OpenStreetMap of Cambridge, England |
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URL | OpenStreetMap.org |
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Slogan | The Free Wiki World Map |
Commercial? | No |
Type of site | Collaborative mapping |
Registration | required for contributors |
Owner | OpenStreetMap Community. Project support by OpenStreetMap Foundation.[1] |
Created by | Steve Coast |
Launched | 1 July 2004 |
Alexa rank | 8,085 (January 2012[update])[2] |
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Two major driving forces behind the establishment and growth of OSM have been restrictions on use or availability of map information across much of the world and the advent of inexpensive portable GPS devices.[3]
The maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography, other free sources or simply from local knowledge. Both rendered images and the vector dataset are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence.[4]
The OpenStreetMap approach to mapping was inspired by sites such as Wikipedia; the map display features a prominent 'Edit' tab and a full revision history is maintained. Registered users can upload GPS track logs and edit the vector data using free GIS editing tools like JOSM.[5] Various mobile applications also allow contribution of GPX tracks to the OSM project.
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OpenStreetMap (OSM) was founded in July 2004 by Steve Coast. In April 2006, the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) was established to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and provide geospatial data for anybody to use and share. In December 2006, Yahoo confirmed that OpenStreetMap could use its aerial photography as a backdrop for map production.[6]
In April 2007, Automotive Navigation Data (AND) donated a complete road data set for the Netherlands and trunk road data for India and China to the project[7] and by July 2007, when the first OSM international The State of the Map conference was held there were 9,000 registered users. Sponsors of the event included Google, Yahoo and Multimap. In August 2007 an independent project, OpenAerialMap, was launched, to hold a database of aerial photography available on open licensing[8] and in October 2007 OpenStreetMap completed the import of a US Census TIGER road dataset.[9] In December 2007 Oxford University became the first major organisation to use OpenStreetMap data on their main website.[10]
In January 2008, functionality was made available to download map data into a GPS unit for use by cyclists.[11] In February 2008 a series of workshops were held in India.[12] In March two founders announced that they have received venture capital funding of 2.4m euros for CloudMade, a commercial company that will use OpenStreetMap data.[13]
By August 2008, shortly after the second The State of the Map conference was held, there were over 50,000 registered contributors; by March 2009 there were 100,000 and by the end of 2009 the figure was nearly 200,000. In Nov 2011, OpenStreetMap cleared 500,000 registered users.[14]
Not all registered contributors actually contribute to the map; a minority of individuals contribute the majority of the content. In March 2008 approximately 10% of the registered user base were contributing map data each month,[15] and in 2011 this percentage is around 3%.[14]
The initial map data were collected from scratch by volunteers performing systematic ground surveys using a handheld GPS unit and a notebook, digital camera, or a voice recorder. These data were then entered into the OpenStreetMap database.
More recently, the availability of aerial photography and other data sources from commercial and government sources has greatly increased the speed of this work and has allowed land-use data to be collected more accurately.
When large datasets are available, a technical team manages the conversion and import of the data.
Ground surveys are performed by a mapper, on foot, bicycle or in a car or boat. Map data are usually collected using a GPS unit, although this isn't strictly necessary if an area has already been traced from satellite imagery.
Once the data has been collected, they are entered into the database by uploading it on the project's website. At that point in time, no information about the kind of uploaded track is available - it could be e.g. a motorway, a footpath or a river. Thus, in a second step, editing takes place using one of several purpose-built map editors. This is usually done by the same mapper, sometimes by other users registered at OpenStreetMap.
As collecting and uploading data is separated from editing objects, contribution to the project is possible also without using a GPS unit. In particular, placing and editing objects such as schools, hospitals, taxi ranks, bus stops, pubs etc. is done based on editors' local knowledge.
Some committed contributors are systematically mapping whole towns and cities over a period of time, or organising mapping parties to intensively map a particular area over an evening or a weekend.
In addition to structured surveys, a large number of smaller edits are made by contributors to correct errors or add features.
Some government agencies have released official data on appropriate licenses. Much of these data have come from the United States, where the federal government does not copyright such data. See Copyright status of work by the U.S. government for more details.
Various authorities have also made more local detailed aerial photography available on suitable licenses through OpenAerialMap.
Out-of-copyright maps can be good source of information about features that don't change frequently. Copyright periods vary, but in the UK Crown copyright expires after 50 years and hence Ordnance Survey maps until the 1960s can legally be used. A complete set of UK 1 inch/mile maps from the late 1940s and early 1950s has been collected, scanned, and is available online as a resource for contributors.
Some commercial companies have donated data to the project on suitable licenses. Notably, Automotive Navigation Data (AND) provided a complete road data set for Netherlands and details of trunk roads in China and India.
In December 2006, Yahoo! confirmed that OpenStreetMap was able to make use of their vertical aerial imagery and this photography was available within the editing software as an overlay. Contributors could create their vector based maps as a derived work, released with a free and open license,[6] until the shutdown of the Yahoo! Maps API on September 13, 2011.[16]
In November 2010, Microsoft announced that the OpenStreetMap community could use Bing vertical aerial imagery as a backdrop in its editors.[17]
NearMap Pty Ltd have, since launch in November 2009, made their high-resolution PhotoMaps (currently of major Australian cities, plus some rural Australian areas) available for deriving OpenStreetMap data under a CC-BY-SA licence.[18]
OpenStreetMap data is published under an open content license, with the intention of promoting free use and re-distribution of the data (both commercial and non-commercial). The license currently used is the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 licence; however, legal investigation work and community consultation is underway to relicense the project under the Open Database License (ODbL) from Open Data Commons (ODC), claimed to be more suitable for a map data set.[4]
As part of this relicensing process, some of the map data will have to be deleted. This includes all data contributed by members who have not agreed to the new licensing terms, as well as all subsequent edits to those affected objects. It also includes any data contributed based on input data that are not compatible with the new terms. Current estimates suggest that over 95% of data will be retained in most countries, but that Australia and Poland have around a 60% acceptance rate.[19]
All data added to the project need to have a license compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This can include out of copyright information, public domain or other licenses. All contributors must register with the project and agree to provide data on a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 licence, or determine that the licensing of the source data is suitable; this may involve examining licences for government data to establish whether they are compatible.
