March 24: School Work starts

As best as I can tell I’ve only worked my way through 69 schools. It seems far more. There are more than 223 changesets made by myself under this banner, and I was trying to do one changeset for each school or set-of-schools in the same immediate area. I think that what has happened is that the number of schools listed on the section of the page that I’ve worked on have shrunk as I have mapped them.

I began using https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/NG to update all school info within OSM in the NG (Nottinghamshire) postcode on March 24. You can see all postcode links at https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/.

osm.mathmos.net

The osm.mathmos.net site was promoted by a diary post by CjMalone. It gathers info from the get-information-schools.service.gov.uk site on current schools and cross-references those against UK schools mapped within OSM. Each top-level postcode gets it’s own page, and within that page the site lists (in order):-

1. Schools apparently not mapped in OSM
2. Schools in OSM not matched against the official list
3. Schools matched in OSM by location but not edubase ID
4. Schools matched in OSM by edubase ID

School Cadastre

In the last 9 days I’ve worked my way through all the first 3 sets of schools in the lists above. I’ve entered missing Cadastre (the perimeter of the school land parcel), and fixed them where they were wrong.

I also tried but failed to find the govt opensource download for those cadastre. Finally, Christian Ledermann mailed me with the link to his github for his App that contains those Cadastre. Unfortunately his site is broken (logging into OSM gives a Status 500 error back from his site), but it originally did work and put all necessary info on the OSM way. Bugger! Just when I needed it, it is not working.

I do not have the time to fix his site. I will finish the NG schools manually & continue to bodge my way with the cadastre. It’s a bummer, because his product was excellent. Build instructions are here. My main caveat with some school results from his product is that the Cadastre is contained within a Relation, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:type=multipolygon, when the Cadastre seems to be a simple, single area. That is unnecessarily complex, unless the school exists within multiple sites, but is probably the end result of a complex algorithm (I’m nit-picking).

All Schools now have websites

There seem to be many missing and some bad website links in the edubase gov.uk site. A useful site is schoolswebdirectory.co.uk, in which the first link on the line will bring up the school website. As a final, last-gasp, putting the school name into Google Street-View will normally include the school webpage link within the school info, but I never told you that.

The interesting feature for me is that a few years ago very few schools had a website or an email address and, suddenly, that has changed with hundreds of identikit websites springing up. Chock-a-block with JavaScript and (oh good lord) the same cute cartoons, and moving pictures. Including more than one with a customised mouse cursor that prevented me from clicking on anything (not deliberate - they had scores of links to click on). The cursor was a little, cute squirrel. I was really wishing that it was a hedgehog, or a porcupine, so that I could stick it sideways up the southern fundament of that page’s web designer.

April update:
After making another couple of hundred site updates, I am astonished at how amateurish many school website designs are underneath their flashy exteriors (an email address just now copying “[email protected]” after right-click; the display is correct, but they had not changed the base template value). Every single site requires JavaScript to be switched on. Some have then abused it so badly that most of the page will not display on Chromium, and the only way for me to find the School contact details is to investigate the page source-code. What finally pushed me over the top was receiving — and not for the first time — a popup error:

name-of-school says:
Sorry, Right Click Disabled.

So I copied the email address using Ctrl-C instead. I was only trying to see if this site — like so many others — was using broken script to obfuscate the email address before copying it.

9 April further update:
Another hundred or so schools updated and yet another jaw-dropping new discovery with Hempshill Hall Primary School’s website. Or, more probably, former website (the URL is what you would expect but a .com). It is now in French & advertises multiple items, including “Comfort and health Incontinence products”. Their actual site is hempshillhall.com (notice the absence of ‘primary’ in the name). That must be egg-on-face for someone.

I’ve updated the Website url on OSM! (it still has the wrong-un in EduBase).

Multi-Site Schools - mapped as Multi-Polygon Relations

Synopsis: Schools, Colleges & Universities typically consist of more than one building and/or site; those sites may even be in different towns. Most schools exist on a single, simple Cadastre (the land-parcel for the entire school site) and the latter should be mapped with a Way (closed upon itself, and thus an Area). Multi-site schools with a single EduBase ID should be mapped as each individual school Cadastre mapped into an Area, and all the different areas then placed within a multipolygon relation. A good practical measure is to name each Cadastre intelligently. Examples include “Upper School”, “Fernwood village site”. If building names are known, they should be named as well. That is tremendously helpful if trying to navigate a large site. Addresses are normally placed onto individual Cadastre (if not too large).

