openstreetmap 101

Contents

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

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

A Brief History

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

Forbidden City, China

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

Scottish Popular Edition

Mapping Parties

•  Get the community working together

Milton Keynes Animation

Link

Atlanta Mapping Party

•  Over 3 Days in October 2009 •  Coverage on FOX News

Atlanta vs Buffalo

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

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

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/

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

OpenCycleMap

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

OpenOrienteeringMap

Some More Uses of OSM Data

Best of OSM

•  http://bestofosm.org/

Contact

•  http://www.oliverobrien.co.uk/ – My research blog

•  @oobr on Twitter •  o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk