KIS Submarine Cables Import
KIS Submarine Cables Import was a manual import of "Kingfisher Information Service" http://kis-orca.eu submarine cables data around the UK, carried out by User:Olvagor in late 2010.
Permission / License
User:Olvagor sought permissions and received an email from the "Engineering Services Manager For and on behalf of Guernsey Electricity Ltd": "I have no objections for our cable routes to be imported. Regards". This was recorded along with several other such permissions at DE:Kommunikation#ab Juni 2010.
Dated 20th Sept 2010, the import was carried out shortly after.
Data
The dataset has route positions of submarine cables for fishing purposes, covering UK and northern European waters. Their data can browsed on an interactive (google) map: http://kis-orca.eu/map (Post-import the OpenStreetMap data can now also be browsed via openinframap.org)
In 2010 the data was taken from an excel file available at: http://www.kisca.org.uk/ThinnedCables_Feb_2010.zip . The whole website has appears to have since been moved to http://kis-orca.eu . It is not clear if the same or similar data is listed among the "downloads" on the new site (TODO: Can Olvagor confirm?)
Covered area
The following areas are covered:
| Area | South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Sea - North & West | 58°00′ N | 21°00′ W | 66°12′ N | 05°00′ E |
| North Sea - Central | 53°00′ N | 02°36′ W | 58°00′ N | 10°00′ E |
| North Sea - South | 50°52′ N | 00°20′ E | 53°09′ N | 05°35′ E |
| English Channel | 48°22′ N | 04°02′ W | 51°00′ N | 01°55′ E |
| South Western Approaches | 47°20′ N | 13°00′ W | 51°40′ N | 03°00′ W |
| Irish Sea | 51°27′ N | 07°36′ W | 55°40′ N | 02°44′ W |
The limitation to these areas leads to (transatlantic) cables being cut off in the middle of the sea.
Quality
The data is thinned to preserve an accuracy of 10m. Its quality looks mixed in my (User:Olvagor) opinion, but I have no other data for comparison to endorse/disprove that impression.
A handful of cables with apparently bad quality (jumping nodes) were deliberately not imported.
Additionally, especially when it comes to inactive cables (disused=yes), large segments are missing, from which I don't know if the data is error prone or if the cable was actually removed from the ground of the sea.
Import
Check for existing data
The import was done manually, i.e. the data was a little bit augmented (capitalization, spelling errors, additional information) and uploaded using JOSM.
For about 50% of the cables, I (User:Olvagor) checked if they were already present in OSM, which wasn't the case for a single one. The rest were then imported without explicit checks. If I created redundant data, please inform me (or fix the problem yourself, if you can).
Tagging Schema
The tagging schema was debated on the german mailing list.
- communication=line respectively power=line
- name=*
- operator=*
- source=Kingfisher Information Service, February 2010, http://www.kisca.org.uk/charts.htm
- submarine=yes
This schema looked good to me (User:Olvagor) but later on additional suggestions were made. Please feel free to improve the tagging.
In the data there was no cable tagged as both power and communication cable. But I found at least one segment, where power and communication cables ran parallel. Maybe these cables are just a single one in reality.
seamark tags
The following seamark tags were suggested later (not actually part of the import). These have have since been added to some but not all of the imported data (e.g. not on [1] as of 2019)
- seamark:type=cable_submarine
- seamark:cable_submarine:category=power/transmission/telephone/telegraph/mooring/optical/ferry
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| power | Electricity supply |
| transmission | High voltage power |
| telephone | Telephone |
| telegraph | Signalling |
| mooring | Mooring chain or cable |
| optical | Fibre optic cable |
| ferry | Ferry cable |
Changesets
The import was carried out back in 2010 by the olvagor user account.
It may be possible to list all the changesets(?) but in the meantime some examples: