Refreshed proposal - Emergency=disaster response

General talk Tagging general discussion
77

I’d ignore all elements of building use and just tag the building based on what the building itself looks like. It might be building=office, it might be building=industrial, it might be something else again.

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| os-emmer
November 20 |

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Kovoschiz:

If a hardware tech company has a workshop in their office, it would still be =office .

I can’t find anything about this in the wiki. If I think about an office, I think about rooms with desks, computers and documents. For example something like this (source):

If the building includes a workshop of a significant size I am not sure what building=* I would use. An example for an workshop is this (source):

If a building consists of

  • offices with desks and computers
  • workshop with tools
  • kitchen
  • lockers
  • showers/toilets
  • storage for food and household articles
  • conference/teaching rooms

How would you tag such a building? Even though building=yes would not be wrong, it would be nice to find something more detailed. How are your opinions on using building=office?

There are different types of offices. Question is whether we would want to distinguish them, and if yes, how, subtags or different main tags?

From the above list, what around here is expected in offices typically is:

  • kitchen (for preparing coffee, with a fridge, not full featured usually)

  • toilets

  • conference rooms

what is not usually expected:

  • workshop

  • lockers

  • showers

these are typical to factories and other places where manual work is performed.

Storage for food and household articles can be found everywhere in small not worth to mention quantities, otherwise these take more room in places like restaurants, hotels, etc.

79

More offices are starting to have showers for the benefit of employees commuting by bike (may not be always necessary depending on weather and bike infrastructure) , or doing workouts . Lockers might be found at eg a security office, and bus or train depot.
Google offices can have full-sized kitchens (aside from canteens), gyms, and indoor ball courts or playgrounds. Doesn’t make them retail or civic related. An building=university or commercial lab building=office can have workshops and labs next to lecture halls and offices.
But anyway, this isn’t critical for this proposal. The argument is you don’t need a builidng= for each function.

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80

I totally agree. From what I’ve read I conclude that there is consensus that

  • we do not need building=disaster_response as there is no unique building style for the disaster-response organisation buildings.
  • the buildings should instead be tagged with an already existent building=* tag according to the wiki page.
  • a seperate discussion thread about the exact meaning of building=office, building=garage, building=industrial or others can be started by anyone.
  • emergency=disaster_response should be added to the node/area resembling the disaster-respnse-unit similar to amenity=police or amenity=fire_station and not to every buidling=*.

Is this conclusion correct? If not please tell me.

A different question I asked that wasn’t realy answered is:
What exactly do we want to tag with emergency=disaster_response? Every facility of a disaster-response-organisation including admiistrative offices, warehouses, academys and so on? Or only the local stations from where a mission is started?

I am realy not sure about this. On the one hand all of these facilitys are relevant for disasters. On the other hand they are very different and grouping them in one tag may be confusing. While small disasters can be managed by one local station alone, for bigger disasters logistic help from a warehouse or administrative help from an governmental office may be needed.

After reading a comment from @Kovoschiz I think we should make emergency=disaster_response fitting to amenity=fire_station and amenity=police. So we should change the definition in the proposal to only use emergency=disaster_response for local stations, not academys, warehouses and so on. A detailed tagging scheme for these could be part of a seperate proposal at a later point in time.

What do you think about this?

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81

Going back to lifeguards, I put in there:

“This tag is to indicate the permanent, or semi-permanent locations (e.g. structure is removed over winter, but is replaced in the same position the following summer), such as lifeguard towers or buildings, that lifeguards will be found while on duty.”

“For lifeguard administration / storage offices / buildings, where it is unlikely that an actual lifeguard will be available, consider tagging as office=lifeguard only, without the emergency=lifeguard tag included.”

So office=emergency_response on the admin office & warehouses?

82

The problem I see here is the conflict with office=government for offices of disaster response organisations that are governmental. Maybe a solution could be office=disaster_response + operator:type=government or office=government + disaster_response=office.

I would like to keep it as simple as possible so I want to avoid any not absolutely necessary tag. But at the moment it feels like emergency=disaster_response is not enough. And I like the parallels to emergency=lifeguard.

I tried to come up with a tagging scheme for every

facility of a not-military organisation that has the main objective to help the civil population during and after natural or anthropogenic disasters by working in the affected area but does not have firefighting or medical service as their main competence

with different tags for different facility types. I basicly added disaster_response=* with different values to distinguish the facility types.

local/duty station administrative place school/college/academy training area storage depot/warehouse
main relevance of place meeting point for members for regular training and maintenance self administrative office work members getting schooled in theory and praxis members practice under near realistic conditions equipment is stored to be distributed when necessary
similar tags amenity=police
amenity=fire_station
lifeguard=base
military=base		 police=offices
military=office
office=lifeguard		 police=academy
military=academy		 military=training_area ?
emergency disaster_response - - - -
disaster_response base office academy training_area depot

This table just shows an idea. It is not complete or finished. What do you think about it? Should we refine this concept or limit this proposal to emergency=disaster_response?

