Potential Datasources

From OpenStreetMap

The following is a list of potential datasources. Some of these are already in use, or have been imported fully. Others are under investigation, and some have been rejected (details of rejections are on here too). There are basically two criteria...

Licenses - We are only interested in 'free' data. In fact we must be able to release their data with our OpenStreetMap License. In practice this normally means we can only use Public Domain data sources.

Accuracy/Quality - All GIS data is limited in terms of accuracy and coverage of features. Some datasources are very basic. Because of our wiki style map building approach, this isn't necessarily a problem. We could import it anyway, and improve it later, however there are limits to this reasoning. Also in areas where we already have superior coverage through other means, we will not be interested in importing lower quality data. For example a low accuracy map of the main roads of London, is actually useless to us, whereas similar coverage of an unmapped city would be useful.

With these criteria in mind, look at the following, see if there are license issues and if they are useful to us or we can collaborate... and mail the Mailing lists with results. Freegis.org is compiling a similar list [1], but it doesn't contain everything.

Datasources which we have imported, should also go on the Import/Catalogue

General

Out-of-copyright mapping

See separate page on out-of-copyright maps.

Dispatch centres

Many transportation companies (Taxi, delivery, courier services) are using GPS units in their vehicles either to track them in real time in their dispatching centre or just for logging. It should be in their interest to provide their GPS tracks in order to improve the maps in their areas of operation. Taxis should effectively cover a city fast, while lorries and such are probably better for longer distances. Already using Ecourier tracks.

Global Coverage

The CIA World DataBank

The CIA World DataBank II is a collection of world map data, consisting of vector descriptions of land outlines, rivers, and political boundaries. It was created by the U.S. government in 1986. Hence it should be under public domain, since the files haven't changed since. There's roughly 1.8 million shape points in Europe and N.A.

GPX files can be created from the CIA World DataBank with the Perl script at

http://www.ces.clemson.edu/~sadam/gpx

There is now an 0.5-compatible import script for OSM at [2]. Please document your upload progress on WikiProject_Import_WDB.

GEOnet Names Server

This database contains 5.5 million geo features, it's updated monthly by the agency. The dataset is in use on the main page when you search for cities.

http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html - Here we try to make this data useable in JOSM: WikiProject_Ethiopia/GNS
http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntyfile/gm.zip
ftp://ftp.nima.mil/pub/gns_data/
There is a wiki version at geonames.org that uses a very snazy google map interface. See also Geonames page

There are no licensing requirements or restrictions in place for the use of the GNS data. However, we recommend using the following citation to identify the GNS as a source

Toponymic information is based on the Geographic Names Data Base, containing official standard names approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names and maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. More information is available at the Products and Services link at www.nga.mil. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency name, initials, and seal are protected by 10 United States Code Section §445.

It'll give you a huge amount of information very quickly, but isn't without errors. There are spelling mistakes, and examples of someone doing far too much historical research (Gildersome near Leeds for example is also listed as "Home of the Gilders").

Another problem is that the data on the rankings of "populated places" appears to be missing for the UK and other places(?), making the selection of place names to display a bit of a problem (you can end up with small village names displayed, and large city names missed because there's no room if you try to handle the layout automatically).

Having said all that, it's a lot of data, it appears to be available under sane terms, and weeding out the small inaccuracies will likely require far less work than building such a database from scratch.

OpenGeoDB

OpenGeoDB was started as a German project for places within Germany, extended to Austria, Switzerland, Liechenstein and Belgium by now. Initial data was derived from GEOnet Names Server, but has been extended by postal area codes, population, governmental structure etc.

The data is public domain and can be used without any limitations.

The homepage is http://opengeodb.de

Dumps are released on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengeodb/

Data can be edited and downloaded any time via http://fa-technik.adfc.de/code/opengeodb.pl

The Berkeley BioGeo gData set

See Berkeley_BioGeo_data for more details of this many-country database. It concerns ESRI compatible free data, in which free needs to be examined. It is presumed that ESRI compatible files can be converted into OSM formats, even when ESRI itself is a company. Is a dataformat leading to a problem with licenses? Orwall 24 Jan 2008

Shoreline databases

There are several freely available datasets for coastlines. For paths running along cliff tops you wouldn't want to trust your life to any of this data - but for the purposes of giving you a plausible landmass to draw maps on they're all useful. See Proposed features/Coastline

Prototype Global Shoreline

See the main page on PGS

Our script for importing into the OSM database is "Almien coastlines (PGS)"

GSHHS - Global Self-consistent Hierarchical High-resolution Shoreline

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html

Import script is at Almien coastlines (GSHHS), but is not being used in favour of PGS.

