WikiProject Kiribati

Mapping a maneaba from aerial imagery

Spotting a maneaba when using imagery is normally easy, as you will see a big rectangular building that seems to have an inner roof inside the outer roof. This is due to the way the entire roof is built, as you can see in the image above. Be aware that many maneabas are nowadays built with industrial materials, using corrugated metalic material for the roofs.

Following is a collection of different maneabas around the islands of Kiribati:

Tagging of maneabas

As they are centres of a village life, maneabas should be tagged as:

amenity=community_centre

building=civic

name=* (in case you know it. Please, avoid name=maneaba)

operator=* (in case you know who operates it)

In the case of church maneabas, they are still quite a community centre. But in the case of school maneabas, they should be tagged as just another building of the school: building=school

Tagging

For the tagging of an atoll we will consider an atoll that has a lagoon conected to the sea in different points, and a completely enclosed lagoon inside one of the islands of the atoll, with a small islet inside it. Islands have beaches, forests and residential areas.

The proposed tagging of the whole atoll would be as follows:

• Trace the coral reef, and tag it as

subsea=reef

source=*

• If there are parts where there is no reef, that means, stretches where the open sea enters freely to the lagoon, just connect one end of the reef with the following with a line.
• In case the reef surrounds all the atoll in one single line, add the following tags to the reef:

place=atoll

name=* Name of the atoll

• In case the reef consists of several lines, put all of them and the connecting lines between them in a relation:

type=multipolygon

place=atoll

name=* Name of the atoll

Role is outer for all the members.

• The perimeter line of each islet or island would be tagged in general as:

natural=coastline

place=island

name=* Name of the island or islet

source=*

Remember that the coastline has to be traced with the sea to its right.

But to properly trace beaches, forests, residential areas, etc, we have to do it using multipolygon relations.

This means we will have to cut the coastline in several parts, unless a beach or forest surrounds all the island. If you do that, move the place=island and the name=* to the multipolygon defining the whole island and listing all coastlines as its members with role outer.

• Then, we collect all the lines of the coastline in one relation, as follows:

type=multipolygon

place=island or place=islet

name=* Name of the island in its original language, if you know it

source=*

Needless to say, the members of the multipolygon have to be all the parts of the coastline that conform the island, with role outer.

With this tagging schema, we can now reuse any parts of the coasline for beaches, forests, etc.

• For a beach, it would be a relation like this:

type=multipolygon

natural=beach

source=*

name=* Name of the beach, in case you know it

• Finally, a lake inside one island should be tagged as:

natural=water or

natural=wetland, depending on what it is.

If you have an islet inside that lake, then you would have to map it as a relation of type=multipolygon, with the perimeter of the lake as role outer, and the perimeter of the islet as role inner.