I am mapping the power sources for healthcare facilities and was wondering what the best practices for tagging the different sources of power a location might have. For example one location might be connected to the grid but also have diesel generators and solar panels as a backup/emergency supply. In this case would these be the appropriate tags to add?
What is the Best Practice for Tagging a Healthcare Facility with Multiple generator:sources?
How about “none”?
I’m still of firm opinion that we are not, and should not, be in the business of mapping private infrastructure that the general public need not worry about. And a changeable one at that – how is anyone supposed to verify that a hospital has procured and installed a diesel generator for backup supply, or that they decommissioned an old one?
If anywhere, this information should be in some ministry of Health and/or Ministry of Internal Affairs register to be aware of the hospital capabilities during natural disasters, but maintaining it in OSM is in my opinion a waste of time.
I have not mapped these details so far, but using electricity=grid for the facility is for sure correct. In regard of the different emergency supply generators it would be best to tag those as different objects. One for the diesel generator which normally is placed in a separate building and one for the solar panels, both according to description in the wiki.
In the original Proposal:Electricity - OpenStreetMap Wiki , they can be added with electricity:grid=yes + electricity:generator=backup . It’s only voted down for redefining electricity= for availability, and some dubious electricity:access= and electricity:fee= ideas.
Usage-wise, electricity=grid + Key:backup_generator - OpenStreetMap Wiki=yes might be used. Then electricity= is for the main source, and backup_generator= for the emergency power. But it would have problem for eg a feature fully powering itself with renewables, and selling the excess electricity back while connected to the grid. This means electricity=grid can’t be used to show it’s connected to the grid. Of course, the verifiability can be debated.
OSM is a big tent, and I certainly can’t stop anyone mapping anything they feel like.
What I can do is to try to point out futility of the whole electricity=* tagging, and I would vote against pretty much any proposal to model backup electrical supply of whatever facilities we map. First, I don’t see a use case for those data in the first place. Second, it has serious verifiability issues: even if you can see solar panels, or somehow know there is a diesel generator (which will, hovever, usually be in the basement or a machine room that the public has no access to), you don’t know how it’s used. I suppose that regulations in developed world mandate that operating rooms and intensive care have to have backup supply; but the rest of the hospital is anyone’s guess.