GSHHS is a database of lakes and shorelines of the world, resolution of 200m produced in 1996. Delivered with source, written in C, and the PD database. They are also available as shapefiles. Tends to give more accurate coastlines than VMAP0 outside of the US (for some reason VMAP0 seems more accurate for the US). There are issues with inland water (such as the great lakes) though.

(The above info appears slightly incorrect: according to the README the last update was in 2004. It was generated from the CIA WDBII and the WVS).

VMAP0

US department of defence vector map (contains far more than just coastlines, but can be rather "coarse". Also known as Digital Chart of the World. See Wikipedia.

World Vector Shoreline

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=World+Vector+Shoreline

Claims, 1:250,000 scale use, seems pretty accurate at least for the GB and Ireland

EVS Islands (Data Dependent)

Based upon different landsat images, some comparision are made against PGS, and there are also maps traced from Google Earth imagery. He makes very beautiful maps of all the islands of the world. http://evs-islands.blogspot.com

SWBD - Shuttle radar topography mission Water Body Data.

ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2

Derived from the SRTM digital elevation model. Newer than the rest, potentially more accurate.

From the README: SRTM data are distributed in two levels: SRTM1 (for the U.S. and its territories and possessions) with data sampled at one arc-second intervals in latitude and longitude, and SRTM3 (for the world) sampled at three arc-seconds. Three arc-second data are generated by three by three averaging of the one arc-second samples.

For reference: one arc-second at the equator is 30metres. For the US this means around 18m accuracy, but for elsewhere it's pretty bad. At the latitude of Brussels it would be about 60metres accuracy. For any latitude l, 1 arc-second of longitude is about 30 metres multiplied by cos(l).

The SWBD data is derived from this and claims one-arc second accuracy worldwide, though only lakes greater than 200m are included.

Converting SRTM into OSM format can be done with Srtm2Osm.

Earth Observing Laboratory NCAR.

EOL provides state-of-the-art atmospheric observing systems and support services to the university-based research community for climate and weather research. Most of it is free(?)

ICEDS European Data Server

The ICEDS server is hosted and run from UCL with the aim of serving high-resolution global and continental data. One of the nicest things about the site is its ease of use - you view an area and then click a button to download the relevent data (SRTM, Geological Maps, Landsat 5 & 7, etc). The site is also an exercise in Open Standards and is fully compliant with the OGC's WMS, WFS standards - meaning that a variety of external data sources (Weather and bathymetry for example) can be overlaid with the click of a button (Why not OSM data?). In common with OSM it is also based on an Open source principle - Map Server on Apache on Linux.

Two things I particularly like about the site:

Extensive use of Java-Script embeds a lot of features onto the page. Try out the "Flicker" and "Swipe" tools and the drop down menus for downloading SRTM data.
The near realtime (15 minute delay I think) Global Clouds layer.

hostip.info Geolocation data

http://www.hostip.info/ has a geolocation database. Geolocation means mapping from IP address to location. It's a neat trick, although the accuracy is obviously quite variable (try it on the site there) We could try to use this to jump to the user's home town, rather than the default world map, when a visitor enters the openstreetmap.org homepage. Might fun, or it might just be confusing when it gets it wrong.

Ip Global Positioning (Unfree)

http://www.ipgp.net will show a map with the location of an IP address. In some cases it will show the location of Internet Service Provider, but you can still make an idea.

DAFIF

Defense Aeronautical Flight Information File. Published by the US Department of Defense, lists pretty much every airport runway worldwide. Apparently, they're going to be removing the dataset from public domain in October 2006. This is used to populate the scenery databases for Flightgear flight simulator and X-Plane. Whilst the dataset is still being kept updated in the public domain, I'll work out an import to Openstreetmap of the runways and taxiways. Welshie 09:51, 25 Jun 2006 (UTC)

OpenAerialMap

OpenAerialMap - Community contributed aerial imagery. An attempt to aggregate as much free aerial imagery as possible. blog post. OpenStreetMap described on their wiki.

Some aerial maps are appearing on a slippy map there now, as contributions from individual people/organisations, within patches. Click the 'Show on map' links on the right hand side of their uploads list, to see examples. They look quite good, and appear to be othorectified suitable for tracing.

The project is quite new, but they do now have licensing information. While some images are public domain, some may have an attribution requirement (means we can't use it, since we probably can't currently provide adequate attribution) But is there a way to determine which patches are PD?

