[Talk-ca] Fwd: GeoBase vs CanVec

Brendan Morley morb.gis at beagle.com.au
Sat Aug 21 02:33:28 BST 2010


On 21/08/2010 10:46 AM, JOHN SMART wrote:
> G'Day Australian Mapper
>
> Perhaps someone from Natural Resources Canada (the Federal mapping 
> agency) could give a better answer, but my understanding is:
>
> - CanVec originated from the NTDB (National Topographic Database) 
> which is essentially the same data as is used for the (sometimes quite 
> out of date) 1:50 000 scale National Topographic Series maps. That is 
> all Federal data.
>
> - GeoBase is an initiative which aims to reduce duplication of work / 
> costs by having Provinces (equivalent to Aus. states) or other 
> entities supply "best" data to the Feds.
>
> Thus GeoBase would actually be an example of the left hand working in 
> partnership with the right hand.

So it seems like CanVec is a top down approach (originally built on 
national scale acquisition approaches) and GeoBase is a bottom up 
approach (originally built from local government property tax / parcel 
surveying approaches)?

>
> I believe CanVec is being updated with any better sources as they 
> become available, e.g. National Roads Network (NRN) gets migrated into 
> new editions of CanVec.
>
> I believe there are many data themes that are in CanVec which are not 
> in GeoBase, and presumably never will be in GeoBase unless the 
> initiative is extended to include agreements for those themes.
>
So perhaps I can adopt a "try GeoBase first, CanVec second" approach?

> If I have misunderstood anything I'd be delighted to be corrected.
>
> Now, what is "CommonMap"? I had never heard of that until now. A quick 
> web search gets me here:
> http://commonmap.info/w/index.php/Main_Page
>
> It looks to me like it is a very similar concept to OSM, apart from 
> licensing perhaps. So it makes me wonder if we have a "left hand - 
> right hand" situation there?
>

We're a bunch of people (now incorporated) dissatisfied with the OSMF 
licence change, to the point where we realised the Share Alike provision 
actually isn't a good fit for us at all.  (There is also a different 
fork in the works for those who believe in -SA but are happy with 
today's OSM licence.) From my own perspective I don't mind having my 
contributions used anywhere, and I want to build roundtripping 
opportunties with traditional mapping agencies.  Both of which OSM is 
limiting by design.

Mind you, one hand (CommonMap) will be able to talk to the other hand 
(OpenStreetMap) because our CC BY / PD licence is compatible with CC 
BY-SA.  It's just that the other direction is not allowed by the -SA 
provision.


Brendan
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