[Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

Richard Welty rwelty at averillpark.net
Fri Apr 3 13:17:20 UTC 2015


so one of the things from recent discussion that concerns me are
perceptions out there about projects parallel to OSM that are designed
to complement it, specifically OHM. here is an outline of the view from
OHM, and i'm interesting in understanding why some treat the whole
project so dismissively (note that i'm a little bit of a late comer to OHM,
i've been following it with interest since it started but only just recently
started contributing directly.)

OHM was created because of the perceived desire to start handling
historic spatial data and characterize temporal aspects of it. the whole
idea is that we accept that OSM is not a good place for this data, so
why not create such a place?

it's a real database, using the OSM software stack. it's live, and you
can pan around in it and not see much because it's pretty sparse.
but you can go see historic building footprints and addresses in
lower manhattan right now. in fact, we just set up a list of projects
that are going on in OHM to make it easier for folks to see what's
up:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map/Projects

the short summary is

1.    it's real and operational
2.    there's stuff in it
3.    if you know OSM tools, you can join the party
4.    we just set up overpass for it, still tweaking it, but overlaying
       interesting OHM data on OSM basemaps just got a bit easier

a number of OHM oriented talk proposals were submitted for
SOTM US, and some will probably make the program.

i think the long term future of OSM will probably involve more
OHM like projects to supplement OSM. my question is how will
the core OSM community treat them? right now it seems very
mixed.

richard

-- 
rwelty at averillpark.net
 Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
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