Public School Grounds

[ShadowChaser]

Is there any preferred guidance for mapping public grade school grounds?

For example, in the area I work on almost all schools have:
* The school grounds (outer border). Typically a large grass field or two with baseball diamonds, parking lots, and playgrounds within it.
* A single school building - for example, the elementary school itself.

In addition, I've seen many people suggest that establishments should have a point of interest over top - almost all of the existing schools in the town I'm looking at have one of these, but no buildings or grounds.

I can think of a few different mapping scenarios, but I'm not sure which is best:

1) Treat it like a university campus. Create a polygon for the outer perimeter, give it a category of "School", and place the name, address, contact information, and website into it. Draw an unnamed polygon for the building.

2) Treat it like a business. Create an unnamed polygon for the building, then place a point of interest with a category of "School" with the name, address, etc over top of the entrance.

3) Create an unnamed polygon for the perimeter with a category of "School", create an unnamed polygon for the building, then a point of interest with the name and details over the entrance.

Any suggestions? I'm leaning towards #3, but I'm still not certain about it.

[Srini vas]

The first method with slight change, include complete address in the building polygon.

[ShadowChaser]

My concern with that approach is that the name of the school would appear on the middle of the field or grounds, not on the building where map users might expect.

[Srini vas]

Yeah, you are right. Basic purpose of Map is to answer where are we and what are around us. When I am in a unknown place I'll use Maps first to find the school first and then zoom in and search for specific things inside the campus like play ground, canteen, etc. Just my opinion.

[Jake Bathman]

Yeah, for this reason I'd recommend option #2. I like the consistency with how other (business) POIs are mapped, with unnamed polygons for the building and grounds, and separate POIs for the school or other facilities with contact/address data. This way the name markers show up over buildings, but polygons don't show up in search as duplicate results. 

Thanks,

Jake

--

Jake Bathman

Pardon my brevity; I sent this from my mobile device.

On Jan 1, 2012, at 11:50 AM, General Map Maker on behalf of Srini vas <google-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yeah, you are right. Basic purpose of Map is to answer where are we and what are around us. When I am in a unknown place I'll use Maps first to find the school first and then zoom in and search for specific things inside the campus like play ground, canteen, etc. Just my opinion.

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[Serge]

I'm making schools in two features:

• boundary (the main feature with full information, school name, address, phone numbers);
  
• building (generic, in Building category, with full address only).
  

After we create both features, we can go to the Google Maps and check where the school icon located. Sometimes the engine automatically move the icon and the name to the building. If not, we can do it manually (in Google Maps).

As a result, we have very nice aesthetic object on the map - whole school territory have a colored boundary, name and icon, and (very important) the building display the bld#.

Sometimes I'm add a school stadium, without any names or info. It's good not only the aesthetic reason, but also for visual navigation.

This is my practice, which I always use for schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, embassies, factories, etc.

For hospitals with many compartments we can use a point features to highlight each one. We have a lot of medical categories for that. There's no necessary to fill full hospital name, only the compartment name (and other unique contact details as well), to avoid a duplicates.
--------------------------
Have a look few schools there http://www.google.com/mapmaker?ll=41.248548,69.289978&spn=0.009793,0.016479&z=16&lyrs=4,5&lyt=large_map

[Teodor Lazar]

I have an unusual situation here. A school (campus) with ground and buildings at two locations, one mile away by each other, on different streets of course and different sub-locality/neighborhoods. 

What would be the best approach ? Making one POI with two ground boundaries, or making two POIs ? There is only a single official address. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated. Thank you.

[Flash]

You should be making two POIs.  POIs represent locations, and you have two locations.

Would you mind sharing the information?  I'm pretty sure some investigation will show two addresses, even if the school claims there is only one.  Emergency services needs to know where to go, and thus even a large single property might have multiple situs addresses if there are buildings in multiple places.

[Teodor Lazar]

Here is the edit http://goo.gl/tSJ4w , as a single POI with two boundaries now.

The website of this school has no information in english, so i will summarize for you.

The main boundary is used for offices, administration and classrooms and it has the single one published address, phone and fax number. It has two building named Building A and B. The secondary boundary has Building C and D used for classrooms and workshops only.

Anyway, I intended to change them as you said as Map Maker seems bothered by the second boundary in other neighborhood and street, but i needed a confirmation.

[Flash]

Well I won't have much luck with trying to find the other address if it's in Romanian :)  But thanks anyway.  Perhaps someone local might know.  I suppose it is possible they share the address, but that is becoming less and less frequent due to the need to give accurate addresses to emergency services.  Instead, they probably share a postal address, but have two different situs addresses.

[Teodor Lazar]

I will proceed making two POIs. There are some indirect information about the secondary address. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge.