Simon Greener,The SpatialDB Advisor

simon@spatialdbadvisor.comhttp://www.spatialdbadvisor.com

Free And Open GeoData – From Shadows to Reality

Contents

• I would like to try and cover the following topics in this presentation.– What is “geodata” (open or not)– Who are the major data players?– Available products.– What is free and what is not.– What can be done with the data: a minimal

treatment of the licensing options.– Actual use of the data.– Data quality and its effect on use– Potential problems with free data.– Freedom vs Responsibility.

What is GeoData...

GeoData

• Geodata is locational data.– It is data that exists somewhere, physically, in the

world. • It might describe a street or coastline, or be a

reference to something physical, such as a billing address.

– It may be described as “vector” data or as “raster” (image) data.

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Raster and Vector GeoData

Vector

Raster Imagery

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GeoData and Us

• It is claimed that 70-80% of the information collected by government and business is spatial in nature.

• But everything we, private individuals, do is spatially conditioned. – See growth of:

• GPS and in-car navigation hardware• Mapping portals Google Maps, Virtual Earth etc.

Available products: that are free and that are not....

• There is a large range of Australian geodata products available.• Geodata generally falls into three categories or types:

– Vector• Small scale though large data

– Points of Interest– Rivers, roads, railways, tracks and trails (linear data)– Postcodes, land use, soil, land title, statistical areas.

• Generally:– Large scale costs money and has heavy restrictions

cf Tasmania – Statewide roads $1375 & Hobart cadastre $8,904– Small scale is generally free and has few use restrictions.

– Imagery• Coarse scale (70m pixel size and up) satellite imagery is mainly free• Large scale imagery (eg aerial photography or DigitalGlobe 1.5m pixel

imagery)– Elevation

• Mostly free at small scale eg Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) @ 30m and 90m pixel size

Available Products...

Government Providers

• Majority of Australia's geodata available has been captured at great cost by State and Federal Government Departments:– Often costs money to collect, edit, organise, export

and use,– With associated license restrictions.– Some is free, most costs $$.

Australian Govt Agencies

• Public Sector Mapping Agency (PSMA) Australia Limited– Is an unlisted public company limited by shares

and owned by the state, territory and Australian governments.

– Purpose is to commercialise government agency data.

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Available products (Purchase)

• PSMA (here treated as a surrogate for all government large scale data)– Administrative Boundaries

• Boundaries in themes from electoral to suburbs– CadLite®

• Australia’s 10.4 million land parcels, including suburb names– G-NAF®

• An index of all Australian addresses– Points of Interest

• Everything from accommodation to banks, hospitals to museums– Post Code Boundaries

• Official Australia Post post code polygon and point data– Transport and Topography

• Road, rail, rail stations and air infrastructure, parks and water bodies

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PSMA

• The creation of the PSMA does not necessarily solve all the problems with public data.– PSMA has to coordinate 9 agencies and then

integrate their datasets into a single, quality controlled whole.

– There are difficulties with this model that relate to various capture, edit and update standards.

– The PSMA, it could be said, has a complex business model when it comes to the supply chain that provides it its data.

– On the distribution side it operates through independent businesses acting as agents.

• I guess they hope that these agencies will supply the full range of potential users.

Govt Data Sources (Continued)• Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM - http://www.osdm.gov.au)

– Makes spatial data available (via search mechanism) under Australian Government Policy on Spatial Data Access and Pricing:

– Spatial data available under the terms of the Policy are provided free of charge when delivered over the Internet, at no more than the marginal cost of transfer for packaged products (nominally $99), or at the full cost of transfer for customised services.

– Has a simple “click through licence” in which “there are no restrictions on commercial use or value-added activities where spatial data has been provided over the Internet or as a packaged product.” Datasets listed on

the Schedule are available free online,

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Examples of (Mostly-Free) Data ...• GeoScience Australia

– Satellite imagery– National topographic data

• 1:100 000, 1:250 000, 1:1 million, 1:2.5 million, 1:5 million, 1:10 million. – Elevation data

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)– Census Collectors Districts (CCD) & Mesh Blocks (MB)

Surely size isn't limiting online download?

In line with “SpatialData Access and Pricing” policy cf OSDM

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GeoData – New Zealand

• Excellent www.koordinates.com site that provides an on-line download service for Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) Topographic data.

• All LINZ data is free because of license:– “LINZ owns the Crown copyright in the material available

for viewing or downloading from this website as provided in the Copyright Act 1994.

The material may be used, copied and re-distributed free of charge in any format or media. Where the material is redistributed to others the following acknowledgement note should be shown: "Sourced from LINZ. Crown Copyright reserved.

– Where data from NZTopo is reproduced, derived or copied, the following acknowledgement note must be shown on the product and associated media:”Sourced from NZTopo Database. Crown Copyright Reserved”

New Zealand Open GPS Maps

• Forgets ...

“Sourced from NZTopo Database. Crown Copyright Reserved”

… creating license confusion

New Zealand – Licensing Questions

• Improved NZ Road Centrelines – From “New Zealand Open GPS Maps” group (see

http://www.gwprojects.org).– Data is licensed via CC Attribution 3 unported by

person uploading dataset. Yet, other than comments on website, there is no mention in the License that LINZ was a source.

– Data looked at showed perfect alignment with LINZ (ie not GPSed at all)

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Open GeoData NZ (2)

• Bulky, highest detail cadastral and road centreline data is available through LandOnline (for a fee):– “The LINZ price for each, or any, supply of Landonline BDE has

been set at $270 inclusive of GST. This reflects LINZ's cost of dissemination and is in line with Government policy of making government-held information more readily available.

LINZ will not impose any copyright fees for the use of Landonline BDE. This means that those purchasing this data from LINZ will be able to on-sell it or share it with other parties without the requirement to pay additional copyright fees. However, while the Crown will not impose any charges for the use of its intellectual property, the Crown will still maintain its copyright and require its acknowledgement. This is necessary to protect the authoritative nature of the Crown's data and to reduce the risk of any liability arising from its misuse.”

– Cost of NZTopo data pack (if don't download from Koordinates or other service) is $1,500 per update.

Private / Commercial Data Providers

• Private businesses provide geodata as well.– TeleAtlas (cf Google)– Navteq;– Telstra (WhereIs)

• Google Maps (free for non-commercial uses)– Including excellent address lookup services

(there is no open source equivalent to http://geocoder.us in Australia)– Still by far the best freely accessible base maps around.

• Microsoft Virtual Earth (free for non-commercial use)– Involves transaction costs for business

• Yahoo– Supposedly far freer particular in allowing digitising from imagery

free of restriction.(Note with Google and Microsoft, you normally only access map images not constituent vector data. Only vector data that is yours is your markup eg KML)

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Commercial - Garmin• As an exercise I looked at purchasing street data

for Tasmania for my Garmin Vista C.– Price is OK ($150).– Data from WhereIS (OK)– Coverage of my area poor.

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Spatial data is complex ...

• Before I discuss open geodata I would like to say that spatial data capture and maintenance is a complex and costly business.– From Alan Garside's (Manager, Spatial Data Services,

NSW) presentation [4]:

– This is only one year's data edits!

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Open GeoData...

Open Geodata

• What is 'open'?– Open information is that which we have a right to

freely use and redistribute works based on, without charge or restrictive copyright conditions. 'Open' is a legal, technological and social condition.

• Why Open Geodata?– Maps and spatial information are used in a host of

civic and political applications. A small revolution in mapping tools and standards is enabling business innovation and future locative mobile services.

– Politically the most commonly expressed view is “State-Collected Geographic Data is public property”.

• Because it was paid for by taxation, taxpayers should not be charged again to use it.

Open Geodata projects

• Open Mapping Projects– In the UK, Europe, the US and Australia several

different projects have been working towards the creation of free-of-copyright maps, and processes for sharing of data and software.

UK Open Mapping

• Free-map.org.uk– Freemap is a recent project, aimed at producing

rural area maps and using the free STRM data sources. Its map-drawing client is now bound to OpenStreetMap's (see later) backend.

• London Free Map– The london free map is an attempt to produce a

webservice for map applications in London with locally-contributed sites of interest. It also has data sharing with openstreetmap.

GeoWiki• Geowiki is a map you

can annotate (like creating KML points for Google Maps/Earth).

• People can use it to mark their favourite pub, castle or shop...

• Once a marker has been placed and named, a description can be added including personal opinions, photographs... etc.

• Everyone who uses the Geowiki can then see anything added.

London Free Map

• London Free Map (http://london.freemap.in/osm.html )– “The University of Openness has a new project to make

copyright-free street maps of London; the page explains the details and MO, but it looks like it’ll involve an awful lot of GPS tracing and GIS data processing from diverse sources and by divers hands. It must be said that, like many open-source projects, they’re essentially reinventing the wheel in order to make it free/freely available — and doing it harder.” Jonathan Crowe, The Map Room(http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2004/11/london_free_map.php )

OpenStreetMap

• OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project– “Creates and provides free geographic data such as

street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways.”

– It provides a wiki-style interface for uploading GPS traces and correcting and annotating the resulting lines into streets.