For the UK, it first comes down to whether the different sites have a different ID within EduBase (as current schools). If so, then they should be mapped independently, perhaps with a note (or description) to tie them together. Otherwise, each Cadastre should be placed within an area, and the bunch of Cadastre mapped into a Relation.

To refresh the basic point, schools, colleges & universities typically consist of multiple buildings within the same Cadastre (the parcel of land that encompasses the whole site). A full mapping of the school will consist of drawing and naming each building with all roads, paths, fences, parking areas, green places, etc. mapped within the site. The perimeter of the Cadastre is also mapped as an area, and that is also where the Education and often the Address & Contact tags are placed, and especially for small schools.

With multi-site schools with a single EduBase ID this means mapping each Cadastre as above, but NOT mapping Education tags into an individual area. Instead, each Cadastre is placed into a Multi-Polygon Relation, and the Education key/values are mapped onto the Relation. Address/Contact key/values will depend on the individual site(s), being placed into either the Relation, Cadastre or building according to reality on the ground.

HowTo Map: Sites spread far apart are not so easy to establish as a relation. Nevertheless, this is how to start mapping a multi-site school, and how to add each member, in JOSM.

1. Select at least one of the school Cadastre
2. Select menu:Presets|Relations|Multipolygon
3. Enter the name of the school
4. Select New relation
   (this actually puts you into the Relation editor; https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:name=name-of-school (from #3 above) & https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:type=multipolygon are already present within the Tags section at top, and the school Cadastre is within the Selection section on the lower right & is also present within the Members section at lower left)
5. Click on Role next to the Cadastre within Members & enter “outer”
6. Press “Okay”

JOSM can show you all Relations that it has downloaded from OSM by clicking on menu:Windows & clicking on the Relations checkbox so that it is selected. There will then be a Relations section within the Dialogues panel (that panel is switched on/off with the Tab key and/or via the menu:View|Dialogues panel check box). If the relevant relation that you have created is selected within that Dialogue and the Edit button is clicked (or selected via right-click) then you will get the Relation Editor.

Make sure within the Relation Editor for that particular school site relation that all Members (bottom-left section) have the role “outer” (the two options are “inner” & “outer”; “inner” is used within a Multipolygon that has holes; that is possible for a multi-site school, but unlikely). The only Tag (top section) that is required is “type=multipolygon”. The Education & ref:edubase tags will also be placed here, but it is (in my opinion) much easier to do so via the Dialogues panel (see below). Finally, the Relation Editor is one of the ways to add a new Cadastre (school site) to the Multipolygon. That is done by:–

1. Selecting a new school Cadastre within the main JOSM window
2. Selecting the school Multipolygon within the Dialogues panel & choose Edit; the new Cadastre is now within the Relation Editor Selection section
3. Click the “Add all objects” button
4. Give it a role of “outer”
5. Click “Okay” to save the Relation

Mapping the Education values: Double-clicking the school Multipolygon Relation within the Dialogues panel will now show it’s Tags within the same panel (make sure that the menu:Windows|Tags/Memberships checkbox is on). The only Tag that is required to be here is “type=multipolygon”. This is the place to put all Tags that are common to all school sites, and thus should be used when a common single EduBase ID applies to every site. In JOSM the Presets|Facilities/Education preset can be used. It may be necessary to click within the Tags section in order to give it focus before any menu actions will be valid.

Final observation

I’ve had to update every school with at least one piece of info, and usually several pieces or all. So, it has been very useful for the map indeed. Only another few hundred thousand to go.

<rant>The one thing that does defeat my imagination is why no-one else has done this before. For it’s size, Nottingham is one of the best-mapped places in OSM. There are a large number of diligent mappers in this region. They have been followed up by others going through all schools and (for example) entering fhrs ids; I’m sure that that is most useful. And yet, it seems that no-one has thought to think for themselves “What will those folks that use OSM want to be able to find within the School (etc.) that they are searching for” and come up with the answer (for example) “contact info”, and thus made sure to enter it for every PoI.</rant>