Talk:OpenHazardMap

Discuss OpenHazardMap page here:

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Including in OSM

As explained in the wiki page, I believe that hazard information could / should be included into OSM in one way or another. Please feel free to add here any comment, idea, suggestion or critics to move this project forward! -- shenriod

"should be included into OSM" D'you mean included into the OpenStreetMap database? This will not work well. I don't think that's just my opinion. A number of people have stated this.

Most of this kind of hazard risk information comes in the form of a fuzzy measure, either based on subjective judgement, collecting anecdotal information form locals, or possibly with more precision based on some scientific risk calculation. But in any case we're talking about data which doesn't generally come with very precise locations representing real things which we can see on the ground. Seismic risk would be the worst example of this. There is no precision in that kind of data. Are you proposing adding nodes and ways directly to OpenStreetMap representing this?

The presentation output of this kind of data, we would expect to take the form of rough polygons (a bit like these fire maps perhaps) or a fuzzy "heat map", and these are prime examples of things which can generally be done in javascript and overlaid on top of OpenStreetMap base maps. Driving these things from a separate database is really the only way I see this working.

This is not to say that I and other people from OpenStreetMap are not interested in the problem. I think it's an interesting challenge. It can be generalised to other mapping challenges where linking in another database is desired. People ask about this a lot, and we don't have a good solution to it yet. OpenMetaMap is an outline solution someone discussed at SOTM last year. Additionally the idea of mapping more fuzzy imprecise data also crops up a lot. A collaborative mapping platform for editing this kind of data could be quite widely applicable, but comes with some tricky challenges.

-- Harry Wood 12:23, 28 June 2012 (BST)

Would it make sense to map related objective things (e.g. faults, sediment and rock types)? Otherwise, we either we just replicate official risk maps (great, if they will donate them), or we are making our own... personally I'd be a bit nervous about that. But if experts could use OSM data on building density, contours, and sediment type to assess flood and landslide risk, that would be great. To judge from Key:hazard_type, the project can map past disasters, which is useful geographic information and reasonably objective. HLHJ (talk) 19:02, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Link discussions

Would be good to have a link to the good discussion(s) at HOT(?) mailing list from Spring of 2012 about this topic. There were some good thoughts to different directions / aspects. --JaakkoH 06:39, 24 June 2012 (BST)

Industrial Hazard

Natural hazard could be mapped, but what about industrial hazard ?

I do not know situation in other country, but here in France, our gouvernment records natural hazard area and also industrial hazard (or risk) with a specific classification.

Follow a summary of french classification or hazards (both natural and industrial) : (french link)

Natural hazards with a defined area

• flood
• snow avalanche
• seismic
• tempest, cyclones
• forest fire
• landslipes
• volcanoes

Industrial hazards

• activity hazards with defined location (company), known as "Installations classées" all activity that as risk for human or environnement.
  • activity that must declare
  • activity that must be registered
  • activity that must be authorized
  • activity that must be authorized with a public study
• industrial hazards with defined location (company), known as "Seveso european directive" (refer to Seveso incident), record all industrial activity envolving a dangerous substance
  • seveso low level
  • seveso high level
  • there is a specific substance nomenclature
• dangerous material transport with a defined route

Tag proposed

Why not used a more common tag typology, for example :

• hazard=yes
• hazard:type=* (avalanche, flood, landslip, seismic, fire, industrial...)

And i'll propose :

• hazard:authority=* (organization that has defined the hazard type and area)
• hazard:source=* (for industrial can indicated the exact source of hazard : gas, nuclear, chimical...)

For intensity, return_period and occurence i'm not sure it will suit. Defining such things is difficult. I think i prefer a more simple proposition that can be extend later if its usage spread.

Levels of risks already have legal definitions in some countries. For example in France there are five (5) levels defined for sismicity, not two, and their definition absolutely do not match what is proposed here (the source is a text of law, in the French Code de l'environnement, which is publicly accessible and easily verifiable; it is easy to convert the list of zones, which are regions, departments, arrondissements, cantons, and/or municipalities -- i.e. all administrative boundaries -- into lists of OSM objects to create multipolygons and so to convert this legal text into a map ; NOT subjective at all !).

An example of map can be seen here : http://www.planseisme.fr/Zonage-sismique-de-la-France.html (this is a public site)

In addition the various proposed subtags may need to be combined on the same area (for example, sismicity and flooding) but the proposal does not allow defining separately on the same objects (e.g. the relation representing an administrative subdivision) these risks with their *own* recurrence, their *own* reference, their *own* intensity. For example hazard:sismicity:intensity=* (for a country-neutral definition), or even hazard:sismicity:intensity:FR=* (its value is legally defined between 1 and 5), or hazard:sismicity:intensity:EU=* (for a classification regulated in the European union, possibly using other criteria).

Hazards and risks have many legal consequences, as these laws are most often country-specific, most of these tags cannot have a common value without a clearly defined schema allowing to map national classifications to some common classification (but whose effective usage will be almost insignificant).

