Replacement data sources for Canvec/Osm

natural=water / waterway=* - See my previous post. We should be getting this data elsewhere. We might also want to reduce the fidelity of the data a bit, but that’s a matter for another post.

natural=wetland - I think this is fine to pull from CanVec.

natural=glacier - This should also be pulled from the NRCAN hydrography shapefiles. They are sliced into many more pieces in the CanVec files and uploaders have not been taking the time to splice them back together. See the glaciers south of Bella Coola for an example of how I believe it should be done, vs north of Bella Coola where they are split into many pieces.

natural=reef - Does CanVec have this tag? I seem to remember it have water=intermittent (or is it natural=water+intermittent=yes). It seemed like NRCAN used this tag differently than we would use natural=reef so I didn’t upload. I would need to refresh my memory.

natural=peak - Use these! But first, search for any with “Range”, “Mountains”, or “Hills” in the name (In JOSM use this search: “natural=peak name:Range OR natural=peak name:Mountains OR natural=peak name:Hills”). Inspect each of the search results to confirm that they are in fact mountain ranges, and change the natural=peak tag to natural=mountain_range.

highway=unclassified - I would lean towards not using this. They’re not going to be anywhere near complete and most major roads (which are shown in CanVec) will already be mapped. Could be used on a case-by-case basis I guess.

addr: - I tried using this data in a few places where it was missing, but JOSM through so many validation errors that I quickly gave up. I don’t think it’s usable.

place=* - Should not be used by default. Occasionally you might find something useful. Most cities/towns/hamlets have already been mapped by other methods and the CanVec data had the node in the wrong spot in most cases. And they all seemed to be tagged place=locality which is wrong.

natural=land - Not useful on its own, but IIRC this tag contains many mountain passes. A search for “natural=land name:Pass OR natural=land name: Col” in JOSM will turn up most of them, and they should be tagged with natural=saddle.

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