User:Viper444/My Projects/Public, Protected, and Restricted Lands

Problem

There is no currently no clear defined method for tagging many public lands including parks, recreation areas, forest parks, conservation areas, nature reserves, natural areas, etc..

Depending on the size, scope, and use of the areas along with user preference, they are marked with any number of tags. This results in inconsistency, confusion, and makes it difficult to extract information about a common set of features.

Proposal

I recommend we try a new method of tagging these types of things

Here are some of the main parts of this proposal

• All parks not part of a larger park system should be tagged park=* with the exception of nature parks.

• Nature parks and other areas with natural landscapes would be tagged landuse=nature_area

• Larger parks and nature areas would be part of park networks

• Protected parks and nature areas would get protected tags and/or be part of one or many protected area relationships
• admin_level=* used for defining administrative level of operation.

Parks

Parks can be defined quite broadly. The general definition is an area designated to some specific purpose.

For our definition. Parks will generally refer to maintained/landscaped areas not dedicated or dominated to nature.

This is very similar to the way leisure=park is currently defined on the wiki.

Examples include common recreational areas in communities however it could also include business and industrial parks, theme parks, trailer parks, and so on.

The goal is to narrow down the choices and determine which type deserves it's own category.

Parks = Maintained, Landscaped, Facilities

Parks
small parks
community parks

Nature Areas = Natural features dominate

Nature Areas
Nature parks
Nature reserves
Large, often networked parks
regional and/or national parks
Most protected areas

Take a look at the proposed Key:park page to see all the different types of parks available to choose from

Key	Value	Description	Usage	Type	Replaces	Picture	Render	Current Usage
park	yes	Land dedicated to a particular purpose. Includes business, community, trailer, theme, and amusement parks	Used for general tagging of parks. More specific values should be used if possible					park=yes

Nature Areas

Now what about nature parks, wilderness areas, forest parks, grassland areas, savannas, natures areas, reserves, refuges, and so on?

These could all be considered forms of nature areas. Some with more or less levels of protection.

Sometimes these are called parks as well which can confuse things. However these areas tend to be naturally landscaped. So we will keep nature parks under this category of nature areas instead of parks to avoid confusion.

The description is typically a form of nature and an area and/or protection type.

For example -

Term	Nature type	Area and/or Protection
Nature Area	nature	Area
Wildlife Protection Zone	Wildlife	Protection Zone
Spotted Newt Conservation Zone	Wildlife	Conservation Zone

Some of these areas have more or less protections and other uses however they are still designated nature areas so we will take care of that first.

These should be tagged with the proposed tag landuse=nature_area

landuse

nature_area

Designated areas used for the preservation or enjoyment of nature

Nature parks, areas, reserves, preserves, conserves, nature, wildlife, and biological protected Areas, refuges, sanctuaries, management areas, forest Parks, grassland parks, wildernesses, etc

leisure=nature_reserve leisure=park

landuse=nature_area

Next if the area is specifically a type of designated nature area, we can specify that with a nature tag

nature=(nature type)

nature	forest		Forest Nature Area	Local, regional, and national Forested Nature areas				nature=forest
nature	wilderness		Wilderness area	Local, regional, and national Wilderness Nature Areas				nature=wilderness
nature	grassland		Grassland Nature Areas	Local, regional, and national grasslands				nature=grassland
nature	savanna		Savanna Nature Area	Local, regional, and national savannas				nature=savanna
nature	wildlife		Wildlife Nature Area	Designated Wildlife areas				nature=wildlife

Examples:

Wildlife area

key	value
landuse	nature_area
nature	wildlife

Forest Park

key	value
landuse	nature_area
nature	forest

We'll get to adding the recreational aspect if needed later on.

We may also may want to indicate the protections an area has.

This would be done with the Key:protected=*

Protection Tags

Key	Value	Description	Usage	Type	Replaces	Picture	Render	Current Usage
protected	yes	Area has some form of protection
protected	resource	Areas contains protections for natural resources see possible resource types considered under Proposed features/Key:protected area						protected=resource
protected	environment	Environmental protections in place						protected=environment
protected	wildlife	Wildlife protection areas, species management						protected=wildlife
protected	monument	National Monument areas						protected=monument

Protected Wildlife Area

key	value		What it describes
landuse	nature_area		nature area
nature	wildlife		optional
protected	yes or wildlife for specificity		Wildlife Protection

these could be described further with subclass tags for each kind of protected area.

