I am quite new to tagging myself, but I’ve used osm for quite a while now. As I walk a lot barefoot there are some qualities of roads and paths that would be very useful to know, that I could not find in any tagging data. I have started tagging the tags like smoothnessand surface, but both of them don’t have the option to include for example how sharp the surface is, how soft it is or (especially in the city) how hot the path gets when in the sun.
I know these are very niche things, but as I would love to keep this data as strictly defined as the other ones, I am sure this data could be used outside of barefoot.
But as for my question. Does anyone know of tags like these? Or is there maybe any norm out there that people are already using? I would love to engage more and path surface/quality/etc. is one of the main things I would love to work on contributing more.
I’ve had this silly idea of creating a roller-blading map at one point. Bad surfaces make roller blading very uncomfortable as you can feel every little bump. So proper tagging would be just as important for that as for barefoot walking. Things like the type of surface, the qualities of the road, and the properties of asphalt become really important. Suddenly I want to know whether I can expect potholes, what the grain-size of the asphalt is, whether there is a gravel topcoat, etc. A motorway might be very smooth for driving, but the large grain-size makes for an uncomfortable rollerblading experience.
One thing I can immediatly think of for your situation is the surface:colour tag for indirectly indicating how heat prone a surface can be. Other than that I’m not fully sure. Maybe you could explain a bit more about the types of detail you would want to know, and how they cannot be (fully) captured by existing smoothness or surface tags.
Hi murmelgrumpf, welcome to OSM and our friendly community.
You have already looked at the correct tags for the specification of the surface of walkable ways which are smoothnessand surface. These tags give any potential user an idea of what may be expected “on the ground”, but not a precise definition. The problem with such tags is the fact that choosing one of them depends on individual estimation. A smoothness understood to be “intermediate” by one mapper will be estimated to be “bad” by another, as we have seen in a lot of earlier discussions.
This problem is getting worse the finer the graduation becomes. No way to find a precise definition to specify if a paved walkway is great to be walked barefoot as this depends heavily on personal perceiption. Having said that I believe an enganged barefoot walker knows quite well what to expect when walking in a city on asphalt, paving stones, cobblestone or the like.
Again such conditions may change very quickly. The same applies to farmland and forest tracks, hiking trails and the like. There is the nearly unused key barefoot=* which could theoratically be used to mark ways which are best choice for barefoot walking but I would refrain from that due to the above reasons.
Thinking about the heat problem in cities I remember there was a topic dealing with a map showing shaded areas in relation to the surrounding buildings and daytime but I can’t find it again. Maybe someone else may remember.
Thank you. I thought rollerbladability should be covered by smoothness and surface, but I’m no rollerblader myself so I don’t really know. As for colour, it seems to be the wrong usecase for that tag imo.
Thanks to you too, from my understanding the barefoot tag seems to be for ways that are exclusively or specially designed for barefoot use, which is not the thing I meant.
As you walk more barefoot, the ground type starts to get waaaaay more relevant and detailed in your brain. For example the heat in the summer does not only stem from shade or even colour, but mostly from the type of stone used.
As for the differences in intermediate and bad for surface type, I think the images in streetcomplete for example are very good guides, allthough I understand the problem.
The thing is, the “sharpness” of a way or however you may call it is not enterable with those other two metrics. A path in the woods with a lot of roots would be quite bumpy and difficult for other modes of transport, even walking with shoes, but would be quite pleasent for barefoot walking.
A pretty even path that is made of untreated gravel is perfect for a bike of shoed foot, but one of the worst things for barefoot. That distinction can be made even within a specific type of osm gravelsurface. Where the same granularity of gravel can be sharp or soft. That is the thing I would love to portrait.
But I don’t think there is already a tag for that and I don’t know how the process of creating a new tag type is done and furthermore if a decently new person should be the one to do it.
oh and btw, as an “engaged barefooter” myself, I know it is quite impossible to predict how barefootfriendly a path is. When it’s not summer it is a bit easier in cities, but when you get more rural it is impossible.
Because barefoot is no consideration when planning paths and roads, seemingly unimportant decisions are made between different types of rock or path, that have huge implications for the barefoot walkability of that path. I cannot fault them for not thinking about it, but that is why map data would be invaluable for that.
Broadly speaking, new tags are created by using them, perhaps documenting them in the wiki, and maybe even formally proposing them.
The taginfo tool is useful for checking if there are any similar tags already in use.
I notice that there is a reasonably popular smoothness:inline_skates tag (more than 9000 uses). I assume that attempts to define smoothness specifically for inline_skaters in more detail than the main smoothness tag. Perhaps you could follow that model with smoothness:foot (4 uses so far) or even smoothness:barefoot to be more specific.
For the heat issue, would specifying the material in more detail help? There is a small amount of usage of this on highways but it seems to be split between material and surface:material tags - see the material wiki page.
That are some great suggestions. The smoothness:barefoot sounds perfect. I would have to come up with good values. But I would love to make the tags in cooperation with other mappers. I even know of one mapper that regularily walks barefoot. I will probably make a seperate issue when I have the proposed values set. Even though I understand I could just use them, but I would rather have a discussion and people review them.
As for material that would be awsome, but I would have to stock up on my geology a lot more since I have at least 100 stone types in my head and don’t know the exact name of any one of them. But that may be something for the future and ultimately isn’t such a big deal. The sharpness is the main thing.
No doubt about that, just to add that any tag which is not self-explaining should be documented in the wiki to give other potential users an idea about the meaning.
This key uses the same values as smoothness. It is surely used to describe special inline tracks in more details but how can anyone know these details if the key is not documented? Not even mentioned on the inline skating wiki page yet.
sounds like a good approach but also requires at least a minumum of documentation to make it usable for interested mappers.
The surface material of highway is already specified with the key surface in such detail that some mappers have problems to distinguish in between the different types. The key material has a different meaning but contains a lot of duplicates of these surface values and surface:material comes with more duplicates of material.
Before adding more values it would be helpful to check which of these keys fits best for the given purpose and which additional values would make sense. Values which are so specifically that only experts understand the difference have the potential to create more confusion than clarification.
- a very good way to move forward. I am an occasional countryside barefoot hiker myself (but never in the city!) and I will be happy to add my thoughts.
Das hat jetzt überhaupt nichts mit Oberfläche / surface zu tun -
aber wenn ich barfuß unterwegs bin, dann meide ich Stellen, an denen Altglascontainer stehen (amenity=recycling recycling:glass_bottles=yes).
Es gibt auch noch andere Stellen, an denen sehr häufig Glasscherben liegen (Getränkehandel, Unfallschwerpunkte).
Meines Wissens gibt es dafür jedoch (noch?) kein tagging.
yeah, but tagging possible glass hazards that are not straight up a glass container is very temporary most of the time. I mean I have a map of glass shards in my head, but it is constantly changing. I don’t know if osm is the right db for that to be honest.
Most of the glass I encounter is just randomly on a pathway.
I didn’t mean specifying heat directly. My suggestion was based on an earlier comment that the specific material used has an influence here, so I was wondering if the materialtag in addition to the surface tag would be useful.
- a very good way to move forward. I am an occasional countryside barefoot hiker myself (but never in the city!) and I will be happy to add my thoughts.