Between the Poles

Free Ordnance Survey Maps Down to Scale 1:10,000 by April ?

The UK Government has announced its intention to explore ways of making all Ordnance Survey maps freely available online from April.  The Free Our Data campaign has worked for over three years to convince the government to "abandon copyright on essential national data, making it freely available to anyone, while keeping the crucial task of collecting that data in the hands of taxpayer-funded agencies".  The UK prime minister said that it was his intention by April to complete negotiations on the free online provision of Ordnance Survey maps down to a scale of 1:10,000.  The online maps would be free to all including commercial organizations who in the past have had to acquire expensive and restrictive licenses.  This measure would bring the UK in line with many other national governments around the world including the US, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and Brazil as well as increasingly state and provincial governments such as California, and cities such as Vancouver.

I blogged earlier about a study by a team at Cambridge University and commissioned by the Treasury that found that making all OS data free would cost the government £12m and bring a net gain of £156m.  Australia and New Zealand have commissioned studies of the contribution of spatial data to the national economy that have concluded that with appropriate government policies the contribution to the GDP, estimated to be on the order of 1%, could be doubled.

Thanks to Mapperz for pointing me to the Guardian article.

Ordnance Survey's OS OpenSpace Beta

According to the Ordnance Survey, OS OpenSpace is intended to promote free and open access to Ordnance Survey data (which is in general relatively expensive) via the OS OpenSpace API to application developers.  This means that a variety of organizations including entrepreneurs and commercial organizations can develop applications using the OS OpenSpace API that use OS data without charge subject only to a maximum daily usage restriction. The OS appears to have taken a leaf out of the Google business model, which allows you to develop mashups using Google's API that access Google data (often licensed from commercial sources) free of charge, but does not permit you to download or otherwise access the raw data.

OS OpenSpace applications must be free and open.  They must be "publicly accessible on the internet and not restricted or protected by password, username, membership or firewalls", and "cannot be used in the ordinary day-to-day activities involved with the internal administration of a business."  Advertising on OS OpenSpace web applications is permitted,  but no charge can be made for use of applications developed using OS OpenSpace.

GIAC Day on the Hill

Yesterday I and about 25 other people representing the membership of the Geomatics Industry Association of Canada (GIAC) spent the day talking to civil servants, Members of Parliament, and Deputy Ministers and Ministers about a budget submission that GIAC has prepared asking the Government of Canada to fund a multi-sector National Geomatics Strategy and a National Imagery Program.

We had several teams and the team I was on talked to policy advisers at the Ministry of Public Safely,  Department of National Defence, and five Members of Parliament representing most parties.  I was very impressed with everyone we met, they listened and took notes, and either offered suggestions about whom to talk to or offered their support.

I talked about geomatics and infrastructure, specifically the utilities and telecommunications industries, and the abysmal data that we have about underground infrastructure. One of our team talked about geomatics and health, another about imagery technology, and another about lidar and other geospatial data sources.

Geo-awareness in Government

Among the people we talked to the level of geo-awareness was interesting.  Everyone knew about GPS and applications and devices for getting directions.  All were aware of Google Map.  Several had a geology or surveying background and so had a pretty advanced understanding of geomatics.  Most were aware of the use of geospatial technology to support election campaigns.  We were very surprised by one MP who was entirely familiar, in detail, with what GIAC is proposing, because she was involved in a similar geomatics policy effort in one of the provinces.

Chile: Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Data

I have been in Chile most of last week in Santiago, where I gave a presentation at the International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2009).  This is my first time in Chile, and I am extremely impressed by the natural environment, the Andes on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and secondly by the quality of the infrastructure, especially the electric power network, I have seen here in Santiago.

I have had the opportunity to visit several government and commercial sites.  One in particular I found particularly interesting. I met Ivan Alonso Lienlaf Nova of SNIT (Sistema Nacional de Coordination de Informacion Territorial), which is a federal government organization that was created in 2006 to coordinate geospatial data among eleven ministries of the federal government.  From a technical perspective they have created a data catalog for all government geospatial data.  The national catalog currently contains metadata and references for 10 000 geospatial products in diverse areas such as agriculture, biology, administrative boundaries, roads, educational institutions, and cadastre.  SNIT is reaching out to other non-government sectors as well, including private companies and universities.

Open Standards

SNIT supports open standards including OGC and ISO standards, and in particular the ISO 19115 and 19139 standards for metadata. 

