[Talk-us] Create GIS database for Non Profit Organization

[Serge Wroclawski]

Clifford,

I'm afraid I didn't entirely understand the question, but will try to
give it a shot anyway.

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us> wrote:
> I have been asked by a friend involved with Washington State nonprofit
> organizations with OSM could be used for a searchable gis database like the
> one in Colorado.  You can find the Colorado database at
> http://www.coloradononprofits.org/gisportal.cfm.

When you say "could be used for a searchable GIS database"- what
information are you intending to put in the database?

That is, are you looking to collect names/addresses/etc of
organizations, or are you looking for OSM as a base layer for display
on the map?

Looking at the site that you've pointed to:

http://cna.civicore.com/customCode/map.cfm

It appears they're just using Google as a base layer, that they have
their own database and then simply call out to Google to make the
display.

And if you're asking "Can we do this, but instead of Google, use OSM"
then the answer is "Yes, absolutely, and easily."


If you're suggesting instead that you'd like to use OSM as the one and
only database, then the answer is a "Yes, you probably could, but it's
not the right tool for the job."

>  Are there similar OSM applications available?

If you just mean pointing to a location on the map (ie the first
scenario I laid out) then I think the easiest thing to do would
probably be to load the non-profit dataset, along with the address
dataset (or congressional district dataset, etc.) into a PostGIS
database, using something like GeoDjango to manage the database, and
then have it handle calling out to OpenLayers or your display engine
to display your data on top of OSM tiles.

> The data for Washington State is available.
>  It would seem that it could be entered with tags that could be searched by a from a web site

This sounds a bit more like the second scenario, so let's dive a
little into that.

First, when you say the data for Washington State is available, we
have to be very careful about what exactly that means. In essence,
you'd be doing an import into OSM, and generally imports have not been
overall good for the project and are /generally/ frowned upon.

Even in the best case, you'd need to do a great deal of work not only
making sure the tags are right, as you point out, but also ensuring
that the data you enter is not already present in someone else's
contributed data. And you would need to ensure that the data is
properly integrated, and then properly maintained, with a plan for
handling updates.

After all this, you'd need to be aware that others might go in and
change the data.

And we haven't even discussed the licensing issues.

I'd say that OSM is not the right choice for putting data in where you
need tight control. You may find a way to make the model fit your
need, but OSM's view of the world is shared contributorship and shared
authorship, which in my experience does not integrate with the needs
by some for only using authorized datasets put out by certain
organizations.


To summarize:

I think OSM is a poor choice for storage and retrial of very specific
data that needs to come from a specific, authorized dataset, but I
think it's a great thing to make that data available to OSM to add in.
I also think that OSM is an excellent choice for the display of that
data either by overlaying it visually, or possibly (depending on
license factors), for direct data integration on your own GIS
database.

Does that answer your question or did I miss the mark entirely?

- Serge