– Also provides help and discussion via forums.– Lots of home made street maps of the world here,

including Australia via an active local group.– Some areas are covered well, but “geek” free areas

tend to be unmapped.

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Open GeoData Australia

• Other than OpenStreetMap there are others producing open geodata in Australia:

• Tracks4Australia– Tracks4Australia provides an alternative free map set that can

be used both with Garmin MapSource or uploaded to a map capable Garmin GPS unit.

– The aim is to provide a high quality map set for all of Australia with a focus on non metropolitan areas.

– The Tracks4Australia group seeks contributions of track logs & waypoints from both members & non-members.

• Contours Australia– Contours Australia is set of FREE transparent 10m contour

maps that cover all of Australia only for the Garmin Mapping GPS.

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Open GeoData Australia (cont)

• ShonkyMaps (http://shonkylogic.net/shonkymaps/)

– “Are a set of unofficial Garmin compatible topographic maps that cover the whole of Australia. The author was not satisfied with the Garmin base map that came with the Garmin gps, and at the time there were no other topographic products either official or unofficial. He created his own set of downloadable topographic maps as a hobby / labour of love. The data is the 250k scale set from Geoscience Australia (http://www.ga.gov.au)and is licensed for non-commercial use. The author makes these maps available to other Garmin users as a favour on the understanding that the user abides by the copyright agreement.”

– The question could be asked: Why didn't Garmin do it but use the GeoData 100K series instead?

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OpenStreetMap

Comparison of Open GeoData

Garmin MapSource (comparison base)

Tracks4Australia Shonky Maps

OpenStreetMap

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Distribution - P2P

• Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) is the geospatial community's open interface of choice. Yet they are rarely available for Government websites and when they are, they have access restrictions or there are restrictions on data use.

• Most download is FTP/HTTP of ZIP files.• Peer 2 Peer (P2P) sharing sites are often used to swap geodata.

– Best known is Australia's own GeoTorrent.org whose goal is to provide fast P2P sharing of geospatial data.

• “All geospatial data on GeoTorrent can be freely downloaded and re-distributed. Please see the license/copyright details in each torrent for details.”

– As one user on a GPSAustralia (http://www.gpsaustralia.net) forum said:

• “I also agree that there is some decent free resources available via p2p - but anyone familiar with torrents etc would be aware that probably 95% of map related torrents are violating copyright. That remaining 5% is immensly [sic] valuable to us though, and it is a good distribution method - as you pointed out, many people have get themselves a copy of my maps via p2p networks.”

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Technical Stuff....

OpenStreetMap - Accuracy

• Note from OpenStreetMap diaries preponderance of GeoCachers, GPX outputs from low accuracy GPS units

• There are no guidelines on the OpenStreetMap website in respect of data capture standards (eg how to define a road intersection), comprehensive discussion of GPS settings and best practice guidelines (via a trip planner) to ensure maximum precision.– Raises issues of positional accuracy of road data

captured• Data edit standards and quality controls exist but are

limited to mainly post-processing: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance

Satellite Reception

• Only reference to satellites and GPS precision on OpenStreetMap project website is (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GPS_reception) on which it says:– “Your GPS receiver needs a good view of the sky and will take a few

minutes to acquire a signal when it is switched on. It is a good idea to leave it with a clear view of the sky for a few minutes before you start your mapping journey.

A 3D fix is not a sufficient criteria of quality. The PDOP is an indicator of the precision of the GPS measure (Position Dilution of Precision). If it is higher than 6 you can consider that you don't have a good fix. Under 4, it is good enough for OSM tracking. Less than 2 you have a very good fix. The quality of the DOP depends on the GPS capacity of correcting the satellite's signal. You can have a good DOP with only a 2D fix.”

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GPS – The Real Deal

• In GPS based open geodata projects surveyed there is no coverage of those all aspects of GPS hardware and processing for mapping quality data capture via a comprehensive “GPS Data Collection Field Guide”:– Differential correction (use of reference

station vs Autonomous positioning– Setting the Positional Dilution of

Precision (PDOP) parameter will notof itself ensure accurate observations.

• “Under 4, it is good enough for OSM tracking. Less than 2 you have a very good fix.” [OSM website]

• Note that xDOP is affected mainly by satellite geometry

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Number of Satellites...