Open Source

GeoNodo is SNIT's web-based application portal, that is designed to allow developers to build web-based applications for accessing the SNIT metadata catalog and indirectly government geospatial data.  GeoNodo is based on open source geospatial tools,  MapServer, PostGIS, and Apache. The Regional Government of the Region del Los Rios has developed a web site using GeoNodo.

Open Data

Chile's freedom of Information bill was passed in 2008, after a decade long campaign by Proacceso, Chile’s right-to-know movement.  Ivan Alonso was optimistic that the bill will result in free and open access to government geospatial data, perhaps in a similar way to the November, 2008 decree published in Brazil that established the principle that federal government geospatial data should be made available without cost to Brazilian citizens.

Latest Release of the FDO Toolbox v0.8.8 Available

The latest release of the FDO Toolbox is now available.

FOSS4G: Open Source GeoREST Project Announced

I have blogged on previous occasions about the RESTful API for accessing raw geospatial data which Haris Kurtagic developed and which Jason Birch has used to provide open access to geospatial data at the City of Nanaimo, BC.  At FOSS4G I gave a presentation on behalf of Haris and Jason, who couldn't make it to Sydney, which announced the creation of the open source GeoREST project (www.geoREST.org).

Open Access to Raw Geospatial Data

The principle of free and open access to government geospatial data has been adopted by many governments including US Federal, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, California, and most recently by the City of Vancouver.  The benefits of free and open access to government geospatial data as identified by Senator Kate Lundy are

• Citizen engagement
• Transparency and accountability
• Economic development

But being able to access prepared maps and other derived material is just a first step, governments need to provide access to raw geospatial data in commonly used Web-friendly formats. Tim Berners-Lee, in Government Data Design Issues, is a strong advocate of making raw data accessible over the web including supporting standard Web methods, most critically, searching.  The thesis on which GeoREST is based is that standard Web protocols, HTTP and MIME, are the simplest way of providing searchable raw geospatial data on the web.

REST

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture style of networked systems which relies on the Web protocols HTTP and MIME. The best example of a RESTful implementation is the Web itself.  REST uses URIs, HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), HTTP response codes, and MIME.

The single major advantage of REST is that because it relies only on standard Web protocols, standard services available on the Web are available "out of the box" including

• Searching
• Passing through firewalls
• Caching
• Scaling/load balancing

GeoREST

GeoREST is a framework for accessing, distributing, and editing raw geospatial data over the web. Because it is based on REST, it supports searching using standard Web search engines such as Google and Bing. 

In its current form it provides feature-based access to FDO spatial data sources including editing. Examples of FDO data sources include PostGIS, SHP, Oracle Spatial, Microsoft SQL Server Spatial, MySQL, SDF, GML, and others.  GeoREST returns geospatial data over the Web in a number of Web friendly formats including KML, GeoRSS, HTML, GeoJSON, XML, PNG, HTML, CSV, and other text-based formats.  

GeoREST relies on open source libraries including CTemplate, POCO, FDO, MapGuide Open Source, and libkml.  GeoREST source code is available at www.geoREST.org.

Example Application Using GeoREST

You can find an example of an application built on GeoREST at the City of Nanaimo Property Search Site. More information about the implementation can be found on Jason Birch's Blog.

If you want to verify that Nanaimo's raw geospatial data is searchable, enter "2323 Rosstown Road, Nanaimo, BC" into Google, Bing or any other search engine, and then click on the first item that gets returned by the search engine.

FOSS4G: Jackie Ng on the FDO Toolbox

Wednesday at FOSS4G Jackie Ng gave a presentation on the FDO Toolbox.  It was presented so well that I was flabbergasted to discover subsequently from one of Jackie's blog that this was his first public presentation.  

There are a couple of important reasons why it is worthwhile talking a look at FDO Toolbox.  First of all, it is built on the .Net platform which differentiates it from the alternative C++ and Java tools.  If you are used to working in a Windows .Net environment, you will feel at home here. Secondly, Jackie has put a lot of effort into the UI so the FDO Toolbox is simple to use. Thirdly, it is a comprehensive schema and data management tool that can handle geospatial and non-geospatial data with equal facility.  I was very impressed with how many things you can do with FDO Toolbox including 

Data Management (ETL)

• Create and edit data models (schemas)
• Read and write geospatial data for up to 150 data sources supported by FDO

Data Preview (maps for geospatial data)

• FDO query
• SQL query

Batch automation

• Batch scripting to automate common geo-processing tasks

Translation (FDO2FDO)

• Bulk copy selected geospatial data from one FDO data source to another
• Fast copy one FDO data source to another, not quite one-click but pretty close

Extensibility

• FDO Toolbox can be extended through extension modules. With extension modules you can add new commands in C# for custom functionality and include new menu entries to expose them in the user interface.

