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MVUM Conversion

The MVUM dataset is all of the motor vehicle roads in a national forest. These are primarily remote dirt roads, often just a jeep track. These are heavily used for back country access for wildland fires and rescues. Currently much of this data has been imported in the past, complete with all the bugs in the dataset.

This utility program normalizes the data, correcting or flagging bugs as an aid for better conflation.

The original dataset can be found here on the USDA FSGeodata Clearinghouse website.

Dataset Bugs

Bad Reference Numbers

In some areas the MVUM data has had an 5 or a 7 prefixed to the actual reference number. These are all usually in the same area, so I assume whomever was doing data entry had a sticky keyboard, it got messed up when converting from paper maps to digital, who really knows. But it makes that tag worthless.

Another common problem in the reference nummbers is in some areas the major maintained roads have a .1 appended. All minor part of the number should always have a letter appended. So FR 432.1" is actually *FR 432", whereas "432.1A is correct. This was confirmed by reviewing multiple other map sources, as the paper and PDF version of the dataset has the correct version without the .1 appended. Obviously this dataset is not used to produce the maps you can get from the Forest Service.

Doesn't Match The Sign

There is an issue with the MVUM reference numbers not matching the sign. This is luckily limited to whether there is a .1 appended to the reference number without an letter at the end. Usually a reference without a .1 is a primary road, and the .1 gets appended for a major branch off that road. While out ground-truthing MVUM roads recently I saw multiple examples where the reference numnber in the MVUM data (and often in OSM) has the .1, so I use that value regardless of what the sign says. It's still quite obviously what the reference number is since the only difference is the .1 suffix.

This gets more interesting when you compare with other data sources, ie... paper and digital maps. Older data source seem to drop the .1, whereas the same road in a newer version of the dataset has the .1 suffix. So I figure anyone navigating remote roads that checks their other maps would figure out which way to go. So anyway, when way out on remote very_bad or horrible MVUM roads, you should have multiple maps if you don't want to get confused.

Missing Geometry

There are features with no geometry at all, but the tags all match an existing feature that does have a geometry. These appear to be accidental duplicates, so they get removed.

Dropped Fields

These fields are dropped as they aren't useful for OpenStreetMap.

  • TE_CN
  • BMP
  • EMP
  • SYMBOL_CODE
  • SEG_LENGTH
  • JURISDICTION
  • SYSTEM
  • ROUTE_STATUS
  • OBJECTIVE_MAINT_LEVEL
  • FUNCTIONAL_CLASS
  • LANES
  • COUNTY
  • CONGRESSIONAL_DISTRICT
  • ADMIN_ORG
  • SERVICE_LIFE
  • LEVEL_OF_SERVICE
  • PFSR_CLASSIFICATION
  • MANAGING_ORG
  • LOC_ERROR
  • GIS_MILES
  • SECURITY_ID
  • OPENFORUSETO
  • IVM_SYMBOL
  • GLOBALID
  • SHAPE_Length

Preserved Fields

The field names are a bit truncated in the dataset, but these are the

  • ID is id
  • NAME is name
  • OPER_MAINT_LEVEL is smoothness
  • SYMBOL_NAME smoothness
  • SURFACE_TYPE is surface
  • SEASONAL is seasonal
  • PRIMARY_MAINTAINER is operator

Abbreviations

There are multiple and somewhat inconsistent abbreviations in the MVUM dataset highway names. OpenStreetMap should be using the full value. These were all found by the conflation software when trying to match names between two features. Since much of the MVUM data is of varying quality, there's probably a few not captured here that will have to be fixed when editing the data. This however improves the conflation results to limit manual editing.

  • " Cr " is " Creek "
  • " Cr. " is " Creek "
  • " Crk " is " Creek "
  • " Cg " is " Campground "
  • " Rd. " is " Road"
  • " Mt " is " Mountain"
  • " Mtn " is " Mountain"

Tag values

OPER_MAINT_LEVEL

This field is used to determine the smoothness of the highway. Using the official forest service guidelines for this field, convienently they publish a Road Maintaince Guidelines, complete with muiltiple pictures and detaild technical information on each level. The coorelate these values, I did some ground-truthing on MVUM and I'd agree that level 2 is definetely high clearance vehicle only, and that it fits the definition here for very_bad, although some sections were more horrible, deeply rutted, big rocks, lots of erosion.

  • 5 -HIGH DEGREE OF USER COMFORT: Assigned to roads that provide a high degree of user comfort and convenience. This becomes smoothness=excellent.

  • 4 -MODERATE DEGREE OF USER COMFORT: Assigned to roads that provide a moderate degree of user comfort and convenience at moderate travel speeds. This becomes smoothness=bad.

  • 3 -SUITABLE FOR PASSENGER CARS: Assigned to roads open for and maintained for travel by a prudent driver in a standard passenger car. This becomes smnoothness=good.

  • 2 -HIGH CLEARANCE VEHICLES: Assigned to roads open for use by high clearance vehicles. This adds 4wd_only=yes and becomes smoothness=vary_bad.

  • 1 -BASIC CUSTODIAL CARE (CLOSED): Assigned to roads that have been placed in storage (> one year) between intermittent uses. Basic custodial maintenance is performed. Road is closed to vehicular traffic. This becomes access=no

SYMBOL_NAME

Sometimes OPER_MAINT_LEVEL doesn't have a value, so this is used as a backup. These values are not used to update the existing values in OSM, they are only used for route planning ground-truthing trips.

  • Gravel Road, Suitable for Passenger Car becomes surface=gravel
  • Dirt Road, Suitable for Passenger Car becomes surface=dirt
  • Road, Not Maintained for Passenger Car becomes smoothness=very_bad
  • Paved Road becomes surface=paved

SURFACE_TYPE

This is another field that is converted, but not used when editing the existing OSM feature. This can only really be determined by ground-truthing, but it converted as another aid for route planning.

  • AGG -CRUSHED AGGREGATE OR GRAVEL becomes surface=gravel
  • AC -ASPHALT becomes surface=asphalt
  • IMP -IMPROVED NATIVE MATERIAL becomes surface=compacted
  • CSOIL -COMPACTED SOIL becomes surface=compacted
  • NAT -NATIVE MATERIAL becomes surface=dirt
  • P - PAVED becomes surface=paved

Name

The name is always in all capitol letters, so this is converted to a standard first letter of every word is upper case, the rest is lower case.

Options

-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose         verbose output
-i INFILE, --infile INFILE MVUM data file
-c, --convert         Convert MVUM feature to OSM feature
-o OUTFILE, --outfile OUTFILE Output GeoJson file