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 They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date.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!

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.

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

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...

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.

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