I spend a lot of time talking about OpenStreetMap. It's a bit fascinating to me. After a career of worrying about quality of data - it's nice to take a look at amount of data. Sort of a quantity vs quality issue if I might be so bold.

At the US State of the Map conference in Atlanta, ESRI came down and gave us a look at their editor for OSM data. I had downloaded it previously and played with it just a bit. I really wasn't that turned on by it. Mainly because I didn't understand it. I did about everything wrong I could have and saw that in the demo.

 Today I dove back into the editor. I downloaded the newest version and got to work. Let me preface this post with some more information. I've been curious about bulk uploads. I've tried and failed on just about everyone I've tried. The bad part is documentation is sparse. It could actually be a good thing since you don't want people just tossing everything and anything into OSM. I decided yesterday I was gong to bulk upload all the Hydro data for my area. The river had been done by another mapper and it was good - but I was spending a lot of time fixing things. I went in earlier this week and whacked everything from one dam to another. Yesterday I started the upload and got the river and all the ponds uploaded. Right now I'm working on the streams. Actually what was cooler I cherry picked what I deleted - some of the previous data was really good. So when I say I whacked everything - I really didn't.

Anyway back to editing. Installation provides you with a new toolbox with about 11 tools. You can download, upload, and symbolize data. You can take a current feature class that has the OSM fields defined and add an editing extension that allows it to be uploaded. Notice what I said. If you have defined the OSM tags as fields (take a look at the feature classes downloaded with this tool), you are good to go. I never look at data collection with a OSM slant - I've got all sorts of fields that make sense for my current project. You really have to change your mindset with this tool. You can't, as I learned, just grab some data (or at least I couldn't )and toss it back to OSM. It wasn't made for that in my opinion. There is some work involved. Actually a lot of work I believe. I would have to essentially add more fields to my feature class (how many more - I have no idea - haven't tried that yet but I'm going to).

 I downloaded some NHD data and got to work. Not wanting to completely muck up a huge upload I grabbed a small area way outside of the city. I grabbed one complete stream network and exported it to another Geodatabase. I tried to upload this one small stream network and that's when I discovered I couldn't - this tool doesn't work quite like that.

So I did the next best thing.I downloaded the OSM data in my area and copied the stream network into it and attributed it. That worked. I could wrap my ESRI thinking brain around that action. When you download data from OSM it has to have a Geodatabase. You create a dataset and the data comes to you. If I name my dataset randy (and it will ask for a name), I will have a dataset named randy and three feature classes under that dataset: randy_osm_pnt, randy_osm_ply, and randy_osm_pt. You also get two tables: a relation table and a revision table. Domains are created for particular tags. In my case I was attributing some streams and the waterway field had a domain with the appropriate attribute. Editing will not be as feature rich with this tool, but it will be good enough for what needs to be done.

In my mind this tool is going to shine for crisis mapping by allowing us, the unwashed OSM heathens, a chance to help. For bulk uploads and things I wanted to try I still think the custom tools and scripts are the best. But for something like the Haiti earthquake this would have been great. I could have spent time mapping instead of learning JOSM or Merkaartor. I haven't checked accuracy to see how things get pushed back up (is it all as accurate as I hope). I was just happy I was able to do it. I will say ArcGIS 10 did crash once - but I believe that was entirely my fault.

The really great thing - this tool is a bridge. The one thing I noticed at US SOTM was there is a divide. There is the unwashed mob and the group that is too smart for its own good. I feel like were more of a group - my weapon of choice (ArcGIS) now contributes back to OSM. Plus can access the data these other guys contribute a little more easily.

As a bonus the school I've been working with - eh - well - I'll save that news for a bit later. I'll just leave you with their next project is going to be pretty spiffy - and this extension is going to play a role. We're going to do some data collection and then share it with the world using OSM.