There seems to be an inconsistency with the office tags for similar organisations. Sometimes office is the key, sometimes its the value. And sometimes it is in plural. All 3 cases can be seen in the table. Is there a reason for that?

83

military=office has been asked before. Talk:Tag:military=office - OpenStreetMap Wiki
police=offices is not necessarily the same as office= . police=offices can be an office complex for the whole site. office= could be used for individual identifiable offices inside. Fundamentally, I would say this is what offices in general are missing. There is only landuse= =commercial , and =institutional / =civic_admin / =governmental ; while =mall exist for shops.
I prefer if the appropriateness of having individual =academy , =training_area , and =depot / =storage can be considered together with other emergency services. Otherwise, it looks redundant if fire_service=training_area + disaster_response=training_area etc is to be used when they are shared. So I won’t be opposed to having only emergency=disaster_response first.

84

Certainly in regard to the Australian SES, they don’t have either academies or dedicated training areas!

Training is done at a unit level only, so at your home base, or possibly also the local Park / Showgrounds or similar.

In regard to Government offices that may be responsible for administering them, I’d stick with plain office=government + government=*.

Checking TI fr options, we have
=public_safety x 454 (undocumented)
(https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Agovernment%3Demergency) x 175
=civil_defense x 25
=disaster_management x 15

Of those, =emergency would seem the way to go?

85

police=offices is not necessarily the same as office= . police=offices can be an office complex for the whole site.

the “police” key is populated with a mingle-mangle of orthogonal values, if I used one of them before I would now look for alternative tagging possibilities:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/police#values

the France-variation of the police tag seems the most logical, describe the type of police:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/police:FR#values

86

There’s possibly Tag:emergency=control_centre - OpenStreetMap Wiki for what’s described there. Currently it is described for emergency call dispatch, but that’s seems too restrictive, and not exactly the same. It forms a good question as this doesn’t suggest the need of a =control_centre for each emergency service.

87

It’s still not logical, as police:FR= doesn’t describe the type of =police station. Is it a jurisdiction or subdivision headquarters, or local station? Most glaringly, police posts viz kouban from Japan are not full-sized police stations. Ignoring the issue of different jurisdiction and organizations, military= now is a feature, with military_service= as an attribute for what force it is.

88

Ok, that is surprising for me. The THW does some training in the local stations but also in other places. Typical options are:

  • Training in the local station (I proposed disaster_response=base)
  • Training somewhere outdoors in public spaces (can’t be mapped)
    • Setting up a pump in a river and pumping the water back in the same river, just to train how to set up pumps and hoses
    • Cut down trees in a forest to train how to do this in case of storm damage
    • Going into houses that are about to be demolished to train how to break through a concrete wall
  • Training in special training areas owned by the THW. They often consist of ruins and tunnels, see hidden pictures at the bottom (I proposed disaster_response=training_area)
  • Training in one of the three big school/universiry like “Ausbildungszentren” where professional trainers/teachers work. They consist of hotel like sleeping places, school/conference rooms for theoretical lessons and outdoor training areas for practical lessons, see hidden picture below (I proposed disaster_response=academy)
  • Training in facilitys owned by firefighters or military (tagging scheme of them is not part of this proposal)

If the Australian SES does not have anything beside training with local units all of this is not necessary for it. As long as we only know about the German THW as an organisation with these facilitys there is no sense in discussing a world wide tagging scheme for them. As long as no one with knowlege of other organisations joins this disussion I think we should limit the proposal to emergency=disaster_response for local stations of disaster resonse organisations. office=government + government=emergency for administrative offices already exists, as I just learned. Stuff like disaster_response=base/academy/training_area/depot/... or a different scheme to store this information could be part of a seperate proposal after emergency=disaster_response got approved and adopted.

As my post with the reworked definition got 2 thumbs up I changed the definition in the proposal to:

emergency=disaster_response applies to a station of a not-military organisation that has the main objective to help the civil population during and after natural or anthropogenic disasters by working in the affected area but does not have firefighting or medical service as their main competence. The place is used for storing and repairing equipment (hand tools, trucks, boats, safety gear, …), training the members (volunteers or paid ones) and doing administrational tasks. It is the place where the members start a mission after getting alarmed.

pictures
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89

If I understand the posts and reactions of @Kovoschiz and @Fizzie41 right you two also favor the plan to limit this proposal to emergency=disaster_response and move the discussion about a more detailed tagging scheme like disaster_response=depot/academy/warehouse/... or something similar to a later point. I just added a new section “Future plans” to the proposal that describes exactly this.

If anyone thinks that a more detailed tagging scheme than just emergency=disaster_response for the local stations is necessary feel free to say so at any time.