• Minimum number of satellites for position = 4

Not a good time to capture data reflected in poor PDOP!• Note that purchased GPS units can have a

number of channels:– Roughly 1 channel == 1 satellite tracked

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GPS – Real Deal (2)

• Satellite Elevation Mask– Generally accepted that the minimum

satellite elevation mask should be set to 15 degrees above the horizon

• Ionosphere and Tropospheric errors

• Right Datum (erroneous datum transformation parameters are large source of error) :– “The defined reference frame for Australia is GDA94 and

not the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) which is the default datum used by all GPS receivers. The between GDA94 and WGS84 is currently about 0.6m (2002) and is estimated to be approximately 1.0m by 2008 because of Australian continental drift.”

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Satellite Visibility (15o Elevation Cut-Off)

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GPS – Real Deal (3)

• Multipath issues are very important:– “Multipath is where a satellite signal arrives at a receiver from more

than one path or route. […] mainly caused by reflecting surfaces near the receiver, such as buildings, walls, fences, or from [...] tree canopy [...].” [1]

– “Multipath analysis under sub-canopy of snow gums, typical of alpine vegetation on the Australian Alps Walking Track, indicated that while signal reception was very good, multipath errors approached a maximum of 20m in some cases. Research suggests those multipath errors for recreational receivers could be as high as 30m under similar multipath conditions.” [1]

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GPS – Real Deal: Summary ...

• For Autonomous (stand-alone) positioning using the Standard Positioning Service (SPS):

[Note: The width of a standard country road reserve (verge and formed surface is 1chain or 20m). A lane in a dual or multi lane road is 3.5 metres.]

• In summary:“Open GeoData projects (OpenStreetMap,

Tracks4Australia etc) are relying on GPS positioning that may be precise

but are more probably very inaccurate”.

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Quality and Accuracy discussion

OpenStreetMap Result:Kingston, Tas

• Issues:– Missing roads– Accuracy (10-12m)– Patchy road names– Ownership (private

vs council)

Actual Use of the data ...

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OpenStreetMap Use

• “The areas I think OSM can currently be used are in small scale cycling, bushwalking and tourist maps.”

• “now that there is a routable [sic] version of OSM, this should encourage people with Garmin devices to contribute as this could be very useful to people.”

• Note: Tracks4Australia is a competitor to OpenStreetMap and so is diluting activity.– Mainly provides Garmin tracks for 4WD, bush

walkers and other outdoor activities.

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Let's see what other people do...

Google MashUps

Markup vs Data

• What is it that people want the freedom to do?• Are people really interested in creating

fundamental infrastructure data (eg road networks) from scratch that “competes” with data created by public authorities?

• Or are they really just wanting to “personalise”, “correct”, “deploy multiply” or “value add” that data for private or community use?– cf Google KML and Mashups– GeoWiki?– Cyclopath (http://magic.cyclopath.org)

What do you want to do?

People love Points Of Interest (POI)!

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Points Of Interest

• Not done that well in traditional mapping …

• Happens to be the Longley Pub which provides lots of entertainment and services – needs to go to GeoWiki to get “message across”

What can be done with the data: a minimal treatment of the licensing options....

Why licensing?

• Licensing is needed to protect the interests of anyone who produces a “work” for sale or consumption by any other person– Doesn't just affect government but individual

people who produce books, novels, music, software, data, photography etc..

– Motive does not have to be profit.• There are, of course, myriads of reasons why the

licensing of any product or work exists from use of written material through digital photos to spatial data....

• What can be done with a data product depends on licensing terms and conditions.

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Stage 1 - Identified Problems in Information Licensing

• Majority of government business units don’t use any formal licensing

• Those that do, vary in legal frameworks significantly• Current “standard” approaches dated – many derivatives• Non standard approach of access for data users• Potentially more difficult for Gov agencies to deal with each other

than to get same information from outside Government• Inter-jurisdictional exchange (eg for NWI) problematic. • Complex for anyone outside dealing with multiple Departmental

approaches to information licensing• Agencies consider themselves as unique business entities, not as a

single government• Licences do not reflect the mature business approach that agencies

now wish to take with data use and reuse.

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What This Means

• Confusion and costs for clients, community and custodians

• Impossible to design an architecture for an online portals and/or inter-jurisdictional data collaborations

• Difficult for information users to know if they are fully complying with legal obligations

• Impediment to innovation

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OpenStreetMap

• Australian user “Biogenesis” on Australian section of OSM online Forum.– On Competition:

“Firstly, given that routable, street indexed maps for GPS units are, for the most part, difficult to make and obtain it's probably not worth "marketing" OSM as a viable replacement for commercial GPS maps yet.”

– On its uses:“The areas I think OSM can currently be used are in small scale cycling, bushwalking and tourist maps.”

– Certainly I look to it only for:• Free street centreline data as background to my

Garmin Legend when in the car on family holidays.• Might supply me with the bushwalking tracks of

Tasmania (Tasmanian Government missed, and continue to miss a big opportunity here).