Jackie demonstrated the latest release of the FDO Toolbox 0.8.7 which includes a dramatically improved bulk copy with a completely revamped user interface and XML file definition.  Also FDO Toolbox now supports Python scripting.

FOSS4G Sydney: Senator Kate Lundy on Government 2.0 and Open Geospatial Data

I've been at FOSS4G 2009 here in Sydney for the last few days.  This has been an exceptionally interesting conference and given that Sydney is a long way for many people, there has been a very good turnout.

Thursday morning I chaired the morning session where we heard very interesting speakers.  The first speaker I had the honour to introduce was Senator Kate Lundy who has represented the Australian Capital Territory in the Australian Parliament since 1996.  Senator Lundy is currently Chair of the Joint Standing Committee for the National Capital and External Territories and a long-standing active member of the Senate Environment,  Communications and the Arts Committee.  Most importantly she is a strong advocate of the internet, digital technology and ICT innovation as an important driver of the Australian economy. 

A favourite web site of hers that I find very innovative in a Web 2.0 sense is the National Archives of Australia site called Mapping Our Anzacs, where the public can not only retrieve information about the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (which took the brunt of Winston Churchill's unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign in the First World War), but can contribute their own relatives' wartime experiences to a public scrapbook or create a tribute to relatives or others who participated as Anzacs in the war.

I have singled out a couple of things that Senator Lundy said  because they appear to represent a clear statement of government policy with respect to Government 2.0 and open geospatial data.

Government 2.0

The current government appears to be a major supporter of government 2.0, which is seen as an enabler of openness, transparency, and accountability.   But Senator Lundy stressed that making government data open and available to citizens not only provides for more transparent government, but it also creates opportunities for innovation which in turn drives economic development.  Senator Lundy said that "as has been evident in the US for many years, open access to government data can dramatically increase the value created from the data both socially and economically. This means the society as a whole benefits from access to the data."

Open Geospatial Data

I have blogged previously about initiatives in the Government of Queensland and the Victorian Spatial Council about enabling open access to government data within government and outside of government.  But Australia has not yet established open and free access to geospatial data as has happened in the US at the federal level, California, Canada, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, and other jurisdictions.  Senator Lundy supports open access to data and in her presentation listed several initiatives the current government is undertaking to move in the direction of making geospatial data publicly available.  One thing in particular she said suggests a comittment on the part of the current government to establishing a policy of open access to geospatial data. "The Australian Special Minister of State has articulated the government’s view that the default position of government ultimately ought to be that all public sector information should be available online unless a case can be made not to release it. This view has been echoed in several portfolios and we have currently before parliament a Freedom of Information Bill and a Bill for the establishment of an Information Commissioner. These bills begin these reforms and provide the framework for future progress in this crucial area of public policy."

Microsoft Rebrands Virtual Earth and Live Search Maps

As part of its announcement of its new search engine Bing, Microsoft has rebranded 

• Virtual Earth (which MS calls a mapping platform), now called "Bing Maps for Enterprise" 
• Live Search Maps ( which is MS's consumer site for location-based search and mapping), now called “Bing Maps"

The important things is that the Virtual Earth mapping API calls will not change so this seems to be purely cosmetic.

GDAL Support for Oracle Georaster

At GITA last week I ran into Steve Serra from Oracle who updated me on open source support for Oracle Spatial/Locator.  He provided a site where open source products supporting Oracle Spatial are listed.

The one that caught my attention is GDAL support for Oracle Georaster.  Since there is a GDAL Data Provider for FDO, I would assume that this means FDO can support Oracle Georaster as well.  Steve told me that Ivan Lucena who works on the GDAL project with Frank Warmerdam has integrated Oracle Georaster support into a number of open source GIS applications like QGIS and OSSIM.  This is good news because it means it's now possible to store georasters in Oracle along with your geospatial vector data.