Presentation 1 General informations on OpenStreetMap

1. Openstreetmap
General
ICRC GIS officers - 24/08/2010
Frédéric Bonifas
fredericbonifas@gmail.com

2. What is Openstreetmap ?

3. Openstreetmap ?
● Collaborative project to create a free and open
map of the world
● Database of geographical vector data
● Wiki-style editing
= +

4. Why does OSM exist ?
● Most other maps are non-free (eg : hard to get Google
MapMaker for Kyrgyzstan)
● Vector data for custom maps is difficult to obtain
● Users can improve the map
● Fast updates
● Commercial maps have intentional errors to prevent copy
● Many areas of the world are mapped poorly
● Specialty maps
● Innovative uses

5. Innovative use ? OSM cake !

6. History
● Aug 2004 : Creation of OpenStreetMap
● March 2006 : OSM on Garmin GPS
● Dec 2006 : tracing over Yahoo aerial imagery
allowed
● July 2007 : First international conference (State
of the Map)
● 2008 : TIGER import in the US
● July 2010 : OSM used by MapQuest and Bing

7. Technical side

8. Data primitives
Node : basic element
Latitude & longitude
Used for POIs
Way : ordered interconnection of nodes
Used for linear features
Closed Way : first and last nodes of the
way identical
Used for areas
Relation : group of any primitives with
associated roles
Used for relationships between objects
and abstract objects

9. Attributes
● Attributes for differentiation of each data
primitive
● No restriction on tags assigned to elements :
use any attributes you want !
● Frequently used attributes are documented →
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features

10. Map Features

11. Which features ?
● Buildings
● Road signs
● Streets and roads ● Amenities and shops
● Boundaries
● Pedestrian and bicycle
● Landuse
● Hydrography
informations
● Public transport

12. Community

13. Who is participating ?
● Citizens and associations
● Private societies
● Google, Yahoo !
● AND
● Cloudmade, Geofabrik, Camptocamp
● Organizations
● Local governments
● NGOs

14. Important growth
290000 contributors
1,9 billion GPS points
740 million nodes
60 million polylines

15. Mapping parties

16. State of the Map

17. Governance
Needs
● Represent the OSM community
● Money and servers management
● Legal aspect
Structures
● OpenStreetMap Foundation
● Local chapters
● Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team