OSM vs. proprietary data

● What is OpenStreetMaps● How do we use it? (and should use it)● How can we contribute?● How to handle changes?● How to use externally?● How it is changing things.● Commercial influences

Alternative for commercial map data

● What is OSM?● A visual Wiki● Community powered● Maturity● Portable● Peer reviewed

OSM specifications

● Tools vs Services● Data and People● Commons based peer production● Small pieces● Easy to use● Contributers: 240K signed, 14K classed as

active. Produce open data.

Issues with commercial offers

● Accuracy problems with the big boys (google/bing and the like)

● Free as in only for certain endusers, open initiatives, development on the api.

● NOT :● behind login page (so no user accounts)● : AND NOT:● not publicly available.

Expensive when not free

● Google min license for small business with less than 800 assets (read: tracked assets, not known, but how many of them you potentially can display on their map.

● Translates to:● At least a license fee per year of 10 000USD.● So not affordable for small businesses wanting

some level of protection for their Geo data.

Google/Bing/Yahoo/... (-)

● Problems with Google/Bing/Yahoo data:● Outdated Sat photo's.● Limited amount of layers (terrain/sat view/map)● Lock in api. (alternatives exist)● Easter eggs (roads that don't exist, to facilitate

catching 'copiers'. Street names with deliberate spelling errors and so on.)

● Slow fix to market.

OpenStreetMaps (+)

● Advantages OSM data● Correctness (no easter eggs!) through peer

review and community momentum ever expanding dataset.

● When dealing with VERY important data big boys aren't as accurate. Speed limits, pipeline locations. Measurements for waterways (can those 2 10meter boats pass each other). Etc.

It's all in the Layers

● Lots of layers: roads/cycle paths/elevation/coastlines/points of interests/gas stations, everything is a layer or can be combined into one producing custom maps with the same data sets.

● Things come in Keys/Tags: some to think about:● drinking_water, watering_place,

refugee_camps,kindergarten,WLAN,stripclub,first_aid,red_cross,...

●

Aggregated data has value

● Google MapMaker is how we freely spend our efforts to a company that sells this back to us for much money.

● If only they’d be less evil and work with OpenStreetMap. I don’t know about you, but my time is too valuable to give it to Google without compensation.

● Compensation of OSM work lies in the fact that we all benefit from each others efforts without extra $

Haiti effort

Hard to get data

● Kabul Google vs Kabul OSM ...

Well, maybe NOT so hard ...

● Kabul OSM ...

Proprietary are lacking data...

● Not just limited to Kabul, more places everywhere where data set is not accurate, outdated or just simply wrong.

● Tbilisi, Georgia, Gaza, Baghdad , etc...● Long time since any updates, problem are from

2008 yet right now the data set is the same. They don't care about places some people are highly interested in. (aid workers, journalists, the people there themselves...)

API's options

● Choose 1 and hope you always will be using that one.

● Choose a superlayer type API that handles the rest as a layer and go from there.

● OSM can be used with Openlayers, it's counterpart for the browser part of mapping api's.

● OpenLayers treats the rest as a layer, very large support for layering, not limited to OSM data

●

Correcting data

● From a search on the internet, it seems that the ability to report errors on Google Maps is limited to users in the USA, so that’s points lost immediately for Google…

● Need to contact upstream provider (teleatlas → check copyright notice on map).

● This section is a bit outdated as with releasing streetview they had to do something to give us some way to give feedback. I still takes ages...

(some) Sources

● http://lamp2.fhstp.ac.at/~lbz/beispiele/ws2008/capitals/index.php● http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/google-maps-vs-bing-maps-vs-osm-responsiveness-of-data-corrections/● http://citizenhaiti.com/2011/04/osm-versus-google-mapsits-no-contest-in-haiti.html

Alternative GIS providers

● Expensive!● See http://opengeo.org/products/suite/pricing/● Java based solution (needs big boxes)● Supports openlayers API (+)● Coincidentally, the Basic version here is priced

a bit below google's map service entry level offer. Still expensive for our target audience.

Serve yourself , backed by bad-ass players

● Cloud computing platforms, possible providers:● Amazon● Linode.com● Leaseweb.com● Point is: Don't buy hardware yourselves, use

proven stable platforms with integrated backups. Easily migrated to the next one in case of any issues.

● Reduntant/available/contained and virtual

Deployment issues

GIS servers need:● Fast disks (SSD's are huge speedup factor for

working disks (postgresql should sit on SSD's, the OS not per se.

● Need memory (lots, 8GB is like entry level) and will probably just barely cope with Europe subset.

● Working space. Europe dataset needs atleast 100GB disks for DB alone, workspace for unpacking osm files and loading them up.

Conclusions?

● Questions● After thoughts● Comments● Rants