amenity=research_institute

[danstowell]

The amenity=research_institute tag is fairly new (122 uses at time of writing EDIT: More than 2000 uses worldwide now), 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 notifications@github.com 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 notifications@github.com 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 notifications@github.com 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.

[polarbearing]

As I see none of the previous concern being valid anymore, please go ahead and render as discussed.

[jeisenbe]

Unfortunately the previous concerns appear to be valid still.

The features with this tag can be an office in a building, a building in a university or hospital, a campus of many office buildings, a campus with office buildings and industrial buildings, or an area of farmland which is used for “research”, in it’s many meanings.

I checked https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/130J for England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and New Zealand.

Although there are some examples like the ones shown above, there is not one consistent type of meaning for this feature: some are within an amenity=university and are a building or several buildings or just an office in a University building with other functions.

There are only a half-dozen in all of Southwest England, including London, Oxford and Cambridge, surprisingly. Often they are just small offices like the “Overseas Development Institute”: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/7205812400 https://www.odi.org - or https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/8287236858 the "Thrombosis Research Institute” in the National Heart and Lung building: https://www.tri-london.ac.uk/

There is an Institute of Zoology building with this tag in the London Zoo: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/40234936

This building in the Wellcome Genome Centre is the "Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute” - https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9398629 - but the whole campus is landuse=commercial (https://www.wellcomegenomecampus.org/)

Near Oxford, the "Diamond Light Source Synchrotron” is tagged - https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/548974 - but the surrounding area is landuse=industrial with the name Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and the larger area is the Harwell campus - it seems to contain non-profit research institutes as well as commercial / industrial businesses: https://www.harwellcampus.com/organisation-list/

The Pera Business Park appears to be an office building but it’s tagged amenity=research_institute: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/221951953 - https://www.perabusinesspark.co.uk

Robert Aitken Institute for Clinical Research is within a hospital campus, sharing a building with the Haematology department: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/7207998548

Kroto Research Institute is tagged both amenity=research_institute and office=university and it’s within the Univeristy of Sheffield: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/201385725

Others are clearly industrial areas with large works (factory) buildings which happen to be used for developing new industrial processes. E.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/8346073097 "Fair-Fusion” inside of a Emmtec Emmen industrial chemical area -https://chemicalparks.eu/companies/emmtec

And there are examples where the area is farmland which happens to be used for agricultural investigations: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/197943816 - related to https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/874675602#map=18/50.98056/3.77901 (Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) - https://ilvo.vlaanderen.be/en

Many of these research institutes are partners with Universities and some actual have classrooms: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/798023590 - https://www.field-studies-council.org/locations/eppingforest/ - “The purpose built, fully accessible Centre has six classrooms, and associated facilities, with direct access into our teaching sites which include woodland, grassland, heath and river. Most of our teaching sites are fully accessible."

This is a couple of buildings in the middle of a proteced moor (heathland) accessible via a track: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/836619083 "Moor House”

“Dairy Campus”, a research dairy producing milk products in the Netherlands - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/678477984 - https://www.dairycampus.nl/en/Home.htm "At Dairy Campus innovative projects and activities are carried out in order to generate new information and knowledge to drive innovation in the dairy chain.”

So as @Imagico had noted before, this tag is used for all kinds of places which might be called an “institute”, whether they are parts of a University or part of an Industrial facility, or separate. And it is used for many features which are focused on research, whether it is basic scientific research, or agricultural development, or industrial processes improvement, or commercial research, etc.

[1ec5]

Indeed, these research facilities are in quite a range of settings. However, at a glance, it doesn’t seem that much more diverse than amenity=college or amenity=university facilities, some of which are just a few rooms in a building and some of which constitute an entire town. One of the larger ones I’ve mapped is a radio observatory. It even has an airstrip on site. Counterintuitively, much of the site does render, due to a protected area (protecting against radiointerference), but that zone is known by a different name and isn’t as well-known.

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

On 31 Jan 2021, at 23:39, Joseph E notifications@github.com wrote:

The features with this tag can be an office in a building, a building in a university or hospital, a campus of many office buildings, a campus with office buildings and industrial buildings, or an area of farmland which is used for “research”, in it’s many meanings.

an area of farmland isn’t an “institute” though, nor are buildings (but they can house institutes, and with ambiguous shortcut tagging it could be tagged together with a building tag set, so they might be “ok”)

It’s ok if there are different scales of the same thing (an office in a building vs. a campus with several buildings)

[polarbearing]

Most of the alleged inconsistencies are generic mapping mistakes and could be cited for lots of objects.

Imagine the following scenario: Assume amenity=school is not rendered and proposed to do so, and now we get inconsistencies reported that sometimes a campus is mapped, sometimes a building and sometimes just a node in a building for a driving school. Would that stop us from rendering schools?

Some reseach facilities tagging might be misplaced, or some have other landuse tags to force them being rendered - we have this style as feedback to the mappers, including to reveal mistakes.

[matkoniecz]

and sometimes just a node in a building for a driving school. Would that stop us from rendering schools?

If that would be popular - then yes.

including to reveal mistakes.

This type of mistake would not be revealed.

[polarbearing]

Research and education are interwoven, there is no sharp boundary in reality, as @jeisenbe' analysis has shown. Thus objects might carry both taggings, research facilities might be placed on university campuses, research facilities might have some seminar rooms. All these mixtures. Yes. This is the reason the identical rendering was proposed. Anyway there are research institutes that are not universities, some of them geographically quite large, and they are denied rendering. Strange.