OSM, Open Data and Geeks required

[tastrax]

Hi Folks,

Seems to me that the Australian Government and most states are now starting to release much of their spatial data in "Open Data" sites on the web. Most seem to have suitable licencing for use in Open Street Mapping. Now we all love free maps, but how on earth do we get this stuff into OSM mapping for all to see. I am a bit of a geek and would love to work with other geeks to get suitable material into the system for the benefit of bushwalkers as well as other users (like Red Cross ... whilst wearing my other volunteer hat).

Has anyone done any bulk imports?

Open data I have found so far.

http://listdata.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/opendata/
https://data.sa.gov.au/dataset
http://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset
https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset

[GPSGuided]

Good on you! I have only participated in dumb dumb entries into OSM and that's the limit of my technical know-how to date.

[michael_p]

I've done over 1000 manual edits but have never done a bulk import. Can't say I know anything about doing a bulk import. It's worth having a read through the wiki on bulk imports: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import. Reading the wiki it seems to be a bit of a convoluted process.

Cheers,
Michael.

[Bubbalouie]

Hi Folks,

Seems to me that the Australian Government and most states are now starting to release much of their spatial data in "Open Data" sites on the web. Most seem to have suitable licencing for use in Open Street Mapping. Now we all love free maps, but how on earth do we get this stuff into OSM mapping for all to see. I am a bit of a geek and would love to work with other geeks to get suitable material into the system for the benefit of bushwalkers as well as other users (like Red Cross ... whilst wearing my other volunteer hat).

Has anyone done any bulk imports?

Open data I have found so far.

http://listdata.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/opendata/
https://data.sa.gov.au/dataset
http://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset
https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset

Looks pretty workable (looking at it on my phone mind you). They have an API & some established exchange formats.

I've got no experience with OSM and editing or uploading. However, I've got plenty of experience writing software to do things like format shifting and interfacing to web sites.

Do you have experience with the OSM API or any of the bulk uploader scripts they've got? How about just editing and their review process?

[icefest]

Look at that cc 1 arc second srtm hydrologically enforced dem data http://data.gov.au/dataset/d3687cf1-b4b ... 5179e3c879

[Bubbalouie]

Creative commons license

Can't view it though, getting 500 error

I assume this is every river/creek/lake in the country as a vector map with an accuracy of 30m? (sorry, I personally know very little about these things)

[tastrax]

OK so it looks like most of us are just casual editors. I will also ask the question on a couple of other forums and try and round up some other geeks.

Bubbalouie - I am just a casual editor with no idea on API's etc. I do have GIS experience and can do plenty of manipulation of the open data to get it into a form that could be ready for importing

[Son of a Beach]

After having complained about Tas gov making it impossible for Tasmanians to get good access to our own spatial/geographic data for so many years, I'm very impressed with the way they've opened up over the last year or so. It's such a breakthrough to be able to make good use of our own data.

Sorry, I too know very little about OSM. I'm just an occasional casual user.

But I've been having some fun over the last few weeks playing with the LIST opendata: http://map.nixanz.com/
Of course, the new LISTmap is also excellent. You can add your own points/lines/etc to it, and print off your own maps from there.

Currently their open data doesn't include mountains/peaks and is missing some other nice-to-have datasets. I queried them about this just last Monday, and received a reply from them yesterday:

The good news is more of our datasets will be available for download mid to late April which will include the Nomenclature (Placenames) dataset that includes Mountain names. The bad news is we are not the custodians of the Forestry Groups data so that one will not be there

(I had queried the availability of mountains, and vegetation groups.)

[andrewp]

Some of this look quite interesting, especially the hydro data which is currently very lacking in OSM. However IMO a bulk upload would not be a good idea. It would create duplicate and unwanted data.

Most of it seems to be in shapefile format. JOSM reads shapefiles.

[andrewp]

Can't view it though, getting 500 error

I assume this is every river/creek/lake in the country as a vector map with an accuracy of 30m? (sorry, I personally know very little about these things)

I don't think this is a map of creeks. I think it is DEM data that has been modified to ensure that the elevations are correct for water flow. If you look at the raw SRTM DEM you will find that creeks flow uphill in places.

IMO this is not useful for OSM.

[Son of a Beach]

Not sure about the other sources but the Tasmanian (LIST) data is available in a variety of formats, including ESRI shapefiles, ESRI file GDB, MapInfo.

Any decent spatial software can read any of these formats. You can download free tools for a variety of platforms to query them and convert them too (see http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadingGdalBinaries ).