[Talk-us] Open Street Map Data Contributions

[Tod Fitch]

Hi Ashlyn,

Thank you for considering getting authoritative data from your GIS department into OpenStreetMap. In particular, address data is often missing and would be very welcome.

I concur with attila at attilakundev.com <mailto:attila at attilakundev.com> that JOSM would be a much better editor to use for this type of work.

With respect to licensing: The key is if your licensing is compatible or allows your data to be used by OpenStreetMap. Many US states or localities put their data into the public domain which is definitely compatible with OSM requirements. I am not a lawyer but you probably have some in your organization. If you have them look at the OSM licensing requirements and review them against your city’s data license they can advise you if there is an issue. And you can then advise the OSM community. An issue that can be a sticking point is if you require attribution other than the usual “OpenStreetMap contributors”. The way OSM is structured that type of restriction cannot be met. One of the big fears many of us in the OSM community have is if data we are not licensed to use is put into OSM, a check of your licensing by qualified people would clarify the legal situation.

With respect to actual importing of the data: It is likely some center line and address data for your city already exists in OSM. Any import process should conflate your data with the existing. Duplicating existing is not desired.  And deleting and then replacing existing where there are conflicts will remove the edit history which is also not desired.

If there is an active volunteer OSM community in your city or state, they should be consulted and could be a very good resource for actually helping you perform the data validation and conflation of your data into OSM.

Regards,
Tod Fitch

> On Jun 23, 2022, at 11:51 AM, Ashlyn Haynes <ahaynes at springdalear.gov> wrote:
> 
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> We are with the City of Springdale, Arkansas GIS department. We have been working on getting our public  data out to other mapping platforms. We have recently submitted to ESRI and Google Maps. We created an account, and have been going through the tutorial to familiarize ourselves with OSM editing. We are wanting to submit our address and centerline datasets for a contribution to your platform. I see in the wiki page that there is a community buy in? Or licensing?  What is a local buy in? We are a local government organization. I am not sure if that matters.
> 
> Let us know what we need to do proceeding forward.
> 
> Thank you,
> Ashlyn Haynes
> GIS Analyst
> ahaynes at springdalear.gov <mailto:ahaynes at springdalear.gov>
> 201 Spring St.
> Springdale, AR 72764
> 
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