A year ago or so, we added a Google Map to a website friends of me are running. The website is about reptiles and amphibians. In one part of the site users can enter details into a form, including the location, when they’ve seen an interesting species. In the meantime their database has grown to a comprehensive collection of (crowd sourced) information like species distribution among our country. It’s not only a hobbyist project, the database means quite a valuable input for species research and protection projects too.
Anyways, before we added a Google Map to the form, user provided location information was very poor. Only a rough location description or coordinate information based on the national topographical map were possible to enter. For national coordinates users had to go to another website, look up the place and copy and paste the coordinates from there back into the form. Definitely not what I would call a convenient solution.
Once we added Google Maps where users could simply pinpoint the location on a map, the collected data turned into something like this:
Green dots … located with Google Maps (92%)
Red dots … located with a service of our National Mapping Agency (8%)
That says something about the benefit of public available mapping APIs. Especially for projects like this, with no commercial but a strong public interest.
Ordnance Survey heads into a good direction by releasing OpenSpace. OpenSpace is a mapping API, based on public geodata and OpenLayers, the Open Source JavaScript library for mapping. OS is probably the most progressive European mapping agency, so there is hope that others will follow (once they have all fulfilled INSPIRE and are done with metadata updates). It took some time until maps showed up at public authorities’ websites, followed by interactive maps and nowadays you even find WMS here and there. The next evolutionary step is probably public geodata made available through APIs.
During the INSPIRE process it became pretty clear that European mapping agencies don’t favor free public geodata. The API concept could help here: it enables flexible usage of data for users while retaining full control over both, functionality and data, for the mapping agency. Seems like a workable compromise to me.
I totally missed that it’s allowed in OpenStreetMap to derive vector data from aerial imagery provided by Yahoo! Maps. Apparently already since December 2006.
Last weekend, when we checked Vienna on OSM, we started wondering how come that it’s suddenly so rich on details. Did we miss a local GPS boom or mapping party?
The last time, it was summer, I collected and edited some tracks in my neighborhood for OSM, Vienna was poorly covered. Some major roads showed up and only a few neighborhoods were mapped more detailed (including parks, cemeteries or water areas for instance).
I didn’t know then that I can actually use the aerial imagery to refine my tracks and relied on the data my GPS unit returned. Reception and therefore accuracy in dense urban areas and narrow streets isn’t the best as you can imagine. Some of my tracks were way off and it was quite a hassle to put them in JOSM to a valid street network together.
However, the boost the Yahoo! aerial imagery gave OSM is impressive. Most parts of the central Viennese districts are already well covered. No wonder, it’s very easy to edit without the need of previously generated GPS tracks, directly via the browser interface.
High resolution aerial imagery + collaborative mapping tools = the real public geodata!
(With some help of the good old Gründerzeit raster, which makes mapping this city pretty straightforward I guess)
TomTom did the obvious step and raised their offer up to 30 EUR per TeleAtlas share, making TeleAtlas worth a decent 2.9 billion EUR.
Why do I get the feeling that, no matter who wins the poker game, the loser will run into big “devices without data” troubles?
The point I’m more concerned about is how will the outcome of this poker game affect other TeleAtlas clients. It’s quite obvious that the future TeleAtlas owner will try to get the investment back. And what would be easier than to have a look at existing costumers? Since TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ (now part of the Nokia empire) were in monopoly excellent data vendor positions, many clients depend on their services.
Just like a considerable part of public administration (transport planning, etc.) relies on TeleAtlas (or NAVTEQ) data. So I guess, thanks to privatization and outsourcing, the TeleAtlas bill is partially going to be paid with tax money too. [via heise]
The Russian developer Alexey “Holyfoot” Botchkov improved MySQL’s built-in GIS functions in order to use precise operations instead of MBR-based operations. Binary packages of a MySQL release containing his work are available for public testing here (FTP).
