[Talk-ca] State of OSM maps in Calgary - comparison with Germany

Tue Jul 4 23:11:12 UTC 2023

Hi Pierre-Léo,

wow, chapeau, that is a phenomenal amount of work.

This is very sobering. My impression is that the best path forward is to 
engage more civic employees as OSM partners or contributors, because 
otherwise we're repeating work.

Does anybody know of existing initiatives to achieve this? It sounds 
like this might already be happening in Ottawa.

Contributing to or cooperating with OSM is treated as part of the 
regular open-data responsibilities by many local and regional 
governments in Germany.

Cheers

Stephen

Am 04.07.23 um 23:37 schrieb Pierre-Léo Bourbonnais:
> I cannot speak for users in Alberta and in the other provinces and territories, but in Quebec, we now have access to the land role as open data and other data sources to validate and enrich osm data. However, open data access is very recent in Quebec (and in Canada except some old data like CanVec). And the main issue is lack of human resources! Our team at Chaire Mobilite is trying to validate and complete OpenStreetMap data (road networks, addresses, POIs) in Quebec (mostly in the Montreal area right now), but even working full time, it would take more than 10 years for a single person (according to our estimates) to complete data for the whole province and provide at least 95% of all the POIs and addresses. We are currently trying to convince our government partners to contribute both financially and with data to OSM, but this will take time. However, we are in the right direction, because the governments officials are starting to understand the value of OSM data for the public and for their own needs.
> 
> And by the way, having the data publicaly available does not mean it is compatible with OpenStreetMap license. In some places, it took almost 10 years to get an official seal of approval to import and/or use open data in OSM. A lot of the new open data portal are CC 4.0, but this still need approval before using in OSM because the license is not 100% compatible, especially regarding the fact that CC 4.0 almost always need to show sources for the end-user on the map itself, which is not true with OSM, because you need to fetch the tags to get sources, and thus sources are not appearing in the bottom of OSM maps.
> 
> If anyone is interrested in stats, here our ours since 3 years of enhancing and completing OSM data:
> 
> To add POIs, realingn the road network, validate street names, add addresses, buildings and driveways, add sidewalks, surfaces, stop signs, traffic lights and number of lanes with road transitions, it takes:
> 
> 27 hours per sq. km in dense urban areas
> 10 hours per sq. km in medium-density suburban areas
> 3 hours per sq. km in villages and low density suburbs
> 1 hour per sq. km in rural areas
> 
> And then add around 10% of these hours must be added every year just to maintain and update, plus also some time every day to review new changesets by other OSM contributors (mostly verify updates did not unconnect a cycling path from the main road, or a crossing from the intersecting road) and revert some vandalism (rare, but happened in the Montreal area lately)
> 
> And you need better aerial phography than usual Bing and a lot of on-site surveying when data is not clear or up-to-date.
> 
>> On Jul 4, 2023, at 5:13 PM, Stephen Bosch <posting at vodacomm.ca> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everybody, bonjour -
>>
>> I live in Germany and I use OSM on a daily basis for address look-ups
>> and navigation. I've got the OSM+ app on my phone and it works very
>> well. In fact, the OSM maps are often better than Google Maps.
>>
>> When I'm back in Canada (Calgary, mostly), it is practically unusable.
>> The most obvious weakness is that buildings are often unnumbered or
>> missing entirely, so simple address look-ups fail. For a dramatic
>> example of this, have a look at the Capitol Hill neighbourhood in Calgary:
>>
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/106980291#map=17/51.07172/-114.10028
>>
>> While it's true that there is a large community of contributors in
>> Germany, the main reason the OSM maps are so good there is that states
>> and municipalities share rich geodata freely, with some even actively
>> contributing to OSM. Many public services rely on OSM data, so it's in
>> their interest that it be of high quality.
>>
>> The City of Calgary seems to have an open data policy:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m32hxV8md4c
>>
>> https://www.calgary.ca/service-lines/2023-2026-city-services/data-analytics-information-access.html
>>
>> https://data.calgary.ca/
>>
>> so I would expect the same to apply there. For example, there is a 2D
>> buildings map for Calgary that seems to be complete:
>>
>> https://data.calgary.ca/Base-Maps/2D-Buildings-Map/h98y-bpv6
>>
>> Here's a 3D LIDAR-derived map:
>>
>> https://mapgallery.calgary.ca/apps/bcd22e7089a440e792628ac61f35f4c1/explore
>>
>> In short, the public data appear to be available. Why aren't they in
>> OSM? Is this a licence problem?
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Stephen Bosch
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
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> 
> 

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