Openstreetmap-carto: amenity=research_institute

[danstowell]

The amenity=research_institute tag is fairly new (122 uses at time of writing), but seems uncontroversial and has been used all over the world (overpass link).

Today I "fixed" a research institute that had been tagged as amenity=university (changeset). Of course this kinda removed its status in the osm-carto rendering.

Research institutes are fairly similar to universities, so may I suggest that they could be rendered in the same way? This would be useful to incentivise mappers to tag them less ambiguously. I know the tag is not yet massive, but I'd like to see what you think. Cheers.

[pnorman]

122 uses is insufficient to be an established tag.

[matkoniecz]

Especially as it is a new tag - tagging scheme may improve.

[geozeisig]

Please render amenity=research institute in the same way as university. The wiki page has been redesigned, so it's clearer now how the tag should be applied. There are only 350 applications, but if research_institute has no color, landuse=commercial is often added. That does not belong together.

[kocio-pl]

How is it different from much more popular https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:office%3Dresearch (which would be rendered soon by #3061)?

[geozeisig]

office=research is a building or a part of a building (node). amenity=research_institute is a campus (area with several institute buildings). It would be good if both are considered. Example

[kocio-pl]

Interesting case - I'm not sure about the meaning for buildings/campuses, but at least this is consistently documented. Still the usage is too low (far less than ~2k) and while we have no latest data, growing the numbers is a slow process (~100/year):

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

On 1. Apr 2018, at 10:30, kocio-pl [e-mail] wrote:

How is it different from much more popular https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:office%3Dresearch (which would be rendered soon by #3061)

+1, office is for a office, amenity is for the institution (the space it occupies/where it is located). You could also have 2 institutions in the same building, or they could have different offices in the same facility.

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

On 1. Apr 2018, at 10:54, kocio-pl [e-mail] wrote:

Interesting case - I'm not sure about the meaning for buildings/campuses, but at least this is consistently documented. Still the usage is too low (far less than ~2k)

300 research institutions are not few, especially as they are often significant features. Do you know how many research institutions there are in the world?

[kocio-pl]

I don't know, but it's ~130 in Poland:

https://forumakademickie.pl/informator-fa/instytuty-badawcze/

[geozeisig]

In Germany, there are 25,000. Not all will be relevant. See Research Explorer.
I will work to get it more.

[kocio-pl]

Great!

I guess some of them can be just too small to be tagged as amenity=research_institute and instead may be tagged as office=research, due to our scheme definitions, but still 2k limit doesn't sound unreasonable.

But thanks for a question, @dieterdreist. There can be some important objects with lower numbers in reality and we should treat such cases in a special way.

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

On 2. Apr 2018, at 02:29, kocio-pl [e-mail] wrote:

I don't know, but it's ~130 in Poland:

currently there 349 in OSM, this is +25% since the “end” of taginfo history = a few months

[kocio-pl]

Nice, that's encouraging. I still hope for regular data updates, but even manual quarterly updates would be good: https://github.com/tyrasd/taghistory/issues/10#issuecomment-377773123.

The question is how would we like to render such objects?

[geozeisig]

The color like university would be good. Something else is good too, maybe a bit darker?

[Tomasz-W]

Yellow amenity=university fill + label would be ok.
Another option is to discuss about some blue fill + dark-blue label for office areas and research institutes.

[geozeisig]

Fixes #2077
Add rendering for office=research.
The color like amenity=university fill + label would be good.

[geozeisig]

Can we open a PR? I don't know what to do.

[kocio-pl]

I feel it's still too early, first we need some numbers to be sure.

[polarbearing]

I agree that university-yellow would be reasonable for a campus.
If it is just a building outline or just a node, how would the label look like?

[geozeisig]

amenity=university has no icon if it was mapped as a node or building. So I would say university-yellow and the name is enough.
If it's just a point or building you should use office=research. Which icon we use for that we should discuss in a new issue.

[matkoniecz]

amenity=university has no icon if it was mapped as a node or building.

In that case it is relatively unimportant and name should be sufficient.

[geozeisig]

The name is the most important. The color is also needed otherwise landuse=commercial is used.

[polarbearing]

636 uses today

[jeisenbe]

Note that the previous proposal for the similar tag amenity=research_institution was rejected back in 2009 and 2010: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/research_institution - rejection of research_institution=yes
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_features/research_institution&oldid=281785 - rejection of amenity=research_institution

It may be useful to read through those old objections to the tag, though most are just opposed to the key amenity.

Perhaps it is still not clear how office=research and amenity=research_institute should be distinguished.