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Government Licensing...

• With regards to government in Australia there is much work being done at the moment to modernise and simplify data licensing:– Action Agenda - Federal Government Report

“Unlocking the Potential – Digital Content Industry”.– Australian Bureaux of Statistics (ABS) and

GeoScience Australia data delivery strategy – free on the web with liberal use permissions.

– WOG Licensing Strategies and industry coordinated acquisition programs.

– Developments in open access publishing in UK Government.

– Push to open access to scientific research - NIH,US NSF, Science Commons

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Users have (informed?) views...

• Individuals on GPSAustralia web-site were asked about copyright.– Here are their responses.

• Of course, they all think Governments are double dipping!– Taxation provided the funds for all capture and update– Taxpayers should not have to pay again to use.

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Licence Foundation/Framework

• In the Internet age, the need to modernise and simplify licensing, has become urgent or paramount.– Such work has a world-wide focus, not just

national but international.– Public Sector Mapping Authority (PSMA) sells

road and land parcel data to Google who use it in Google Maps and Earth!

• The main mechanism being proposed as the foundation or framework for the licensing of any work is Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org)

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Basis of CC - Stallman

• Richard Stallman and his advisers at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) provided the basis for CC with their insights:– “if you want to structure open access to knowledge you

must leverage off or use as a platform your intellectual property rights”

– “regulation of ... downstream activity [of information once it leaves your hands] was achieved by claiming an intellectual property right (copyright in the code) at the source and then structuring its downstream usage through a licence (GNU GPL). “

– “not a simple 'giving away' of information but rather a strategic mechanism for ensuring the information stayed “free” as in speech'

– “Creative Commons expanding that idea from open source code to open digital content.“

[3 – APPOLO] Page 100

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What is Creative Commons

• Licensing system that protects the intellectual property rights of the data creators whilst encouraging the sharing and re-use of that data

• Can be applied to any information delivered in any media including text, books, film, photographs and music (digital or analogue)

• Creative Commons:– Defines the spectrum of between full copyright (all rights

reserved) and the public domain (no rights reserved)– Allows creators to retain copyright, while inviting certain

uses of the work, a "some rights reserved" copyright.– Provides a predetermined set of licensing terms and

conditions

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Licences are Clear and SimpleBY Attribution

BY-NC Attribution - Non Commercial

BY-SA Attribution - Share Alike

BY-ND Attribution - No Derivatives

BY-NC-SA Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike

BY-NC-ND Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives

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Licences are Interoperable

BY BY-NC BY-NC-ND

BY-NC-SA

BY-ND BY-SA

BY

BY-NC

BY-NC-ND

BY-NC-SA

BY-ND

BY-SA

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Licensing are Easily Applied

Is commercial use allowed?

Attribution is a condition for all Australian Creative Commons licences.

Where a government owns a copyrighted piece of information, attribution

affirms the government’s right to be acknowledged as

the source of that information along with a

legal right to license its use.

ATTRIBUTION SHARE ALIKE

ATTRIBUTIONNO DERIVATIVES

ATTRIBUTION

CREATIVE COMMONS INFORMATION LICENSING OPTIONS

No

ATTRIBUTIONNON-COMMERCIAL

ATTRIBUTIONNON-COMMERCIALNO DERIVATIVES

ATTRIBUTIONNON-COMMERCIAL

SHARE ALIKE

Are derivative products allowed? No

Are derivative products to be

restricted to a share-alike basis?

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

BY-NC-SA

BY

BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC

BY-NC-NDAre derivative products allowed? No

Are derivative products to be

restricted to a share-alike basis?

Yes

No

Yes

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Licences are Understandable

Human-ReadableCommons Deed

Lawyer-ReadableLegal Code

Machine-ReadableDigital Code

                                                                   

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Licences are Widely Use

• Already over 299 million CC resources on net

• Google and Yahoo have a specific CC search

• 66,967 Australian CC resources

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Use of CC - Digital Road Network

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NSW licensing seems to recognise the individual person

– “You are welcome to reproduce for personal or non-commercial use any material owned by Lands on this Site. Any reproduction shall be acknowledged: "© Department of Lands (year)".

If you wish to reproduce, alter, store or transmit the material for any other purpose, you should contact our Copyright Officer before processing any information.”

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Individual Users of CC

• As indicated earlierCreative CommonsLicensing is verymuch capable ofaddressing a fullrange of needs fromthe individual to government and business across a whole range of products.