Further detail on the protected object could be provided with additional tags

wildlife:common_name=Elk

protected:species=*

This could be used in combination with protection class if there is not a specific tag.

Military areas can be tagged using the landuse=military and the military=* tags if allowed.

There are also areas the public is generally not allowed to be. These areas imply public access is not allowed.

These are restricted areas, and these restrictions deserve their own tag.

Restricted areas include anywhere that poses a safety, legal, or other hazard.

Areas would include water protection areas, and the like.

Chemical spill cleanup area

restricted

hazard_area

Hazard area

Recreation

Parks and other natural areas that have recreational activities would be tagged with the following keys

recreation

yes

Feature has recreational activities available

Recreational areas

Note: this is not the same as marking an area of land as a dedicated recreation area. This describes whether recreational activities are available within any number of features.

leisure=recreation

Key	Value	Description	Usage	Replaces	comments	Picture	Render	Current Usage
recreation	single_use	Single purpose recreation area (ATV, Sandrails, etc)	Single-use recreation areas					recreation:type=single_use
recreation	fishing	Fishing recreation available (potential for fishing site relationships)						.
recreation	hiking	Hiking trails available (potential for trail relationship)

Administrative Level, Owner, Operator

Now that we can describe these areas effectively we can look at how to describe who owns and operates these areas and how they can be classified This is done using

Key:admin_level=*

With the amount of work that has gone into describing the rank of each area's administrative rankings it seems that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Owner and operator can be used to describe the owner and operator.

Park Networks

Parks part of a larger network of parks should be added to a Park Network Relationship (park_network)

park_network values

Key	Value	Description	Usage	Replaces	comments	Picture	Render	Current Usage
type	park_network							type=park_network
name		Name of Park Network
admin_level		OSM Admin level of operator						admin_level=

Type:park_network relation roles

Role	Description	Usage
park	park area within the network
boundary	boundary of the park
admin	node/way of the entity/place that administers the park network
owner	node/way of the entity/place that owns the park network
support	node/way of entities/places that support or maintain the park network

Protected Areas

Larger protected areas should be added to a protected area relationship as shown below

protected_area relationship values

Key	Value	Description	Usage
type	protected_area
name		Name of protected area
admin_level		OSM Admin level of operator
protected		protection type

Type:park_network relation roles

Role	Description
area	A protected area members
boundary	Boundary of protected area
admin	node/way of the entity/place that administers the protected area

Complicated example:

Large County Park part of a larger park network with a protected water power resource that that allows recreational access, has recreational areas, and is owned by federal government. The protected water resource being part of a larger Water storage basin.

Key	Value	Description
landuse	nature_area	Nature area
recreation	yes	with recreational activities
ownership	national	owned by federal government

Park Network Relationship

Key	Value	Description
name	this County Parks and Recreation	Name of park network
operator	this County	owned by federal government
admin_level	6	Operates at county level in US

Protected relationship

Key	Value	Description
name	Name of protected area	Name of protected area
admin_level	2	Managed at national level in US
protected	resource	Protection type
resource	water

Rendering

Using this method allows us to break things into render layers

key	value	combo	layer	render
park	yes		parks	grey outline
park	residential		residential parks	same as leisure=park
landuse	nature_area		nature areas	could be based on nature type otherwise should be similar to nature reserve
landuse	nature_area	admin_level	Administered nature area	same as boundary=national park perhaps with nature type defining fill shade or a shade of green
		recreation	Recreational activities	could overlay with a recreation themed symbol
landuse	recreation_area		Recreational areas	Same as current
protected			Protected areas	minor dashed red outline perhaps?
restricted			Restricted areas	Red outline, bars, etc

parks (Different depending on the type) defaults to grey border outline with park=yes

park=residential - same as leisure=park now

nature areas - same as nature reserves

nature areas in park networks - same as national park

protected nature areas - could have red dashed outline

Areas with recreation -

Designated recreation areas - same as current recreation area rendering

Similar Projects

United States/Public lands

User:ZeLonewolf/Proposal:Key:protected area

Proposed features/Key:protected area

Key:park:type

Comments

This is the beginning draft - more is being added

Please use the talk page to discuss this proposal by clicking the talk link at the top of the article

Please comment on the discussion page.