[talk-au] New CC-BY datasets due Monday 28 September on Government 2.0 Taskforce website
Hello Aussie OSMers, Those recently at the last OSM South Brisbane meetup may remember I was going to get onto our Department of Natural Resources people to see when they were going to release their datasets under a GILF (CC-BY compatible) licence. It turns out there's been a little-publicised initiative within Federal Government called the Government 2.0 Taskforce @ http://gov2.net.au/ Note the blog post: http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/08/suggest-a-dataset-ideascale-competition-part-three/ We are seeking your suggestions for datasets to be made available under the open access to public sector information principle (such as the Australian Toilet Map). These datasets will form the basis for our upcoming mashup competition. Also: http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/08/13/hack-mash-and-innovate-contests-coming-soon/ we are working to make some datasets from various jurisdictions available on open access terms and in formats that permit and enable reuse. If we find that an agency is willing to make data available but cant because of a legacy system, we will outline the technical requirements and post it as a challenge to build and open source a tool that will help that agency (and possibly others) liberate the data. And the followup: http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/22/innovate-mash-camp-govt-2-0-contest-update/ This is the one that I personally am most excited about. We are on track for launching this, possibly as early as next week. The combined forces of the Secretariat and my colleagues at DBCDE (thanks Judi and James) have been hard at work securing the agreement of at least 12 (yep, count them) federal agencies and at least four (possibly more) out of our seven states and territories to release datasets for use in the contest (drum roll) in RDF, XML, JSON, CSV or XLS formats and under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia license. [...] We realise that data doesnt just mash itself up. We also want to bring the community together to share and collaborate. In an effort to do this, we are working on organising at least one mashup camp to be held in Sydney in late October/ early November. We also hope to hold one in Canberra in mid-October. Just to give yall a heads up that we are trying to give you a formal forum to get your innovative juices flowing to mashup the data that we have liberated. It turns out this competition is indeed due to launch on Monday. I can also say that the Queensland Government contribution to this competiton will be (data is in a range of formats, including DBF, PRJ, SBN, SBX, SHP SHX): 1. Queensland Wetlands Mapping - Streams 2. Queensland Wetlands Data - Wetlands Estates Layer including National Parks, Conservation Areas Forest Reserves etc. 3. Drainage Basins Queensland 4. Groundwater Observation Bore Sites 5. Surface Water Gauging Stations Queensland 6. Property Boundaries Annual Extract Queensland (Lite DCDB) 7. Local Government Boundaries Annual Extract Queensland Other jurisdictions will also be releasing a smattering of datasets, they won't necessarily be the same themes. Well I'm pretty excited to the point where I'm planning to host a WMS server for at least dataset #6. It's about 2.1 million polygons, bless'em. If you lot promise not to DoS the server, I might even tell you the address once I get the CC-BY version of the dataset (-: All we Qld OSMers need to do is use the attribution=State of Queensland (Department of Environment and Resource Management) 2009 tag, as per CC-BY. I presume it will be similar for other jurisdictions. I'd like to acknowledge my contact at Qld DERM for this heads up. However I'll leave him to introduce himself when the time's right. Brendan (morb_au) ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] More on the survey tag
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:02:50 +1000 John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/26 Ross Scanlon i...@4x4falcon.com: I don't think that the ABS boundaries change if the roads change. It'd be worth investigating, especially if other govt bodies can benefit from it and as a result we end up with more data. It's probably worth while whoever originally contacted the ABS and check with them to see if the road changes and an ABS boundary is along that road does that change the boundary. Was it Franc? It was. Looking back to April when it was first entered, it was suggested that where no/little sat coverage or indeterminate from yahoo, then the ABS data could be used for natural features (rivers, coastline). My thoughts at the time were that rivers would be good but I was dubious about the coastline as I had seen several where the ABS data just cut straight across the mouth of a bay. Whereas the PGS and/or landsat was more accurate. So I'd support using it for rivers but not for coastlines. As for roads until we get some clarification from ABS as to when a road is moved then the boundary moves with it don't use it for roads and don't move the boundary to match the road. Particularly those that have been surveyed and no longer match the ABS boundary closely. -- Cheers Ross ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Graphical view of postcodes
I tried to import the bigger areas so the map didn't look so blank, and so it looks a little prettier now :) http://maps.bigtincan.com/?z=4ll=-32.470,131.472layer=00B00FF Having a graphical view of things has helped to show up errors with data missing from the database, I'm waiting for the new change files stuff that keeps getting mentioned on the talk list about it being able to cope better with not all information appearing in the minutely files. There was a few errors with postcodes that didn't quite match Franc's OSM files. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] More on the survey tag
On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:35:05 +1000 terryc ter...@woa.com.au wrote: Ross Scanlon wrote: We should not just automatically change the coastline to the ABS data without at least looking at the sat imagery as well. What exactly will that tell you? I would expect that you need to find out what data the ABS coastline is based on. From memory, the offical coastline is at mean highwater level. The ABS data is boundary data not coastline data, however there are areas where it will follow the coastline, rivers, etc. Have a look at the link below: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-20.2657lon=148.9852zoom=13layers=B000FTF This is Whitsunday Island. If you then go to edit and turn on the Yahoo imagery as the background you will see that the area on the western side the ABS boundary cuts straight across a bay whereas the coastline follows arround the bay. Like wise on the eastern side the ABS boundary follows the water up the inlet and the coastline follows the navigable part of the inlet. As I said there are areas where you need to look first if you are going to change the coastline to the ABS boundary. Also have a look at Repulse Creek area which is SW of this on the mainland, the ABS boundary in no way reflects the coastline or the creekline. On the east coast, probably means little difference, but NW coast might mean a great positional difference, i.e Sat images also require knowledge of the state of the tide when they were taken. Anywhere in the tropics has the posibility of a great positional difference. The northwest coast is not the only place that has 9m tides. Have a look at Mackay's eastern beaches where the difference between the low tide waterline and the high tide waterline can be about 1k due to the shallow slope of the bottom there. Practically, what is the coastline used for? Aside from defining the outline of Australia, anything you want to. I know someone who is using it in a gps program along side their nautical charts, not for navigation purely as an educational exercise. Cheers Ross ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
