2. Contents
• A Brief History
• Around the World
• Contributing
• Mapping Parties
• Companies
• State of the Map
• Special Versions

3. A Brief History
• OSM is a “Wikipedia” of map data
– Also a website displaying particular renders
of the data – http://osm.org/
• Started by Steve Coast in July 2004
– While doing an MSc here at UCL
• Anyone can edit
– Data under a Creative Commons licence
• OpenStreetMap Foundation

4. A Brief History

5. OSM Around the World
• UK – Fairly rapid growth
– Lack of free data (pre-April 2010)
• US – Growth has been more recent
– Import of TIGER dataset
• Holland
– 1st “complete” country (AND data donation)
• Germany
– Very detailed – most active community

6. Forbidden City, China

7. Contributing
• The best data is your own data
– GPS tracklogs
– Yahoo aerial imagery
– Historic (out-of-copyright) mapping
– Ordnance Survey Open Data
• Editing
– Potlatch
• Minutely updates

8. Scottish Popular Edition

9. Mapping Parties
• Get the community working together

10. Milton Keynes Animation
Link

11. Atlanta Mapping Party
• Over 3 Days in October 2009
• Coverage on FOX News

12. Atlanta vs Buffalo

13. Project Haiti
• 12 January 2010
– Copyright-free high-res
aerial imagery made
available very quickly
afterwards by providers
– Overseas volunteers traced
what they could see and
packaged the data
– Used by disaster relief
teams on the ground

14. Companies
• Cloudmade (U.S.)
– Developer APIs and custom renders
• Geofabrik (Germany)
– Regularly updated per-country shapefiles
• ITO World (UK)
– Provides some useful tools to detect and
fix missing data in the UK

15. State of the Map
• The OpenStreetMap Conference
– Three so far, all in Europe
– StateOfTheMap U.S. takes place in Atlanta
this weekend
• http://www.sotm.us/

16. Special Versions
• Get the data
– XML to PostgreSQL, or as shapefiles
• Build a map
– Mapnik, or in a GIS
• Show it to the world
– OpenLayers, or a printed map

17. OpenCycleMap
• http://www.opencyclemap.org/
– Signposted cycle routes
– Cycle shops
– Cycle parking
– Contours
– Toilets
– Pubs

18. OpenOrienteeringMap

19. Some More Uses of OSM Data

20. Best of OSM
• http://bestofosm.org/

21. Contact
• http://www.oliverobrien.co.uk/
– My research blog
• @oobr on Twitter
• o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk