant for civilians to be protected in case of a conflict (even though this is not really respected in a alot of conflicts going on on our world).
I would avoid any tagging with building= as this implicates it beeing a building itself which mostly is not the case.
amenity= should work fine. But which value?
public_bomb_shelter: Well some (if they will be mapped at all) might not be public (in private houses, within a industrial area…), or might not be thought for protection in case of bombing but maybe floding (even thogh those I know are for both cases)
civilian_shelter: Actually looks fine for me (at the moment)
I had a look at the map here in Switzerland for those “Zivilschutzanlage” I know about or remembered sleeping in during my military-service. Well none of them is mapped at all, so not much help for the moment.
Many of them are used for other purposes (storage, short time accomodiation for asylum seekers, group accomodation that can be rented (or used by the army while in the yearly 3-weeks repetition courses…), rehearsel room for musicians…) now that we do not need them, but none of them is mapped either.
I’m not sure if I’ve understood your intentions correctly as English is not my first language, but what you are describing in the ‘Tag:bunker_type=bomb_shelter’ entry is a bomb shelter for civilians.
I live in the Korean Peninsula, which is currently under tense military confrontation between North and South Korea, and I am aware of several different types of government-managed bomb shelters.
I have also done some research on bomb shelters in other countries, especially Taiwan, which is still under tension, in order to write this entry.
Some of these facilities are open all the time, some are used for other purposes during normal times, and some are opened when there are signs of war.
These bomb shelters can be broadly viewed as “military” facilities, and I do not believe that “military” necessarily means that they must be used and managed by the military.
I don’t think it’s possible or reasonable to categorize bomb shelters with a tag that reflects all of the different conditions that apply to them (because the conditions vary so much, I think the term should be used rather generically).
I just ran a few overpass turbo queries to get a picture of the tagging.
The tag bunker_type=bomb_shelter is used about 4600 times over the whole world and mostly together with military=bunker so this combination seems to be accepted.
More of a surprise was that more than 4200 of them were in one country: Romania.
So I checked some of them there and from what I could see they are for civilians (exactly what we were talking about skyddsrum or Zivilschutzanlage).
Those I checked in other countries beside Sweden and Switzerland were often old military bunkers (mostly world-war2).
Of course I can live with the military tag even if it is not my favourite - but OSM is not just for me
I will now change the skyddsrum in Kiruna which started all this writing according to this scheme.
Edit: Just to dicover that JOSM does not show bunker_type=bomb_shelter in it’s drop down menu…
One question remains: Why are these facilities not mapped in a wider scale by now (except for Romania)? No interest, not easy to see, “keep them secret”, unawareness of the tagging? Time might tell…
There are many in former Yugoslavia, as they were mandatory for cities, in the residential areas. Many are destroyed now and no longer in use for their original purpose. Also, private ones, for single-family houses, were mandatory but one could register pretty much anything dug into the ground, as a shelter.
Why do we allow ourselves to get into the confusion around military=bunker though? I’m Fine with bunker_type=bomb_shelter or otherwise, but what is differentiating between an actual military bomb shelter vs civilian emergency shelters?
I still feel like we should re-think the use of military=bunker for civilian non-military bunkers, as it seems many of them are not even remotely managed by the military
I think military= doesn’t nessecarily imply which party manages/owns/uses the map feature. It rather implies that this is a military-related feature, regardless of wether it’s government-run.
Even the wiki on military=bunker reads “as well for bunkers for civilians.” so it’s explicitly documented. Please use caution when mapping these objects though. See Key:military - OpenStreetMap Wiki under Usage->Legality.
I would not say that it is military related at all in Sweden, it’s a government entity that manages them all. Based on adreamy’s response above it seems to be the same in South Korea.
That’s why I wanted to bring it up because it’s been asked several times throughout the Discord and I have general uncertainty about it too. There is nothing tying these to military at all, not with construction, oversight, nor naming
But this tag combination stills creates an issue where you cannot without checking each entity whether it is a civilian bomb shelter or a military one
From my Swedish view. A military bunker is something completely different and I think this tagging must be very clear.
I imagine a scenario where after a number of weeks of extra tension it is suddenly clear that an invasion has started. Since I’m a lazy bum I did not check for shelters beforehand and now the Internet is down. As I have a few hours of battery left on my mobile device I open OSMAnd and the offline maps show me clear information on where to get protection.
In this scenario I would not like to end up at some active military installation or even worse a historic bunker from 90 years ago.
As these places can be in basements, subway stations or parking garages for me the only logic is to map it as a node with distinct and clear tags.
I found a good article (in Swedish unfortunately) here (krisinformation.se). This is like a QnA for the Swedish “skyddsrum”. I will do some translation here:
Who will make the rooms ready for use?
The property owner is the one responsible for all equipment, that the room is functioning and is opened in need. It is the refugee that is responsible for emptying it out [often used as storage], install ventilation, water barrels and toilets. Every Skyddsrum has a storage with equipment, tools and instructions.
What does it protect against?
A Skyddsrum is not a primary target. It will protect against shockwaves and splitter from bombs in the vicinity. It will proba not stand against a direct hit. It also has protection against gases and some radioactivity as well as biological weapons.
I would also argue that the tagging for these is different than the ones that are military and/or governmental. In This case these Skyddsrum are made up and kept in condition by the property owner, who also pays for the upkeep. The government are just checking that equipment is in place very seldom (like every 15 years or something).
I think military= doesn’t nessecarily imply which party manages/owns/uses the map feature. It rather implies that this is a military-related feature, regardless of wether it’s government-run.
even if the interpretation of the military key would extend beyond the current definition („ The military tag is for buildings and land used by the military (Navy, Army, Airforce, Marines).“) civilian bunkers would not be related to military.
If you are looking for a suitable key, I think amenity or man_made could be relevant. We could also use both, amenity for currently active ones and man_made for private or possibly unmaintained bunkers. This summer I have visited a friend who has bought a former central bank building which happens to have a nuclear bunker in the basement. While it is structurally in good condition, (including the doors, tunnel and escape hatch you would use to leave the building once it has collapsed above you and you ran out of food), it couldn’t serve as a nuclear shelter because the filters are not maintained and there is no petrol to run the generator, and the whole place is filled with a workshop and disposed stuff rather than food and water. This is still a bunker, but not one you would go to in case of necessity.
A bomb shelter for civilians has nothing to do with military. So I would not use military=*
It’s a shelter and you may want to go there in rough weather or so.
And since it’s a building, either on the ground or (partly) under the ground I would use building=bunker
I’m sure that that is the case, but OSM’s system of tags and values doesn’t assume that. OSM’s tags, things like military, but also natural, landuse, barrier etc. are just a way of subdividing all the possible values. In this case it doesn’t mean that the military operates the shelter - there’s an operator tag for that.
I’d use an operator tag. It has some use with bunkers currently.
I can understand 2700 including historic ones such as this. There are also a bunch of others that appear to be now museums or tourist attractions but lack those tags and others that are likely just wrong.
There are allegedly 700+ non-historic, non-disused bunkers in an area approximating to NL, but many of those have other tags such as heritage and start_date implying that they’re historic artifacts, and the tagging is inconsistent.
A building tag is not a feature type - it just says what sort of building it is. Many buildings built as one things are now used as something else (many former bunkers are museums, for example). If you want to say that it is an actual bunker you’ll need to add a tag for that, because no-one will know to look for the bunker_type flag without it.