• The above is from a colleague's website (http://www.digitalearth.com.au/)

• From my own:

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• Licensing is one aspect: governmental will is another.

• But what if terms of a license are not acceptable?– I doubt is the OpenStreetMap people are going to

see Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licensing attached to the road centreline or street address data for Australia!

– So they will continue to do what they do.

License is not all

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Deriving Products and Sharing ..

• Unless we can address the the concerns of the open geodata community, who would like to be able to share their work, build new products from the base data and deploy it in whatever way they want, we will struggle to deliver geodata to individuals in a way that will liberate their creativity.

• It is copyright notices like these that annoy (though digitized geodata is a poor relative of the underlying data):

– “You may not use, access or allow others to use or access the Content in any manner not permitted under the Terms, unless you have been specifically permitted to do so by Google or by the owner of that Content, in a separate agreement.” (Google)

– “It is a condition of the license that any unauthorized copying or reproduction of the content in any form, or by any means, is not permitted. Without in any way limiting the generality of the above, you or any user of this data shall not copy any of the content by any means including magnetic, digital, rasterizing, scanning, digitizing, any electrostatic method, fax or photocopying. You may not attempt to reverse engineer any output that would allow the recreation of any digital mapping data, including but not limited to any form of geocodes.” (© by MapData Sciences Pty Ltd - http://www.google.com/intl/en-us/help/legalnotices_maps.html )

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IDC

• In the Interdepartmental Committee on Spatial Data Access and Pricing 's (IDC) document: “A Proposal for a Commonwealth Policy on Spatial Data Access and Pricing” (‘the OSDM Policy”), Australian Government (2001) we note:– “Fundamental spatial data may … be considered as an

information infrastructure. A good example of a fundamental spatial dataset is the road network. “

• And that the IDC urged the Federal Government to..– “provide fundamental spatial data free of charge over the Internet,

and at no more than the marginal cost of transfer for packaged products and full cost of transfer for customised services, without any copyright licence restrictions on commercial value-adding. Fundamental spatial datasets, and their current and planned availability over the Internet, will be identified in a public schedule.”

• What about the more important State Government fundamental data?

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Discussion ...

Freedom vs Responsibility

• Freedom vs Responsibility.– This standard philosophical phrase is applicable to

free data regardless as to whether it is created by Government or a group of individuals.

– Are people, in this litigious age, willing not to sue a data provider who puts a Disclaimer in their license as follows:

Base Map GeoData Creation

• The capture of base data (as in OpenStreetMap) raises a range of issues that are specific to base data creation that problematic when considered from a Freedom vs Responsibility perspective.

• Base data, I would argue, has a set of important characteristics that is the responsibility of the provider to address. This relate to data precision in the areas of:– Accuracy, detail, scale, cost, capture and editing methods

• So, after OSM has created a navigable dataset for Australia and someone, when using it, has some sort of emergency compounded by the dataset what good is all this freedom?

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Value Added GeoData Creation

• Value-added data is derived data:– More “self-defining” and less questionable wrt

Freedom vs Responsibility.– Should be able to reasonably “inherit” all the

characteristics of the base data;– Still has certain “fit for purpose” characteristics that

must be described and maintained • Eg does that McDonald's hamburger shop

in your Point of Interest (POI) dataset still exist?

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Hardware and Software

• Why is it that many creators of base geospatial data are prepared to purchase:– Expensive bicycles and gear;– Often, expensive GPS units (Garmins range from $200-$800)– Petrol driving roads/highways;– Hours of their own time editing data;– When some of the data available is relatively cheap (eg

Garmin City Navigator?)• But not base geodata at low cost ($150 is quite low for roads of

Australia)?

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Hardware / Software (2)

• After market in-car navigation units (TomTom, Navman etc) are a large selling item, relatively cheap (< $500) within high precision road data bundled with them. – The bundle doesn't work when separated ie try and buy

quality data for an ordinary GPS.• Akin to trying to purchase a laptop with EXACTLY the

hardware and software specifications one wants: Nigh on impossible!

– The map update license can be costly and certainly annoyed one user on an Australian website:

– “On aspect of buying a sat-nave is the cost of buying map upgrades. We have a Navman. During a recent trip to Queensland, we were misdirected because of changes to the roads. When we got homr [sic], I looked at upgrading the map. WHAT A RIPOFF - $170.00. I defy anyone to justify the cost of the upgrades. This is a very significant part of the price of a new item. They have to change the maps anyway so that new units can be sold with accurate maps, so why do current owners get ripped off so much???”

– Do users understand the value of the initial data in the unit? Or the underlying licensing and distribution issues?

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Model ...

