[OSM-talk] Contributing GIS Data to OSM

[IT Intern]

Thank you for your response Serge!  This is a very good outline and you are
very kind to have given me this kind of walk through.  I have read through
the docs about each part you outlined for me and have some more questions..

"If you've signed up recently, you've accepted the new Contributor Terms"
So I believe this means that I should work under OSM's future license
policy, even though they have not yet made the crossover?  Or do I work
under the current terms for now and then change everything later?  Sorry for
asking what may seem like dumb questions, but I want to be really sure about
this :)

"If you understand OSM, then you know how we use tags to classify features."
My data is in a GIS database.  I looked at the tagging section of the docs.
The way I understood it is that I have to change my database to reflect the
tags?  I'm not really sure since I have a lot of columns with entries such
as place_name, lon, lat, geom, etc.  Another question about this is that I
am working in the U.S., but I would be importing data for a region in an
another country.  Do I follow the tagging system of the U.S. or do I follow
that of the country I am importing for?  What if that country has different
tagging systems for different regions and none listed for the region of my
interest?

As for importing data, I saw it mentioned somewhere that there is a test
database for OSM that I can work with to ensure my actual import goes
right.  Is this so?  Other than that is there a place I can show my .osm
files for moderation and checked by an OSM team or professionals alike that
will ensure me that my pending import data will benefit OSM?  Also I saw
that you said that mass data imports are not favored.  What constitutes as a
"mass import" as opposed a more normal/manageable one?

As for the XML/.osm format, isn't there a tool from the FWTools suite,
something like ogr2osm that will correctly convert my GIS to .osm?  I am
guessing that even with such a tool, that I might have to edit/clean-up the
.osm files a bit, but I assume there has to be many tools out there to do
the bulk of the conversion...

I truly appreciate all your kind help and assistance with this.  I don't
know what I would do if it wasn't for you guys :)

Thanks,

elshae


On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 10:42 AM, IT Intern <itintern12 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This was originally posted here:
> > http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=10817
>
> Hi, and welcome to OSM!
>
> There's a large split in the people who use the forums vs the lists. I'm
> biased.
>
> The other resources for OSM are the Wiki (wiki.openstreetmap.org) and
> help.openstreetmap.org.
>
> help.osm has a lot of question similar to yours, and this question
> comes up a lot, so I'm going to apologise if this answer seems terse,
> there's just a fairly large amount of information that I need to give
> you to answer it.
>
>
> > I apologize in advance if the answer to my question is blatant from the
> docs, but as far as I can see there seems to be no way to contribute GIS
> data to OSM.
>
> It depends what you mean by contribute. I'm going to assume you mean
> "Put data you and others have collected into OSM"
>
> > I am working on a project making an interactive map and the foundation
> which I work for has a lot of data which they have collected (mostly from
> gazetteers).  We figured since OSM is providing us with their lovely base
> maps from the API, we want to give back to them by contributing our data.
> However, our data is mainly in a PostGIS database.  Is there anyway to
> import this data to OSM?  I appreciate all and any advice you may offer me
>
> For my own sanity, I'll break the process down into several parts:
>
> License, Tagging, the Import Process in General, and Technology
>
> 1. License
>
> First, and foremost, any data that goes into OSM must be compatible
> with the OSM license, which is currently in a transition period. If
> you've signed up recently, you've accepted the new Contributor Terms.
>
> The issue is that you have to be sure that your organisation is okay
> with these terms, that you have the proper authorisation to add the
> data into our dataset, etc.
>
> There are lots of resources on the wiki, and lists to help with this,
> so I won't go too far into the process.
>
> 2. Tagging
>
> You didn't mention what kind of data you have. If you understand OSM,
> then you know how we use tags to classify features. Your data will
> need to be added in using tags that our system understands, or if it's
> an odd case where the data is unlike anything we already have, we'd
> need to work out a new tagging system for it. But the later is very
> unlikely.
>
> If you have questions about this, lots of people will be happy to help
> you, but the best resource is the wiki.
>
> 3. Imports in General
>
> As a general rule, OSM doesn't like mass data imports, for lots of
> reasons. There are exceptions, people do imports, and some are fine,
> but generally the community doesn't like them, and usually it has to
> do with poor execution, and overlapping data.
>
> For example, let's say you have road data that you want to add to OSM.
>
> Will your import process take in to account roads that are already in
> the database? If so, what strategy will you use for deciding which
> data is correct? Will you look at the date of collection? Will you
> always blow the existing OSM data away, will you always blow your data
> away?
>
> And if you do add roads, will they route properly with existing OSM
> data (ie will they be topologically consistent with the existing
> dataset?). And so on...
>
> It's a non-trivial matter, and the process needs to be customised for
> each dataset.
>
> We can go into more depth about this, but look at the wiki for
> "import" and "imports" and you'll see lots of existing information.
>
> 4. Technology
>
> If your data is in PostGIS now, it shouldn't be too hard to write a
> script that extracts the features and makes it available in the OSM
> XML format, ready to be consumed by the API.
>
> Are you familiar with the XML format and the API? If not, they're
> referenced in the wiki and or we can give you a link.
>
> - Serge
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20110118/3f343125/attachment-0001.html>