Finally there are scientific definitions using various scales of measures and conventions, making them compatible with the legal classifications will not be easy, even if these more precise scientific maps (based on effective researches, or compaigns of measures, or by tracking historical events) may be used to define the legal areas (but most often, the legal areas are simplified to cover larger areas, such as administrative boundaries, ignoring internal details).

In my opinion, trying to define too early a generic scheme applicable to the world, without even looking at the existing schemes (even if they are not compatible with each other between regions), if an error (this data will also be unverifiable, unmanageable). On the opposite, the legal definitions are most often publicly defined (in texts of laws, possibly containing some tables, that whe just need to convert to maps by geolocalizing the described legal objects to OSM objects).

So don't try putting put the egg before the chicken or the reverse, just concentrate first on mapping what really exists, even if it cannot be applied to the world as the whole (any attempt to convert several national mappings to a worldwide classification should only come later; onsider what has been done with administrative boundaries, even if their types are not completely convertible at all administrative levels). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 08:28, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

For more information about catalogs of open data in the domain of risks assesments in France, look at: http://catalogue.prim.net/ (this site covers all kinds of natural, industrial, or environemental risks, for which there is some form of regulations and planification for preventing them or limiting their damages, or resolving them after events, it also includes lists of past events; all communes in metropolitan France and in French overseas departments, plus a few French overseas collectivities, are covered by these data). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 09:00, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion to move educational and overview content from this page to Hazards or more precisely Natural hazards and use template Template:Feature

OpenHazardMap does not cover social (military, political, drug wars etc) and technological (indusrial, nuclear failures, oil splits) hazzards so Natural hazards will be better place. OpenHazardMap may be left with minimal info how to contact site or people/projects. Xxzme (talk) 17:11, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Seismic hazards

I think the seismic hazards area of this project is poorly thought through. There are a number of different types of seismic hazards, each of which may need a different form of response.

ground-shaking

Commonly known as an earthquake, ground-shaking is generated by earth movement along fault lines (ruptures) or magma flow in a volcano. Normally reported as a magnitude according to a scale. (Richter, Mercalli) The modified Mercalli scale describe the local intensity of the ground-shaking and damage it causes.

fault line

A visible earthquake fault escarpment or ground feature that is the surface trace of a earth rupture that occurs during an earthquake. The ground on either side of a fault line can move in different directions (displacement). Many fault lines are mappable geological features that are visible in aerial imagery. Others are more cryptic.

liquifaction

Caused by shaking of waterlogged uncompacted earth, such as sand, drained swamps, or reclaimed land, that liquifies and flows around building foundations and buried infrastructure causing buildings to sink and buried pipes and manholes to float to the surface. Also results in widespread flooding from muddy water squeezed out of the ground.

tsunami

Seabed uplift or movement results in displacement of seawater that spreads away from the earthquake epicentre as waves of water that inundates coastal areas and destroys buildings and infrastucture then washes the debris out to sea.

falling debris and landlips

While not a hazard confined to earthquakes, falling rocks and landslips are often the result of earthquakes in areas already prone to these hazards. These can form a natural dam in a river that then has a flash flood when the dam is breached.

earthquake prone structure

Structures, including buildings, that have been constructed without fully taking into account the likely effects of a probable earthquake during the lifetime of the structure, and may pose a threat to life to its occupants or users in the event of a typical large earthquake expected in the area. While structurally sound, the building is liable to be severely damaged or destroyed in a moderate to large earthquake.

geothermal features

Naturally occurring hot springs, boiling mud pools, steam and gases arising from volcanic vents and fault lines can all be hazards in their own right, as well as tourist attractions.

volcano

Places where molten rock or magma comes to the earth's surface can be hazardous due to the explosive nature of releasing the pressure on a very hot liquid containing dissolved superheated water and other gaseous compounds. Ash clouds that rise kilometres into the air and cover the surrounding country in metres of ash are recorded (pyroclastic flows). As are large rocks thrown into the air (lava bombs) and molten lava.

lahar

volcanic ash plus water from a convenient river or lake can form a lahar - a mixture of fast moving volcanic ash and water about the consistency of sloppy wet concrete slurry.

These are all different seismic hazards that I can think of in New Zealand. There are different plans for dealing with each of them, so each could probably be considered as a separate hazard. - Huttite (talk) 02:46, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Vicious dogs

A path might lead past the home of vicious dogs. Yes the most vicious might be tied to a post, but even the least vicious might kill any hiker passing it. Surely such a life-threatening hazard should be mapped. Jidanni (talk) 23:48, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Duplicate & cohesive tag scheme

This is a duplicate of hazard=* which has been created way before than hazard_prone=*'s tag and has greater number of elements tagged with it. Also its tag structure is more simple/efficient and following official and international scheme. Please keep in mind that when you propose a new tag, it should respect the most efficient and cohesive tag structure throughout OSM's tags so that third part services can implement it most easily, somewhat like a coding language. Having a sub tag to define the type of hazard is useless in this case, giving a direct value to the key is enough. --SHARCRASH (talk) 13:27, 17 February 2020 (UTC)