Due to the license switch, data added in future must be compatible with both the Open Database License and the new Contributor Terms in order to be accepted.
Software used in the production and presentation of OpenStreetMap data is available from many different projects and each may have their own licencing. The core Ruby on Rails code to manage the databases, much user interaction and the API are available under a GNU General Public License.[20]
Certain parts of the software, such as the flash-based map editor Potlatch2, have been made available as public domain.[21]
OpenStreetMap data is available through an increasing number of sites and in different formats:
Mapping is available online at general mapping sites:
Map | Theme | Area |
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OpenStreetMap | general, cyclists, debugging | Worldwide |
OpenStreetBrowser | overlays, search, navigation, wikipedia, public transport | Worldwide |
Information Freeway | general, almost realtime | Worldwide |
OSM WMS Servers | general, Web Map Services | Worldwide |
OpenSeaMap | nautical chart | Worldwide, multilingual: seas, oceans, waterways, weather charts, harbours, Wikipedia |
FreeMap | walkers | parts of the UK |
Reit- und Wanderkarte | walkers and riders | Austria, Germany, Switzerland |
TopOSM | walkers and riders | United States |
OpenCycleMap | cyclists | Worldwide |
OpenMTBMap | cyclists (esp. mountainbikes) | Worldwide |
YourNavigation | routing | Worldwide |
OpenRouteService | routing | Europe |
OpenOrienteeringMap | orienteering style | Worldwide |
OpenPisteMap | skiing | some European and USA resorts[22] |
Bing OSM "Map App" | general | Worldwide |
CloudMade | general, mobile and various other custom styles | Worldwide |
OpenAviationMap | Airspace indexing and classification | Braunschweig Germany |
MapQuest Open (beta) | general, routing | Worldwide |
NearMap | up-to-date photomaps | populated areas of Australia |
OSMTransport | public transport | Worldwide |
ÖPNV-Karte, or OpenBusMap | public transport | Worldwide |
OSM Mapper | Debugging maps by Ito World Ltd | |
OpenLinkMap | Map showing additional information, e.g. websites, wikipedia, contact, ... | |
Busroutes.in | public transport bus routes | India (Chennai) [Bangalore and Delhi under development stage] |
A wide variety of programs exist by now that use OpenStreetMap data to display maps on mobile phones,[25] supporting a large number of different devices. Amongst supported devices are nearly all phones that can run Java ME, making OpenStreetMap available to the majority of current phones, as well as platforms like Maemo, Android,[26] the iPhone,[27] Windows Mobile[28] or Openmoko.[29] The various programs distinguish themselves according to key features like if they use raster maps or vector maps, need an Internet connection or can be used offline, support alternate render layers such as cycle paths,[30] support address search or advanced features like routing, thus catering for a large number of different needs for viewing maps. With the inclusion of OpenStreetMap support in several programming libraries for mobile phones[31][32] it is also possible to include OSM maps in other location-based service.
Yahoo has started using OpenStreetMap data within its Flickr service for various cities around the world, including Baghdad, Beijing, Kabul, Santiago, Sydney and Tokyo.[33][34][35]
The WordPress OpenStreetMap plug-in[36] inserts maps and adds geo meta tags to posts / pages of WordPress blogs.
Drupal has multiple OpenStreetMap plug-in modules[37] to integrate database content with OpenStreetMaps.
Joomla also has a variety of OpenStreetMap related modules[38] and plug-ins.[39]
Map data is available for download in a variety of formats and for different geographical areas:
OSM provides information that other map sites don't provide:
In 2009, Hasbro, the games company behind the property trading board game Monopoly, launched Monopoly City Streets, a massively multiplayer online game which allowed players to "buy" streets all over the world. Although the game used map tiles from Google Maps and the Google Maps API to display the game board, the underlying vector street data was obtained from OpenStreetMap.[43] The online game was meant to be a limited time offering, closing at the end of January 2010.[44]
In 2009, Austrian mass customization company Fluid Forms introduced the vectors of OpenStreetMaps into the proprietary product "Streets Clock". It is an online design interface with which people design customized wall clocks from a city's street-map. Fluid Forms uses the vectors to enable visitors of the website to get previews of how the clock will look in real-time.[45]
During the 2010 Haiti earthquake, OpenStreetMap and Crisis Commons volunteers used available satellite imagery[46] to map the roads, buildings and refugee camps of Port-au-Prince in just two days, building "the most complete digital map of Haiti's roads".[47]
The resulting data and maps have been used by several organisations providing relief aid, such as the World Bank,[48] the European Commission Joint Research Centre,[49] the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,[50] UNOSAT[50] and others.[51]
There are lists of online and offline routers available on the OSM wiki. Following routing software supports OpenStreetMaps:
OpenStreetMap uses a topological data structure.
Up to version 0.4 of the protocol, an intermediate element between nodes and ways (segments, line segments which two node produced) was also used.
A recommended ontology of map features (the meaning of tags) is maintained on a wiki.
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