Background on OpenStreetMap project

1. OSM Background
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2. OpenStreetMap
Background
• Open Data Project
• Build a truly free map of the world
• “The Wikipedia of Maps”
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3. OSM History
• Initiated by Steve Coast in 2005
• Started in the UK
• Because Ordnance Survey maps were
expensive
• Rapidly grew to a worldwide project
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4. International
Variations
• Significant differences country to country
• Europe started mostly from scratch
•US imported a base map based on Census
Bureau TIGER road centerline Data in 2007
•In Canada, CANVEC imports are ongoing
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5. Licensing
• Originally Creative Commons
• CC BY-SA was a poor fit to a fact
database
• Migrated to ODbL (Open Database
License)
• Migration was painful, but is now over
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6. OSM in the Capital
District
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7. Differences from
Wikipedia
• Wikipedia discourages original research
• OSM depends on original research
• Edit wars less of an issue
• easily verifiable facts make a big
difference
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8. Differences from
Google Maps
• Google Maps is “Free” only in a limited
sense (read the ToS)
• Google owns all Intellectual Property
• Google does not provide for
community governance
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9. Other Properties
• No pre-moderation
• Different structure than traditional GIS
• Two tier model:
• database
• data consumers
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10. OpenCycleMap
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11. TopOSM
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12. The US & TIGER
• TIGER has problems which effectively
require us to either review & correct or
replace all data
• Long, slow process of Ground Surveys
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13. Support Tools
• ITOWorld - Tiger Reviewed Map
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14. Capital District
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15. South of Albany
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16. OSM Data Model
• Three basic entities
• Node - lat, long
• optional tags
• Way - list of nodes
• direction
• optional tags
• roads, boundaries, entity footprints
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17. OSM Data Model
• Relations
• Bags of nodes, ways & relations
• Entities in a relation have roles
• Tags
• Key/value pairs
• Names, addresses, characteristics
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18. Tags for Western
Avenue
highway=primary
name=Western Avenue
ref=US 20
maxspeed=30 mph
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and we use a relation to bind together all the segments that make up US 20

19. State of OSM Today
• Excellent Display Map
• Reviewed areas generally route well
• Lack much address data
• POIs incomplete
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20. TIGER Review
• Some parts of the US are great
• Vast rural areas are largely unreviewed
• Need more dedicated mappers
• But how to persuade them that
reviewing TIGER is worth their time?
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21. Addresses
• Where do we get them?
• Enhanced 911?
• Parcel Data?
• On Foot?
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22. POIs
• Point of Interest databases are hard to
collect and hard to keep up to date
• Small businesses open and close with
some frequency
• “Enter and forget”
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23. Pause for General OSM
Questions
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