2009/9/27 terryc ter...@woa.com.au: John Smith wrote: This gives us some basic specs to figure out what we'd need either to build or buy one, combined with a HD camera and low enough to the ground we wouldn't need to worry about clouds etc. For comparison, you really should compare buying/renting your own aircraft and flying it around Australia. This is where the detail aerial images that are behind google come from. That name as the bottom is the company that stitched them together. If we had a UAV blimp capable of operating in some moderate wind speeds it should be possible to program it to do overlapping areas, possibly a lot cheaper than sat imagery. Sydney is 1788 sq km according to wikipedia at $12/sq km comes out at about $21,000 which is only a small area of NSW let alone Australia. Also something just occurred to me, the imagery could possibly be licensed to others to further fund the project. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] More on the survey tag
Ross Scanlon wrote:
We should not just automatically change the coastline to the ABS data without
at least looking at the sat imagery as well.
What exactly will that tell you?
I would expect that you need to find out what data the ABS coastline is
based on. From memory, the offical coastline is at mean highwater level.
On the east coast, probably means little difference, but NW coast might
mean a great positional difference, i.e Sat images also require
knowledge of the state of the tide when they were taken.
Practically, what is the coastline used for?
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Re: [talk-au] More on the survey tag
I had never really thought of this before, but land traveller and
mariner have quite different concepts of what it means to reach 'the
coast'. For the former it is when you get your feet wet, for the
latter it is when you run into something. And there are places where
there is quite a gap between the two.
Given that OSM is a land-based project, the mean high water mark is
probably might be the best to use.
jim
Practically, what is the coastline used for?
Aside from defining the outline of Australia, anything you want to. I know
someone who is using it in a gps program along side their nautical charts,
not for navigation purely as an educational exercise.
Cheers
Ross
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Re: [talk-au] New CC-BY datasets due Monday 28 September on Government 2.0 Taskforce website
Hi. On the issue of land parcels, does OSM support this (i.e. with useful information to do things like give the parcel an address)? I know you can relate a point to a street, and attach the street number to the point. Can you attach a number to an area, and relate it to a street? Possibly yes, as you can attach a street number to a building (which is an area). There was some discussion in another thread on mapping locations to addresses. With land parcels mapped you can do this pretty easily. - Ben. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
John Smith wrote:
Sydney is 1788 sq km according to wikipedia at $12/sq km comes out at
Can you explain the $12/sqkms.
(That 1788 sqkms sounds awfully small to me, but anyway)
about $21,000 which is only a small area of NSW let alone Australia.
Also something just occurred to me, the imagery could possibly be
licensed to others to further fund the project.
Is that possible under OSM?
(There is also the question of the established competition).
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Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
2009/9/27 terryc ter...@woa.com.au: John Smith wrote: Sydney is 1788 sq km according to wikipedia at $12/sq km comes out at Can you explain the $12/sqkms. Sat imagery with a non-profit discount is about US$12/sq km (That 1788 sqkms sounds awfully small to me, but anyway) I looked again area is 12144.6 km² (I really must stop emailing late at night), so at US$12/sq km = $145,000 The prices must have dropped compared to what is on the OSM wiki which estimated the price at $300k Is that possible under OSM? We'd need a legal entity to do it under, however there is nothing I know of that would prevent us from on selling/licensing assets the legal entity produces to further fund itself. (There is also the question of the established competition). This is the question, can we provide our own imagery cheaper than others already doing it? Which is probably yes, at that point could we use it as a funding source? Instead of onselling/licensing the imagery we could see if Yahoo or someone is interested in the results and willing to fund us to do it... ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
2009/9/27 Babstar debian-l...@blueturtles.com: One thing to consider is that the photography won't actually need to cover the *entire* state. Given the way most rural towns work, it would just need the point-to-point connections to cover the important roads between towns as well as the towns themselves. This vastly reduces the area required to get the most important features. That assuming we don't want to do most/all of Australia so we can plot land uses on maps too... I am in a position to be able to the flying if needed for free, however the majority of the cost is for the hire of the aircraft. The biggest issue is how to mount the camera equipment in the aircraft to get suitable images. I could do some further investigations if this was a path we were likely to go down. Judging by the UK experiment into this I don't think hiring a plane would be the most cost effective option, also the only way to do proper photos without modifying an aircraft is to do sharp banking so this would limit the amount of useful time in the air and co-ordinating the collection of imagery etc. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
$150 gives you a feed from space... ;)
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/09/21/reaching-near-space-for-less-than-150/
jim
On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 11:17 AM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/27 terryc ter...@woa.com.au:
John Smith wrote:
Sydney is 1788 sq km according to wikipedia at $12/sq km comes out at
Can you explain the $12/sqkms.