[polarbearing]

You find my comments on the talk pages of the proposals. The only voting was for amenity=research_institution, the proposal box was later changed to research_institution=yes which did not have a voting.

Anyway, this issue is not about the old attempts, it is about the amenity=research_institute which is growing organically since 2015.

To answer your question:

• An office is e.g. in a building where I can sit at a desk.
• A campus of a research institute can potentially hold significant technical installations besides typical office buildings. Examples are a Particle Accelerator, a Research reactor, or a test drive area for research on autonomous driving. The latter are not offices.

[jidanni]

Maybe https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=research%20institute should warn that this feature is not currently rendered at this time. At least that is what happened with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology .

[polarbearing]

A feature being rendered or not in a particular style is not a hazard someone has to be "warned" about. Go and map more institutes and the chances to render it increase.

The institute is in the database, so Nominatim is able to find it.

[jidanni]

It finds a blank area. Maybe I should add a comment to the changeset asking the user to try some different tags? This place is all in the news. Senators are talking about it. Shouldn't there be a way for it to be on the map? (Beware, this building has been oddly moved around on other map services recently.)

[polarbearing]

No you should not recommend somebody to tag something incorrect to get a feature rendered.

[jidanni]

I see. I should

Go and map more institutes and the chances to render it increase.

[ognone]

I would like to suggest landuse=research, which is also not uncommon in the database. And completely unrejected if this matters to you.

[jeisenbe]

If you wish to request rendering of landuse=research that will need to be a new issue - but that tag has only been used 97 times and was not discussed, and the wiki page was just created today.

The rejection of a proposal for amenity=research_institution in 2008 does not have much influence, since it was for a different tag and it was a long time ago.

[jeisenbe]

Original reason for closing was low usage (122 times), now this has increased to 746 occurences in the database, so I've reopened for discussion.

[jidanni]

I would like to suggest landuse=research, which is also not uncommon in the database. And completely unrejected if this matters to you.

Thanks! This is a lifesaver. I was almost about to ask the HOTSM team. Worldwide crisis POI like this cannot wait. Death tolls are rising.

Wait. [landuse=research] is not rendered either.

[HolgerJeromin]

Thanks! This is a lifesaver. [...] Worldwide crisis POI like this cannot wait. Death tolls are rising.

You are right!
Having this research institute rendered on an map millions of Chinese people are using every day will save thousands of lives!

(I really hope ill people will go to a hospital and not to a BSL-4 facility itself.)

[pnorman]

I don't see that 746 occurrences is enough to warrant rendering. What are people thinking would be a suitable rendering?

[HolgerJeromin]

The most logical choice would be the same as rendering an university.

[polarbearing]

Yes that has been suggested by several people in this thread above. Which would be in sync with other societal amenities (#1624) and an easy fix.

[imagico]

I see a distinct lack of consistent use of this tag and a poor definition so i would suggest to close this again.

Specifically

• the definition is completely tied to the meaning of the fairly vague English language term research.
• the geometric semantics are very unclear. Sometimes the tag is used on buildings, sometimes on (often non-verifiable) wrapper polygons around buildings or groups of buildings, sometimes there are research institutes tagged within research institutes.
• consistency in use is very poor. In Munich for example there are two feature with the tag - one of them (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/103038933) is a place where no actual research is performed, it is an administrative and training center - while there are certainly dozens of research facilities within the city that are tagged differently.

From a purely cartographic perspective if a tag is used equally for research offices and things like farmland patches used for agricultural research rendering that in a meaningful way without other information is not really possible.

[polarbearing]

What is vague about the term "research"?

OxDict/BrE: "the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions."
Or, on the practical side, "Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020)"

[polarbearing]

the geometric semantics are very unclear. Sometimes the tag is used on buildings, sometimes on (often non-verifiable) wrapper polygons around buildings or groups of buildings, sometimes there are research institutes tagged within research institutes.

Yes this is real life. It is not different from schools or universities. Sometimes they are just a single building without outdoor area, sometimes a separate institute/department is a tenant within a larger institution, sometimes the facility has a campus and sometimes not.

[DnaX]

I will add some examples of the usage of amenity=research_institute in italy:

• CNR-Pisa: National Research Council: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23082352

• Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, one of the most important physics laboratories of the world: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/79401619

• Bruno Kessler Fondundation: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/813142998

They are closed areas with buildings, parking lots and various structures, such as schools or universities. But it can also be a single point where the structure is not recognizable as an area, like an "office" (but it is not an office) of a large building with other functions.

Ps. now the global usage it's > 1k items.

[velikodsky]

Global usage is already growing faster. This year the number of uses has doubled (now ~ 1.5k). I suggest rendering like universities.