Importing City of Calgary open data

Communities Canada
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The City of Calgary publishes open map data under the OpenStreetMap-compatible Open Government Licence - City of Calgary license:

highways:

buildings:

enforcement:

recreation:

other:

You might find more here: https://data.calgary.ca/browse?sortBy=relevance&pageSize=20&limitTo=maps

We’re working on importing some of this into OpenStreetMap, you can see some of the Python scripts I wrote (with ChatGPT/GitHub Copilot) for this here: github.com/verhovsky/calgary_osm_import.

So far I’ve imported the red light camera locations (without a corresponding enforcement relation though), bus shelter outlines and fixed a bunch of street names. We’re working on importing building outlines neighborhood-by-neighborhood and hopefully one day building (parcel) addresses.

All the datasets I’ve looked at in depth have had mistakes. The Intersection Safety Camera Locations dataset specifies the direction of speed cameras in an inconsistent way and has at least one camera I couldn’t find in real life, the Street Centreline dataset has at least like 30+ wrong or misspelled street names and a few artifacts, the Building Roof Outlines dataset has really good outlines generally, but they contain tons of unnecessary nodes and the outlines are often misclassified, in a neighborhood there will be a garage or two misclassified as a residence or vice versa.

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Can you confirm who is “we”?

OpenStreetMap generally has quite restrictive import processes - have you seen Import/Guidelines - OpenStreetMap Wiki ?

Well done checking it rather than importing blindly!

3 Likes
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I appreciate the contributions to the map in Calgary, as otherwise things like building outlines have been very, very slowly added over the years.

(Not trying to toot my own horn too much, but I’d say the vast, vast majority of buildings in the southwest Inner City I drew in manually and manually cross-checked the addresses, which was extremely ‘inefficient’ :sweat_smile:, but I would argue has been far, far more accurate than simple imports.)

That said, I’m very glad to hear you’ve been looking at the data and attempted to cross-check it against reality first, rather than blindly importing things and presuming it’s correct—or more correct—than what’s already on the map.

From a cursory look at the “street centreline” data, I wouldn’t presume any of it is more accurate than what’s already on OSM. You’ve already caught many errors in the intersection cameras data, and thankfully left notes on the map (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here) which I’ve tried to backfill with whatever local knowledge I have. Likewise with your attempts to clean up the names of school buildings, and remove them entirely where they’re already present on the school grounds, such as here. And you’ve paused before adding school grounds that no longer exist, which is great.

That said, some assumptions have been in error, e.g. copying the name of a school building to the school grounds where it wasn’t warranted, or “correcting” a road name incorrectly.

Looking through the data sets, I can anecdotally tell you from a cursory glance that most of them are somewhat accurate, but their spatial precision leaves something to be desired. For instance the “private water hydrants” data and “public tree locations” data seems fairly accurate in that there are hydrants and trees in the vicinity of most (but not all…) of the dots on the maps, but many are off by several metres. Same goes for the “public art locations”; I was curious whatever happened to a couple statues at Century Gardens: they’re still on the map with fixme notes added by yours truly (1, 2), but the City data still shows them in those original locations and I can tell you with 100% certainty they’re not there… :sweat_smile:

“Parcel Address Points” seem ~97% accurate, but the closer you get to Downtown the more convoluted it is. There are plenty of addresses in the data that I can tell you don’t actually exist anymore due to redevelopment, especially where townhouses and apartment buildings have been “infilling” where single-family detached dwellings used to be. Pockets of them are also blatantly non-existent, such as at the intersection of Glenmore Trail and 24th Street SE, the vicinity of which I coincidentally edited about an hour ago.

In general I would say: keep up the good work! :slight_smile: However, please do elaborate as to who “we” are, and please follow import guidelines, as per Jarek’s reply above.

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With respect to transit routes and stops, I presume you’re not working with other editors who’ve been (re-)adding them in recent months, e.g. 1, 2, 3?

I’ve noticed the route names have been (re-)named with “/number/ /name/” formatting, which I guess allegedly jives with the ‘preferred’ PTv2 format (…?), and the stops have been imported or (re-)named with a heavily abbreviated format copied from the City data, e.g. “SB 14 ST SW @ 24 AV SW”. I rather painstakingly tried to ‘unabbreviate’ these names and follow what the voice announcements on the buses actually say (e.g. “14 Street & 24 Avenue SW”) when I added them to the map in the first place, but oh well I guess… :face_with_diagonal_mouth: :man_shrugging:

In the past I got a lot of guff from people about ‘abbreviated’ quadrants in street names (and by extension addresses), so don’t be surprised if you import the transit stops and routes without changing the names you get ornery admonishments from others. (As far as I’m concerned those people can fix it if they’re so inclined; I certainly won’t lift a finger to assist. :laughing:)