The Xinjiang re-education camps (also called Concentration Camps) camps have been in the news for the last few years, with recent news regarding their scale, processing over one million people a year. The centres must be big enough to show up in the satellite imagery we use. They are generally secret locations, but it seems that mapping them could be useful for people doing research on the bases. From the imagery we'd be limited to roads, buildings, and (probably) walls. I'm wondering if there are other things visible in the imagery that would be useful to identify these centres, that we could keep our eyes open for. Are there tags that would be useful to add to suspected re-education camps? asked 19 Sep '20, 04:48  keithonearth |
One Answer:
I would strongly suggest to stick to verifiable information - if not on the ground (hopefully not!) then verifiable by aerial imagery. Map walls and fences and gates when you see them, but don't use OSM to record your suspicions. What you could do is write a piece of software that processes OSM data and then, based on known facts about these camps, makes guesses: "OK there's a cluster of large buildings here and a lot of fencing so maybe if you're a researcher you want to look at this area". OSM could then limit itself to recording facts, and the external software could interpret these facts without adding its guesses back to OSM... answered 19 Sep '20, 12:08  Frederik Ramm ♦ |
I'd say sticking with verifiable information is more than a wise suggestion, it's a requirement. But we can choose what to map based on what interests us and/or what we think is useful, and I was thinking that mapping these camps might be useful. So I am looking for advice on how to make reasonable guesses at identifying areas to map. And what features to map in them.