• Perhaps many of the problems around access to geodata generated by government departments are not related to cost but more accuracy, timeliness of update, and notions of core business.– Businesses make investment decisions based on return

on investment (ROI). In most projects that involve geodata, the cost of the data is small relative to total investment.

– What is more important to business is the accuracy of the dataset and the timeliness of updates or corrections.

• Governments are not commercial companies: sales and marketing is not their main focus.– This is why, in Australia, they came together to create

the PSMA• Yet the PSMA has substantial data update and

integration issues that have cost then lots of time and money to correct (again geospatial data is complex).

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The participatory Internet...

• The Internet is the biggest participatory democracy the world has seen. No one company or government dominates. While the individual is immaterial as a single entity yet .....

• A lot of the Open Geodata initiatives are based on individuals with know-how and technology who have grouped together to achieve their individual needs.– OpenStreetMap is really about individuals

wanting access to road networks and walking/riding trails so that they can electronically navigate their way rather than use “old technology” map sheets.

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Learning from the Internet...• Perhaps we need newer licensing terms and conditions that

recognised the individual more and allowed them free access to government data but still charged businesses and other large entities for access and update services.

• This is akin to the Internet phenomenon in which makers of software create personal (or lite) copies of their products available to individuals for home use, but charge for professional versions (routing enabled?) or full business editions.– Cf Tracks4Australia differential product offering

(http://www.gpsoz.com.au/tracks4australia/)

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Granularity ...

• It seems to me that we have not got the granularity of geodata access correct.– Business vs Individual meeds.– Data packaging.

• Tracks and trails inside transportation layers• Geographic scale.

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Being more Collaborative

• Case Study #1: Bush-walking Tasmania– Cannot purchase layer or individual track from

The LIST website (micro-transaction).– No ecosystem of collaborative exchange created

by Government in which walkers are encouraged to upload their tracks (with certain metadata standards) for inclusion/update of existing data.

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Collaboration #2

• I once did a small amount of consulting to a commercial (paper) map production company in Australia.– All effort went on large populated areas with no

updates having been done to many country towns for years.

– I suggested they create a “My <XXX>” (<XXX> == Name of Company) website in which they encouraged people in those towns to upload corrections (GPS) to local roads or names and even to add local content such as local businesses (to display businesses logo, charge a small yearly fee eg $100).

– It was not done.

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Desk Jockeys and Secret Practitioners Business

• I am a member of that industry and, until I wrote this report, I could not believe how many documents have been written about data licensing and sharing over the past 20 years (cf [3] -APOLLO report)– Is the public aware, listening or seeing the benefit of all this talk?

• GeoData editing is often a “desk jockey” driven industry of people who often edit maps for locations within their own state that they have never visited from the comfort of an office on the nth floor of a building in the CBD.

• GeoSpatial data is “Geek” world par-excellence in which there the dominant view is that “geospatial data and processing is special” requiring that only people with the right qualifications be allowed to produce content.

– (I partially agree with this as can be seen from my comments on OpenStreetMap)

– But I would argue most of the exciting work in broadscale, individually focussed work has occurred in “non traditional” business and community sectors as is evidenced by the rise and use of Google Maps etc and the production of open geodata in Australia by (uneducated) users of consumer GPS products.

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What Eco-System Do We Inhabit?

• Government Mapping Agencies often only talk to the same people: commercial businesses or other Government Departments at both the Federal, State and Local Government level .– Little real effort directed towards understanding the needs of

individual users.– For example, the “Spatial Digital Data Distribution and Pricing

Model” document was written for The LIST in Tasmania in 2002.(http://www.thelist.tas.gov.au/docs/licc/LICC_Spatial_Digital_Data_Distribution_and_Pricing_Model.htm)

• Defined, among other things, 6 broad categories of spatial users:– General client– One-off project client– Infrequent business client– Frequent business client– Web site manager– Value-adder

• In the description of the “General client” is this sentence:– “The only output required would be a print out of what is presented to them on one

or more screens.”• I cannot see the current open geodata people or my own needs

fitting into any of these categories.

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Eco-System Mentality

• Finally, is there here also evidence of a public service mentality that finds difficulty in thinking outside of the square.– For example, The LIST in Tasmania hasn't changed in over 10

years so it is not surprising that their distribution and collaboration capabilities have not evolved.

– The speed with which they conclude data sharing agreements can take years:

1) Work I started at my last employer 8 years ago on data sharing with DPIWE is only just being implemented.

– They discount data or update/change requests from suppliers within their eco-system so it is unlikely they could conceive of what an individual user in this community wants or accept from us that we have found an error in their data.

