Geodata collection for the
twenty-first century
Nick Black
20th September 2007

§

Mapping Parties
• Gather in a place
• Map it exhaustively
• Have fun

Stats
•11,000+ users
•1,000+ users editing / month
•10-20 million objects in db

Data:
UK-US comparison

US GeoData Maket
Price
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

US GeoData Maket
Price
TIGER-derived
(mostly)
TIGER
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
Price
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
OS
Price
OSM
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
OS
I’m ignoring ex-
Price copyright data as
its place is very
debatable
OSM
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
OS
Price
OSM
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
OS
Price
OSM
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

UK GeoData Maket
OS
Price
OSM
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

We’ve seen this before

OS Market
Windows
Price
Linux
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

OS Market
Windows
(Think price per
Price feature)
Linux
‘Quality’ 100 ‘%’

So what is valuable
within the OSM stack?

0 Value Lots

Aerial Imagery
0 Value Lots

NPE
Aerial Imagery
0 Value Lots

Software
NPE
Aerial Imagery
0 Value Lots

The People, the Commons, the Community
Software
NPE
Aerial Imagery
0 Value Lots

What is a community
anyway?

People who want to
make a Free map

Also...
•People who want everything to be free
•People who love maps
•People who hate the OS
•People who want to make maps
•People who want to use data
•People who want to write software

The Problem: How to
get all of these people
to do something
coherent?

Use Force
Requires a lot of resources

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mshades/493511263/

Create an ideology
Ideologies are exclusive and often end in disaster
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mshades/493511263/

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/saveena/268981853/

Pay people
Requires a lot of cash, unless you use...
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/saveena/268981853/

Pay people
Requires a lot of cash, unless you use...
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/saveena/268981853/

Non-monetary motivation

Non-monetary motivation
Give people ownership

Non-monetary motivation
Give people ownership
Create a short feedback loop

Non-monetary motivation
Give people ownership
Create a short feedback loop
Allow especially talented people to
do amazing things

Coase’s Penguin
(Yochai Benkler)
Commons-based Peer Production:
•Non-monetary motivation
•Discrete multi-size pieces
•Low-cost integration

Coase’s Penguin
(Yochai Benkler)
Commons-based Peer Production:
•Fun
•Takes 5 minutes
•Easy

Give People Ownership
•Its your map, your project
•Ownership of the data
•CreativeCommons License - Trusted,
inpedendent third party
•Copyright assigned to the OpenStreetMap
Foundation

A Short Feedback Loop
•People want to see the results of their hard work
•Maps - Need to be rendered yesterday
•Software - Needs to be deployed before its written
•This can be annoying, but it means that the
community is working

Allow especially
talented people to do
amazing things

'It's my belief that open software and data projects
are much the same... They don't progress smoothly
but in fits and starts. Thus far those punctuations in
equilibrium have been the result of single efforts.
To point out some of them, they are the rails port,
the introduction of mapnik, the move from java to
ruby, the first mapping party, josm, aerial imagery.
These are largely the result of one person having
some time and/or insight to change things.'
Steve Coast, July 2007

Letting people do things
•Committees don’t help much
•Massive standards don’t help much
•Talking doesn’t help much

Letting people do things
•Committees don’t help much
•Massive standards don’t help much
•Talking doesn’t help much
•Let the talented people do the amazing
things

I know what you are
thinking...
• How can you trust the data that someone
puts in?
• OSM format is useless for my GIS
• Where is the support?
•Where is the person on the end of the phone?

CloudMade:
OpenGeoData Providers

CloudMade - Open Data for
GIS Professionals
•Verification of data - correction of errors,
spelling mistakes, profanities, topology
•Provision of data - in the format you want
•Metadata - source, date, geodetic information
•Updates - get the latest data from open
sources

PostCodes
• Postcode Point data sourced from
FreeThePostcode and NPE Maps
• Postcode sectors
• A web based API

Motorways, A Roads, Train lines
• Vector data sourced from OpenStreetMap
• An attributed, verified dataset
•Updated regularly

Geo-Coding
• Worldwide geo-coding based on open data
sources
• Available as a web API

Tile Hosting
• Google Maps tiles is the standard
• CloudMade can host tiles for web applications
• Host your own tiles or have custom tiles
created for you

Thanks for listening
nick@cloudmade.com