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90

This

together with your reference to
emergency_service=

makes me think that that would be a great way of completely re-doing everything concerning emergency services!

Bring everything together into one scheme rather than the current mix of amenity / building / emergency:
landuse=emergency_service + emergency_service=police / fire / ambulance / rescue + police=station + station=“general_duties” / detectives / SWAT

Well & truly s discussion for a later time though!

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91

If Croatian case at least, “Civilna zaštita” (literally translated “Civil protection”) is a government organization structure under the umbrella of “Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova” (Ministry of internal affairs - which also controls the police force, personal IDs/passports issuance etc).

The organization does not just volunteer manpower during a disaster, but has its own organization, equipment, etc. for disaster relief, is that correct?

Yes, in Croatian case. For example, during 2020 earthquakes in Croatia, they provided food, drink, power and temporary shelters (tents) as well as semi-permanent shelters (mobile houses, still used years after in some cases). They also provide logistics and material and people for flood prevention, are responsible for manning early warning & alerting systems, handle 112 emergency phone call number, etc. They even have a task force dedicated for marking and removing minefields (even 30+ years after the war…) in civilian areas.

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92

What if we take a different approach:

How about start with a disaster. Disasters can be simple auto accident or multiple car plie-up. A factory fire or mountain flood. Then try to catalog each of the services that might required to save lifes and minimize damage to property.

It shouldn’t matter whether the organization is volunteer, professional or military run. Mainly because victims of a disaster don’t care who provides them assurance. Such as which fire department rescues those stuck in a burning building. And whether a army medic, a county EMS or local doctor aids the injured.

We can start by filling in missing tags and replace those that are too specific. My aim to create a cohesive collection of tags, someone should be query a regions capabilities.

93

@IanH Was that in regard to my comment re emergency_service=*?

I think that should be split off into it’s own discussion rather than complicate matters here.

94

Hi @Matija_Nalis and thank you for your input about an aditional organisation.

If I understand you right, the “Civilna zastita” is an organisation that has some similaritys to the Australian SES and the German THW. Does the Civilna zastita have facilitys that match the definition below? If not, what aspects are not fullfilled?

emergency=disaster_response applies to a station of a not-military organisation that has the main objective to help the civil population during and after natural or anthropogenic disasters by working in the affected area but does not have firefighting or medical service as their main competence. The place is used for storing and repairing equipment (hand tools, trucks, boats, safety gear, …), training the members (volunteers or paid ones) and doing administrational tasks. It is the place where the members start a mission after getting alarmed.

95

Hi Ian and thanks for joining the discussion,
I am not sure what you are exactly trying to say but I am trying to answer as well as possible. If I totally missunderstood what you meant please correct me.

As of now, there is consensus that volunteer and professional organisations are both included in the use of emergency=disaster_response. My thoughts about excluding military organisations is the following:
If we used emergency=disaster_response for every organisation that acts in disasters we would need to include all the army/marine/air force facilitys into this tag. Because a war is an antoprogenic disaster and the military tries to protect the civil public from the opposing military. But the military is very different from civil defense/protection organisations in what they do.

It was already meantioned that the current situation for tagging facilitys of emergency organisations is not perfect at all. But as cleaning this up is a very big and ambitious project I think that this idea should be seperatd from the current proposal. Adding a more specific tagging scheme for disaster response organisations is already a “Future plan” but to keep it simple it is not part of this proposal. I also like @Fizzie41’s draft for a detailed and consistend taggning scheme, but as he/she said, this is something for a seperate discussion.

96

Even though some detailes of the already discussed aspects may change due to feedback from the latest posters, I would like to already introduce a new topic. The last section that currently exists in the proposal but is without content is Rendering.

Before we discuss how we want to render a disaster-response-station we first should discuss if disaster-response-stations should be rendered and if this should be part of this proposal. So my question is:

Schould any kind of rendering of emergency=disater_response on the standard map be part of this proposal?

pro:

  • A world wide unified tagging scheme is a feature that is relevant for a lot of people.
  • The stations can be used for orientation. At least for the German THW there are often road signs guiding to the stations and the stations themselve often have some signs too.
  • In case of a disaster the stations may be the place to get help.

con:

  • A rendered feature that is for most people not relevant on a daily baisis would make the map confusing.
  • emergency=disaster_response has basicly no use at this point. We have no empiric proof that this tag works at all. The discussion about if and how to render it is more sensfull once the tag proofs that it works as intended.
  • There were already thoughts about unifying the tagging scheme of different facilitys (academys/warehouses/training areas) of different similar organisations (police/fire fighters/water rescue/…). The “If?” and “How?” of the rendering of all these organisations could be a combined in one proposal at a later point.

What do you think abut this topic? Which pro/con arguments can you think of?