2) For over 5 years, Local Government and other Agencies within Tasmania have called for a single state-wide, multi-resolution, regularly updated ortho-mosaic – is still not fully implemented (better to use Google Maps)

– Perhaps they have given over any commercial focus to the PSMA?

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Democracy ...• We live in a world of increasing centralisation of power within particular

political parties and individuals.• At the same time, our politicians have little respect from us as we don't

feel they are really listening to the people (but vested interest groups who have too much influence in a Press whose members often have views outside of those of the people on the street).

• Also, hardware and software/data vendors are teaming to provide bundles of product and to shore up market share in critical areas.

– We don't have the freedom in this world to buy the laptop we want, can we expect better in the geodata world?

– TomTom bought TeleAtlas last year.– Nokia are supposedly in the market for Navteq

• Navteq have put vehicles into Australia twice now in the past 4 years recapturing the road centreline data to a high accuracy and as network routing quality.

• If your next Nokia (with GPS and access to Navteq data) gives you all the access to geodata you need to produce your content (hopefully, with a license that allows you sufficient freedom), then perhaps one driver to create open geodata will go away.

• Also, if Nokia and similar companies are successful, then perhaps we might see results such as Google reducing its need for geodata from PSMA to just legal Land Parcels – would the other data become cheaper or more accessible?

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Hardware and Software• After market in-car navigation units (TomTom, Navman etc) are

a large selling item, relatively cheap (< $800) within high precision road data bundled with them. – The map update license can be costly and annoys users:

• “On aspect of buying a sat-nave is the cost of buying map upgrades. We have a Navman. During a recent trip to Queensland, we were misdirected because of changes to the roads. When we got homr [sic], I looked at upgrading the map. WHAT A RIPOFF - $170.00. I defy anyone to justify the cost of the upgrades. This is a very significant part of the price of a new item. They have to change the maps anyway so that new units can be sold with accurate maps, so why do current owners get ripped off so much???”, user “jetals” Dec 21, 2008 2:09 PM posting to PC Authority test of Navman and TomTom units.(http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Review/131264,head-to-head--tomtom-one-v4-vs-navman-s150.aspx/2 )

• I checked TomTom updates for Australia: $150 currently – January 2009 - discounted to $79.95.

– However, the bundle doesn't work when separated• Try getting good, cheap geodata for your independently

sourced GPS.• Remember that trying to purchase a laptop with EXACTLY the

hardware specifications one wants is nigh on impossible.... which is any other channel marketed consumable any different?

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Focus and Competition

• Tracks4Australia and OpenStreetMap are competing projects NOT being collaborative.

• They also are focussed on a reproducing a difficult dataset – road centrelines.

• A dataset that is far simpler to produce using GPS and which is a far more important element in geodata usefulness wrt presenting one's own data or mixing your data with geodata in new a creative ways (cf Google Maps Mashups etc) is an open and free address dataset for Australia.– Commercial competition: PSMA's G-NAF– US Census data used in free http://geocoder.us

geocoding service is very popular in open geodata user community.

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Conclusion

• The discussions on geodata access in Australia and elsewhere are a continuation of the “abstraction of political representation” issue and also the limitations imposed on consumer hardware/software purchases due to globalisation and market positioning.

– Providers are not producing the products end users want, the way they want, and that reflect what they want to do.

– It is an immature industry that is only just coming to terms with its new found popularity (via Google, Virtual Earth, Yahoo etc).

– The open geodata initiatives show that people are taking the production of the product they want into their own hands.

• The product may, in the mind of the purist, have technical limits....• Or be focused on producing the wrong (to my view) dataset.• And we may even quibble that they want their cake and eat it too...• But in the Internet-Democracy world we now live in, they are

voting with their feet....• Who blames them?

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Questions?

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References

• [1] “Global Positioning System Handbook, GPS Data Collection for Integration with Geographic Information Systems, Standards, Specifications and Best Practice Field Guide”, Department of Sustainability and Environment & Department of Primary Industries, Victorian Government, Version 7.2 February 2006

• [2] Presentation by Alan Garside (Manager, Spatial Data Services, NSW) at the Mapped Out Conference, 23rd October 2008)

• [3 – APOLLO Literature Review] "GOVERNMENT INFORMATION LICENSING FRAMEWORK and CRC-SI PROJECT 3.05, A LEGAL PLATFORM TO SUPPORT INTER-AGENCY AND INTER-JURISDICTIONAL EXCHANGE AND SHARING OF DATA", Tim Barker, Neale Hooper, John Cook, Jenny Bopp Queensland Treasury, Anne Fitzgerald, Baden Appleyard QUT, 2008