[OSM-talk] Ongoing bulk uploads of GPS traces?

Jonathan Bennett openstreetmap at jonno.cix.co.uk
Wed Oct 13 10:12:31 BST 2010


  On 13/10/2010 08:50, Sam Wilson wrote:
> 1. We use OSM maps for navigation, and so management are quite able to 
> see the value that could arise from our giving this data to OSM, 
> because it would make the maps better.  But there is a bit of a gap 
> between lots-of-GPS-traces and lots-of-well-tagged-roads!  What can I 
> do to bridge this gap? (I mean, trace over the GPS trace, I know, but 
> that's going to leave a lot of 'highway=road' tags; is that okay?)
>
That's fine -- it's much better than nothing
> 2. What form of permission do I need to get from management, and where 
> does it get saved? Is there a pro forma letter somewhere? What licence 
> do we release the data under?
You'd be releasing the data under CC-BY-SA and ODbL. If you are acting 
on behalf of the copyright owner, then you don't need to add any further 
documentation -- simply uploading the data is enough to show you agree 
to the licences.
> 3. Is a single daily trace suitable?  I mean, all vehicles' traces put 
> together in one file and uploaded (under, I guess, a separate account 
> -- but still owned by me)? Or is there some automatic way of doing this?
A separate account for the traces may well be a good idea. As for 
aggregating the traces, I don't see any benefit to OSM of doing that, 
especially if it involves you doing more work. If it's the effort of 
uploading multiple traces that worries you, there's an Alpha-quality 
Java utility that I'm happy to help you to use: 
http://www.chainring.co.uk/Tracey.jar
>
> But really: is this worthwhile?  Will my company benefit?  Will OSM 
> benefit?
Yes. More source data is always good, especially if it's based on real 
movements.



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