Vancouver/Imports/Coquitlam/Street Lamps

Coquitlam Street Lamps was a one-time import of the Coquitlam Street Lights dataset covering the City of Coquitlam. The import was completed on 13/06/2026.

Goals

The goal of this import project was to have comprehensive coverage of all public street lamps in Coquitlam, along with their details, in the OpenStreetMap database.

Import Data

Background

Data source site: https://data.coquitlam.ca/

Data license: https://www.coquitlam.ca/894/Open-Government-Licence

Type of license: OGL-Canada-2.0

OSM attribution: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors#Canada

ODbL Compliance verified: Yes (LWG minutes 2026-05-11)

OSM Data Files

The GeoJSON to be imported can be found here.

Import Type

This import was a one-time import, though it could be repeated a few years in the future if new data is made available. This import was prepared via a script to mutate the GIS data into OSM format, but was overseen and verified manually.

JOSM with the conflation plugin was used to import this data due to the relatively limited scope of the import.

Data Preparation

Data Reduction & Simplification

Information not useful for OpenStreetMap was removed such as internal city document URLs. This includes things that change often like condition of the poles, condition of the paint, and foliage status.

Tagging Plans

A Python script was used to transform applicable values into the OSM schema, drop null values, and drop columns that are not useful as mentioned above.

Changeset Tags

Key	Value
comment
import	yes
source	Coquitlam Street Lights
source:url	https://data.coquitlam.ca/datasets/Coquitlam::street-lights/explore?layer=1
source:date
import:page	Vancouver/Imports/Coquitlam/Street Lamps
source:license	OGL-Canada-2.0

Data Transformation

Python script can be found here.

The following fields were converted into the OSM schema:

Source field	Source value	OSM tag	OSM value
STATUS	OPERATING	light_source	lantern
	DECOMMISSIONED	disused:light_source	lantern
POLE_HEIGHT	number (999 dropped)	light:height	same number
INSTALLED_DATE	generic date string	start_date	YYYY-MM-DD
LAMP_TYPE	LED	light:method	led
	HPS		high_pressure_sodium
	MH		metal_halide
POLE_TYPE	Davit	light:mount	bent_mast
	Post Top	light:mount	straight_mast
	(any kept value)	light:support	pole
POLE_COLOUR	colour name (lower-cased, "other" dropped)	pole:colour	same colour
PROVIDER	COQ	operator	City of Coquitlam
		operator:wikidata	Q139888158
	BCH	operator	BC Hydro
		operator:wikidata	Q795720

Data Merge Workflow

Team Approach

This import was conducted solo.

Workflow

1. Take the exported GeoJSON file from Python script and import it into JOSM
2. Use Conflation plugin to merge tags with any that overlap
   1. The number that overlap is small, so they can easily be manually checked
3. Upload new and conflated data to OSM.

The entire import should fit within the bounds of one changeset.

Reverting can be done if needed with osm-revert as the data is simple.

Conflation

Conflation checks a 30 foot radius. Due to the lack of existing street lamp data in Coquitlam, there are very few nodes that need to be conflated. The few conflicts that arise can be manually verified to ensure tags are properly merged.

QA

The dataset has a 0.01m to 10m precision. Most poles are extremely precise, but this will be spot checked by checking 10-15 poles in various locations. If an area is found to have a larger number of less-precise poles, they can be manually corrected.

Discussion

The post to the community forum was sent on 21/05/2026 and can be found here

Update 1:

• Replaced City of Coquitlam Wikidata ID with new ID for the government entity rather than the location
• Removed BC Hydro Wikipedia tag

Update 2:

• Updated to use `light:*_*` namespace