Should we encourage local governments to donate info also? [http://lwn.net/Articles/318801/]
===== Public data for OpenStreetMap February 11, 2009 This article was contributed by Tom Chance. [...] OpenStreetMap was founded by Steve Coast in 2004, borne of a frustration with the prevailing preference for proprietary data in the UK. The Ordnance Survey, which can trace its roots back to 1747, is the part-government funded agency with some of the world's most detailed and best loved maps. Unfortunately they charge you an arm and a leg to get the underlying vector data. So out stepped Coast, equipped with a GPS, notepad and pen, followed by tens of thousands of volunteers all manually gathering the data to enter into OpenStreetMap's database. [...] Coast quickly secured an import of GPS traces from a courier company for central London; the donation cost the courier company nothing but was very helpful for OpenStreetMap. Much more impressive imports began more recently, with the US census bureau's TIGER database bringing data for the entire street network for the United States of America in late 2007. The Netherlands appeared in even finer detail around the same time, thanks to a donation by Dutch company AND. This process has now rapidly accelerated. You can get an idea of the scale of the import activity from these incomplete wiki pages on importing government data, the catalogue of major imports and the enormous list of potential data sources. These imports vary from quite comprehensive -- such as the Canadian Geobase -- to very specific datasets like NAPTAN (UK public transport access points) and UK oil wells. Importing vectors for buildings in addition to roads has been popular, examples include Boston in the USA and Naga City in the Philippines. [...] ===== -- Soh Kam Yung my Google Reader Shared links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16851815156817689753) my Google Reader Shared SFAS links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/16851815156817689753/label/sfas) _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
