[Talk-ca] BC2020i - Solving the licensing issues

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

This is great! And it reflects the recommendations provided at the first
consultation meetings with your management at Satistics Canada. I believe
there is merit in talking with the municipalities from whom you are
accessing the data, simply as a courtesy, but also as a way to enlist them
as part of the project, and potentially they may have a better and more up
to date dataset than what they share in their open data. And may even have
other data of use.

OSM resembles ordnance survey as was part of the original raison d'etre
When it started in the UK, but that does not preclude the possibility of
incorporating administrative boundaries such as wards, and less formal
boundaries such as neighbourhoods, and potentially even other cachtment are
boundaries such as school boards, and police districts and so on.

I am including James McKinney in this conversation because he did some work
in compiling quite a few municipal base files when he was the ed for Open
North.

And there most definitely will be variable quality, and ontologies! Vive la
difference!

Nice work and kudos to you and your team.
TRacey


On Wednesday, February 7, 2018, Alasia, Alessandro (STATCAN) <
alessandro.alasia at canada.ca> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> It is fantastic to see all these exchanges about BC2020i! There are a lot
> of great ideas and improvements being made. I cannot follow up on each
> point, though I wanted to update you regarding one area of specific
> relevance: the attempt to find a solution to the licensing issue for
> building related datasets. I believe this is one area where my team can
> contribute to support the BC2020i.
>
> With my team, I am looking into the feasibility of compiling all available
> municipal open data files into one single file and then releasing this
> single file under one common license, specifically the open data licence of
> the Canadian federal government. This would, hopefully, solve the license
> compatibility issue. We are still exploring this possibility but are
> moderately optimistic.
>
> So far we started with the "easy" task: compiling all the known files – a
> special thanks to those who contributed to the tables on the BC2020i wiki
> page! With that and other OD sources, we compiled an
> "OpenAddressRepository" file of nearly 11 million records (georeferenced)
> and an "OpenBuildingRepository" file of nearly 3.2 million polygons (still
> in progress). Preliminary analysis suggests that the coverage and geocoding
> are very promising. More importantly, given that the files all originate
> from official municipal sources, there should be no reason to doubt the
> quality of the data.
>
> The next step, for us, is to look at the process required to release these
> files with a GoC open data license. We do not yet have a clear timeline for
> release, but if this idea is possible, we should almost certainly make it
> before the timelines that were discussed on Talk-ca for vetting each and
> all individual municipal open data licenses  - 2080s or 2030s if I recall
> correctly :-)
>
> We believe this solution/approach, if successful, puts an end to the issue
> of license compatibility (at least for the files found thus far) and
> greatly facilitates the use of these open data by the general public as
> well as the private and public sector. Furthermore, and more importantly
> for BC2020i, this solution paves the way for the many local OSM groups to
> import these open data as they see fit. As well, once the large national
> level files are released, we might be able to collaborate with local groups
> and provide more manageable partitions of the larger files.
>
> Of course, this approach will not necessarily solve the license
> compatibility issue for all types of municipal files. Thus, needless to
> say, anybody is obviously free to pursue submitting individual municipal OD
> licenses to the License Working Group of OSM.  Though, given that the
> Working Group resources are scarce, and assuming the approach outlined
> above works for building footprints, we would be happy to discuss the
> feasibility of compiling and re-releasing other municipal open data under
> the open data licence of the Canadian federal government.
>
> Finally, as I mentioned in other communications, my team is also exploring
> other activities that will hopefully contribute to the BC2020i. These
> activities touch on data analysis, data monitoring, and building footprint
> extraction from satellite imagery. For this work, we are primarily using
> open source tools and applications that can be integrated in open source
> environments (more updates on all of this hopefully soon!).
>
> More updates, feedback, and follow up on other interesting points of
> discussion later on.
>
> Regards to all,
>
> Alessandro and DEIL team
>
>
>


-- 
*Tracey P. Lauriault*

Assistant Professor
Critical Media Studies and Big Data
Communication Studies
School of Journalism and Communication
Suite 4110, River Building
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa (ON) K1S 5B6

1-613-520-2600 x7443
Tracey.Lauriault at Carleton.ca
@TraceyLauriault
Skype: Tracey.P.Lauriault
https://carleton.ca/sjc/people-archives/lauriault-tracey/
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