Open Maps?

Chilltowner asks: "I'm trying to get local (US) maps together for a community project. I want to able to modify and annotate the maps and provide them free to the public, creating a derivative open work. They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date. I've been searching around for maps available in the public domain or under open licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses allowing derivative works. I've looked at the National Atlas, but the maps, though interesting, aren't detailed enough with street information. The topographical and aerial image maps available through that site are from Terraserver, which are copyrighted to Microsoft. Plus, I really just need simple vector road maps, not USGS rasters. I tried looking at the Census Bureau's TIGER line data, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Are there maps available through other agencies (national or international)? Are there Free/Open-Source Software projects that are making use of public data to build street-level maps for free (as in speech) use?"

Comments

Freegis?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeGIs project?

The FreeGIS Project provides * software overview on free Geographic Information Systems (this web site)
* communication on developments, plans, infos on free GIS software and free Geo-Data (mailing list)
* software and data prepared for direct use (CD)

http://freegis.org/

Re:Freegis?

[ruckc]

good source of information, but doesn't come with maps.

Best place i have found maps is:

1) Tiger data (If you read the infosets long enough you can begin to undersdtand them)

2) Shapefiles from ESRI(These shapefiles were generated from Tiger data)

The software i prefer to use is Tiger Map Server The author of this software has also figured out a way to convert tiger data into his own shapefiles due to ESRI's license.

Best of luck!

Re:Freegis?

[roman_mir]

After a while you don't see the infosets anymore, all you see is blond, brunet, redhead...

Re:Freegis?

[Spetiam]

The USGS also has maps viewable online. I'm not sure, but FOIA may make their maps part of the public domain. They talk about FOIA on the USGS web site, he might want to check that out. There's a ton of other information there that might be relevant.

No need to re-invent the wheel

[The-Bus]

Maybe it's possible to buy a database of that information and make it your own? I don't think map24.com, for example, started from scratch... That would be a hell of a lot of work.

Re:No need to re-invent the wheel

[Tomcat666]

I attended a speech of the inventor of Map24 - the CEO of Mapsolute.

- They get their data from three companies, TeleAtlas, NAVTEQ and AND. For quite some money you can get their databases consisting of GBs of maps, and use it the way you want. This is true at least for the EU version, different conditions might exist for the US maps (see map24.com bottom).

- The Map24 applet connects to their map server directly (just over a proxy), using their own Map Transport Protocol (MapTP). So in theory you are able to connect like the applet, and query the whole country at the highest zoom - getting GBs of vector information to use. But they'll probably notice, so don't try it. :)

Anyway, the conclusion is: Like most mapping websites, Map24 (Mapsolute) use commercial maps of mapping companies, they didn't start from scratch. But using it without shelling out a lot of money won't work.

Maybe it's time

[lawpoop]

I've seen several projects where people use their PDA/GPS to map their daily route. Maybe it's time someone organized a collective mapping project, for release cunder the creative commons license.

Re:Maybe it's time

[snillfisk]

We've already done a bit of work on this, although not in any open projects yet. We do however have a small testbed for integrating and designing datasets in a SVG-client before going through a peer review process by others that have data in the same area.

Our white paper on the architecture may be seen at SVG Open from the 2003 proceedings. A small amount of information (including a live demo -- it does however require that someone accepts the data submitted, so don't expect to see anything in the gateway at once) is available here.

The idea is however a good one and is absolutely doable. The problem is that you'll probably get rather large datasets for the most used paths, while the roads noone travels frequently will remain unmapped (and those are really the roads that you _do_ need a map for)..

USGS

[glass_window]

The USGS has this really cool thing they call the 'national map' (http://nationalmap.usgs.gov/nmjump.html) that will display all sorts of information down to the street level and it allows you to download and print the maps you display along with the information. But enough of that, go check it out for yourself, enjoy!

For a more direct link: http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm

*scratches head*

[Akardam]

Maybe I've missed something, but I was under the impression that the arial and topo maps presented via terraserver were copyrighted/owned by the people that put them together in the first place. I don't think Microsoft, as much as we may think otherwise, has mapping sats in orbit. Last time I checked, the data itself belonged to people like the USGS.

Re:*scratches head*

[ericspinder]

Yes, you have "missed something" the National Atlas (a service of the USGS) is clearly public domain material. As is (I think) all published government sources. In fact, most of what the map makers do is based on government surveys and publications. The companies do some fact checking(some better than others), add "features", and consolidate information, but the 'base' work is often public domain.

Maps and accessories baby...

[chamilto0516]

I was suprised when I bought my GPS unit. The maps (or unlocking the maps that we shipped with it) were almost as expesive as the unit itself. I have a Garmin eTrex Venture and between the Garmin US and DeLorme TOPO USA, I have paid more for this data than the hardware.

The maps are where the GPS device companies make their profit. That and accessories ($35USD for an AC car adapter!).

If I were to ever start my own Open/Free project, it would most likely be a call to all us GPS hobbyist out there to create our own Open/Free maps and GPS coordinates of useful landmarks.

Excellent Ask Slashdot question...

Re:Maps and accessories baby...

[cosmol]

Then as hundreds of people move about, all recording it, then you'll build a map.
That's sort of like the strategy ant colonies use to establish paths. It's interesting, but such a brute force method would duplicate much effort, and miss many routes. The data is out there, we just need to convert it into a usable format.

TIGER -- look again

[pb]

Go to freshmeat and search for "tiger maps"; check out the Tiger Map Server project.

Note that they don't have labels rendered on the streets yet, but plan to add this. However, all the code is there, and the data is available, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel here.

Re:TIGER -- look again

[Jaysyn]

I think he's needing datasets & not predrawn maps. His best & cheapest bet would be to get the Free TIGER line files & read thru the 436pg manual on how to use them. That's what we did. I guess if time is a problem, then he's going to pay out the nose. Other resources include MapInfo Streetworks (not too expensive for the level of detail) & ESRI.

Jaysyn

Tiger Files

[aef123]

Take another look at the Tiger Files, they really are one of the best sources of data you can use. In fact, I have found that the tiger files are even more accurate than MapQuest for rural Utah towns. (However, MapQuest has them beat for more populous areas.)

Not only do the files include streets, but it also covers bodies of water, railways, etc.. You can even retrieve additional information such as school districts and voting districts, which you can overlay on your maps.

Along with the files, you can download a 300 page PDF document fully detailing all the table structures and how to interpret the data.

Don't discount them just because it will take a bit of work to figure them out.

Remember Mr Perens

[platypus]

Bruce Perens once bought a data set of AFAIK exactly what you want from his own money and put it on his server for free use. Look here
http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/
Though I didn't get into the ftp server, I'm sure the files are still out there.

Very nice and forthlooking of him.

Find the offsping of Tiger

[thogard]

Tiger is the format of the census files and they list every road where people live or work in theory. They are also only accurate for time of the census (1990,2000,2010) and some of the pre/post processing checks (1989,1992,1999,2002,2005,...) and are accurate relitive to the local map datum which may or may not be anywhere close to WGS-84 (which is what your GPS will most likly default to). A while back a new group was set up to prevent the duplication of work between the Census dept and others that also need the same data (USPS, Dept of Interior, USDA). I'm not sure what that dept is called.

There are plenty of resources on the net about how to parse Tiger line data and most of the main mapping programs that do street level views where based on that data with many corrections. For example its common that older streets will be on a state map datum and improperly adjusted to NAD27 and/or WGS85 or something else. You can find roads that aren't parallel even though they all are directly north or you can get some interesting results when one township was on one datum and the next township over was in a different one which results in the streets appearing to be in the order of 1st, 3rd, 2nd. You also have things like auto placement where one road is just so out of place, auto placement aginst sat photos puts the wrong name on it and somehow it bounces the correctly named road someplace else. The plan was to clean that up for the 2000 census data but I think the task was just too large.

There is a programm called "Grass" that will read in these files. It might be a place to start.

You might want to do a google groups search in the newsgroup sci.geo.cartography as well.

SourceForge Project and US Government Map Products

[OldHawk777]

Project: RoadMap: Summary

http://sourceforge.net/projects/roadmap/
http:/ /tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl
http://ww w.census.gov/geo/www/maps/CP_MapProducts. htm
http://opensourcegis.org/
http://fsffrance.o rg/news/news.en.html
http://www.map-collections.c om
http://www.mapimage.com/grass_latitude_maps_ma p_ap plication_poly_server.html

GI - http://maps.langenberg.com/

A navigation system that displays US street maps (from the US Census Bureau) and tracks a vehicule using GPS. Specific areas can be displayed by selecting a street address (street number & name, city, and state). RoadMap can run on iPAQ and Zaurus.

Developer Info
Project Admins:
pascmartin
Personal Information
User ID: 11734
Login Name: pascmartin
Publicly Displayed Name: Pascal F Martin
Email Address: pascmartin at users.sourceforge.net
Site Member Since: 2000-02-06 13:19 :Vector Graphics

* Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable
* Environment: Handhelds/PDA's, X11 Applications
* Intended Audience: End Users/Desktop
* License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
* Natural Language: English
* Operating System: POSIX
* Programming Language: C
* Topic: Viewers, GIS

I hope this helps - OldHawk777

Re:PostGIS

[po8]

Yeah, this is the kind of /. question that drives me nuts. "I want some map data, with a whole bunch of constraints on what kind it is, and I want it to be free. Oh, by the way, I found exactly that from the USGS. However, in spite of the fact that there are tens or maybe hundreds of open source projects that use it just fine, I can't figure out how. So that's no good."

The first page of freshmeat.net after searching for "tiger" contains a link to this open source TIGER map server. Maybe that would be a good starting point. Further down the page are getmap and geotools, which also support TIGER.

I wish submitters and especially editors would realize that when they don't do their homework, they're wasting the time of literally hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes a lot of time, like when the idiots actually waste extra time writing a long-winded reply.

Maps are not copyrighted

[tiltowait]

so go nuts with whatever you can get your hands on. At least that's what the law was the last time I checked: you can't copyright a fact (or a made up fact for that matter), although some people are trying to change this.

I had a the pleasure of once working for a map company, for example, that at a time (before I worked there of course) traced a competitor's maps when drafting their products. An ensuing lawsuit, during which the judge actually acknowledged this practice, resulted in a verdict in favor of allowing such infringements.

Re:Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Local "MLK drive" was called something different 30 years ago.

Typically, the "wrong side of the tracks".

No, he is not re-inventing the wheel

[FeatureBug]

He wants maps which are under a Creative-Commons type of copyright licence because he wants to be able to publish derivative works such as annotated or modified versions of the original map . The copyright licences on most existing maps, as used by map24.com, are not compatible with Creative-Commons licences, which prevents him from using them.