According to the GIS Functions wiki entry following MySQL GIS functions have been added to the MySQL 5.1.23 beta GIS release:
- BUFFER
- DIFFERENCE
- DISTANCE
- INTERSECTION
- SYM_DIFFERENCE
- UNION
I haven’t had the chance to test it yet, but I remember being very excited when I first read about the MySQL spatial extension a couple of years ago, followed by disappointment because of the MBR limits. Finally I decided to go with PostgreSQL/PostGIS back then.
However, if this functions make it into the official release it would be a good tool for proper storage and inclusion of geospatial data in (lightweighted) mapping applications like map mashups, compared to file based XML (KML) storage for instance. MySQL is supported by every other shared hosting plan, so the install base would be quite considerable I guess. [via heise]
According to this press release the dutch navigation solution provider TomTom is bidding for Tele Atlas, a global digital mapping company and major data supplier for navigational devices.
What’s next?
TomTom competitors ban Tele Atlas, Garmin acquires Navteq and Openstreetmap fills the gap?
An agreement on the INSPIRE-directive between the European Council and Parliament has been reached last night. The press release doesn’t provide many details but it looks like that public European geodata will remain where it is now:
Data search services designed for the public will generally be free of charge, although the directive allows fees to be charged for access to data that has to be updated frequently, such as weather reports.
Basically I think INSPIRE is an important step for a common European data policy. But still I wish our governments would have taken the chance of pushing the European geospatial industry by agreeing on a more courageous directive.
According to a study on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, 8bn EUR of potential added value lie safely behind closed doors in the form of public geodata.
A few interesting posts about the Geo Business Kongress on the German Geograffiti blog lead me to the conclusion that the aim of the European geodata policy is probably to vaporize its potential by doing nothing but creating one working group after another until some private companies have caught up, can substitute national mapping agencies and do their job with less effort and better license agreements.
I remember quite a similar study about the situation in Austria, stating an immense economic potential by freeing public geodata. What did it help? Nothing.
European geodata policy seems irrational and mainly driven by political lobbying.
Whenever I have to deal with the European Environmental Agency, I’m deeply impressed by their data service. Basically it’s very simple, no or little fancy online mapping applications, but therefore it offers fast and easy to use data searching and data browsing features. I wish more European Agencies would offer such a service. Finding the right data or indicators can be painfully and, at the worst, take ages.
Besides the downloads, a very convenient feature is that the EEA data service manages your agreements. Especially in the case of national data sets (e.g. Corine land cover) in cross-border regions it’s very useful and time saving. You select the data, fill out a form and the data service takes care about the agreement with each involved national agency. You see all given permissions and details in one single overview, without the need of finding the right person to ask in each country.
Well, finding and talking to the right person can result in new projects, but in this case I was only interested in getting the data quickly.
Jared Bendedict succeeded in his Map Ransom mission and made, as promised, all his purchased data available for download at the Libre Map Project. (via James Fee GIS Blog)
Congratulations, great work!
I was thinking if a similar initiative would succeed here too, but I’m afraid that European copycats would need fundings similar to GNPs of some medium insular state, a bunch of excellent attorneys and a lobbyist better than Nick Nayler to buy and finally free the data of its public copyright.
It’s quite clear that collecting high quality geodata is cost intensive and since there is a noticeable political pressure on public authorities, such as most national mapping agencies are, to act like private companies it’s understandable that they don’t want or can’t distribute their core business freely.
The point is, that small European businesses, start-ups or single geo-developers who can’t afford licensing all needed European geodata are forced to test run their services and applications with American geodata, like the one at Libre Map Project, and deal with American spatial issues or to make use of one of the available geo APIs (mostly focusing the US of course).
Is it in the interest of the European Union to direct grass-root innovation from Europe to the US?
What would be the problem of making outdated European public geodata freely available? Most people would be fine with that. I believe it would ease and push innovation (anyone remembering the Lisbon Strategy?) in the geo industry a lot, simply because geo applications heavily depend, already during conceptual work and development, on data – no data, no development.
The GPS tracklog blog has created a GPS data search as a custom search engine based on Google’s Co-op platform, aimed to bundle resources of free available GPS maps, POIs, etc.
If you happen to know a source which should be included, head over and let Rich know. Once all listed GPS resources got indexed by Google this customized search will be pretty useful.