Sat imagery with a non-profit discount is about US$12/sq km
(That 1788 sqkms sounds awfully small to me, but anyway)
I looked again area is 12144.6 km² (I really must stop emailing late
at night), so at US$12/sq km = $145,000 The prices must have
dropped compared to what is on the OSM wiki which estimated the price
at $300k
Is that possible under OSM?
We'd need a legal entity to do it under, however there is nothing I
know of that would prevent us from on selling/licensing assets the
legal entity produces to further fund itself.
(There is also the question of the established competition).
This is the question, can we provide our own imagery cheaper than
others already doing it?
Which is probably yes, at that point could we use it as a funding source?
Instead of onselling/licensing the imagery we could see if Yahoo or
someone is interested in the results and willing to fund us to do
it...
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Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
From this website: http://www.skyshipsremote.com/airships.htm UK based company says in the UK there is an altitude limitation of 400ft (~130m) for UAV aircraft, not sure if the same is true in Australia though. If it is we can probably still cope with this via fish eye lenses like the camera at the bottom of this page: Applicable AU rules: http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_91039 One way to go about capturing the images: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Webcam-HOWTO/ I had set up something along these lines with lat/long encoded onto it but found the resolution of the camera too low. With some of the new 10M pixels webcams it may fix that. -- Cheers Ross ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] Our own satellite imagery?
2009/9/27 Ross Scanlon i...@4x4falcon.com: Applicable AU rules: http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_91039 Same reg as the UK, maximum operating ceiling of 400ft for UAV aircraft. Tethered balloons (and kites) are allowed up to 500ft... Apart from any restricted air space around airports it most likely wouldn't be practical for areas with tall buildings, but it would be fine for land use etc, then it's just a matter of programming it with way points and digital elevation information or a laser range finder to estimate hieght. Having 4 ranger finders (down, front left, right) and/or some kind of radar, might be useful to avoid collisions. One way to go about capturing the images: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Webcam-HOWTO/ I had set up something along these lines with lat/long encoded onto it but found the resolution of the camera too low. With some of the new 10M pixels webcams it may fix that. The other option is a HD digital video camera, even though the frame sizes aren't as big we'd get a lot more of them. These cameras are now reasonably priced and combined with a fish eye lense plus gyro stabalised mount that always points vertical it's ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
Re: [talk-au] ABS Data (was Re: More on the survey tag)
John Smith wrote:
2009/9/27 Ben Kelley ben.kel...@gmail.com:
I don't think we need to worry about going back to the ABS too much.
That isn't the point, we want govt's to use us for their data
repository, so we need data how they want/need it.
Just my 2c, but it isn't going to happen on the current system. OSM is
about basic maps.
If uneducated government employee wants a quick graphic, then they
might grab a screen dump.
The problem is that everything the government says and does has legal
implications. so the information they publish has to be as accurate as
possible, hint millimetre acccuracy.
Essentially government is about land. Property boundaries are basically
the foundation upon which all government rests. Everything else relates
to those property boundaries.
The first thing the government data people can do is give you hook line
and sinker on how that data was obtained and each and every step on how
it was processed to reach its current form.
Part of that processing is how it all joins together and fits together
with a goal of being as perfectas they can despite continental drift,
earthquakes, susidence, etc, etc.
Stuff like roads and tracks is then laid on top of that and they spend a
lot of effort making sure the alignment is a good fit.
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Re: [talk-au] ABS Data (was Re: More on the survey tag)
2009/9/27 terryc ter...@woa.com.au: The problem is that everything the government says and does has legal implications. so the information they publish has to be as accurate as possible, hint millimetre acccuracy. ABS postcode boundaries are out by 1+ km in some places so I think it depends on the data set/use of the data. Essentially government is about land. Property boundaries are basically the foundation upon which all government rests. Everything else relates to those property boundaries. This is getting off topic, but I disagree that OSM couldn't be used, you just need some suitable queries to extract the information. Part of that processing is how it all joins together and fits together with a goal of being as perfectas they can despite continental drift, earthquakes, susidence, etc, etc. DGA94 doesn't have much continential drift, WGS84 on the other hand does. Stuff like roads and tracks is then laid on top of that and they spend a lot of effort making sure the alignment is a good fit. Again depends on the data set/intended use, the ABS data has no roads even if their boundaries align with man made features. ___ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