APRS data

Many Amateur radio operators have GPS receivers connected to packet radio transmitters and transmit their location in a standard format known as APRS (including fixed stations, weather stations, and mobile stations) on standard frequencies from which the data can be picked up and is injected into a internet infrastructure APRS-IS. The infrastructure includes databases APRSWorld, OpenAPRS, and a substantial supporting body of open source software (which would make it simple to set up a database to selectively mine internet feeds for data coming from mobile stations that are likely to be traveling on roads). APRS data does have some intrinsic limitations - positions are usually transmitted on 5-10 minute intervals, and a widely used non-compressed format limits the precision of latitude and longitude to 0.01 minute (see the APRS protocol specification for details). Given the origin of APRS data as Amateur radio transmissions, they are likely to be in the public domain.

Placeopedia (rejected)

The guys who gave us Pledgebank made placeopedia as well, it's a way to use Google maps to geo reference wikipedia articles. The database is held separately from the wikipedia one, and can be accessed with rss, xml and kml feeds from their site.

It says it is available under a Creative Commons license, but not which one.

This has been discussed on the mailing list, and the consensus is that Placeopedia is a derivative work of Google Maps. Although it's very unlikely to be challenged by Google Maps / Teleatlas, it's not suitable for use in OpenStreetMap (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2005-October/001212.html is one of many relevant posts, and a good summary of the argument).

Local data

Switzerland

Swisstopo

Some data (maps, city coordinates) are available on http://www.swisstopo.ch/en/download/freedata/overview

Lisense need to be clarified. English version say "Free Download" which can be understood as in "free beer", but the French translation is "à votre libre disposition" which is more encouraging about what we can do with those data for OSM. The download page also say "Please specify copyright © 2005 swisstopo note", so it seems that redistribution is allowed.

just wrote Swisstopo an email to clarify this --blk 18:20, 23 September 2006 (BST)

here's what it says (the email is posted in Talk:Potential_Datasources#copy_of_email_to_Swisstopo): we are allowed to import all data listed on this page as long as their copyright remains (proposed k='copyright' v='swisstopo'; k='source' v='swisstopo-import' - this tag should be made sticky once it's set, so no one can remove it) --blk 12:34, 29 September 2006 (BST)

Post

A List of Swiss postal codes can be found on https://match.postmail.ch/match_zip?SIT_ID=5&SPRCDE=1 The site also contains a list of street-names of all major swiss cities aswell as other potentially interesting data.

Verzeichnis aller Strassen

Maybe the street name index of Zurich http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/internet/geoz/home/strassennamen___hausnummern.html can be used? It has to be clarified. It contains data, from which streets the other streets connect. With the Yahoo data, a Database without spelling mistakes can be built. Also it contains the newest changes in the city planning

SO!GIS Online Vector Data

Kanton Solothurn has a free Web GIS Service http://www.sogis1.so.ch/sogis/OnLineData/php/index.php with vector data (ESRI Shape Files) under this license: http://www.sogis1.so.ch/sogis/OnLineData/php/index.php?action=nutzung&UID=&USR=&lang=de&menue=&aktuell=&sogis_zip_ie=

If the copyright is correctly attributed (analogous to the free swisstopo data) I don't see any license problems with SO!GIS data.

France

INSEE (Unfree)

INSEE (National french Statistics agency) provides a CD called Correspondance adresses-zonage urbains. It is a whole database of In which urban area is this address (number + name of the street). It covers cities greater than 10,000 inhabitants.

I don't know wether the licence is ok. I wrote to INSEE and they say : "La rediffusion des données du produit, y compris à des fins commerciales, est autorisée sans licence et sans versement de redevance. Toutefois, la rediffusion du produit en l'état, en tout ou en partie substantielle, gratuitement ou contre paiement, est interdite." In english : you can distribute the data, even in commercial ways, without licence nor fee. But distribution as is or of a major part of the product isn't allowed. Would you think extracting the whole streets would be a major part ?

Anothor question : data isn't supposed to be modified. Problem is that there are some mistakes. But the whole thing would be of great help, even to check for the validity of the openstreetname database (it's possible to compute somehow proximity between streets).

The licence as printed on the back of the CD is as follows:

L'INSEE, titulaire des droits de propriété intellectuelle sur ce produit, vous concède le droit d'usage final et de rediffusion des données qu'il contient. Toutefois, il vous est interdit de rediffuser ledit produit en l'état, en tout ou en partie substantielle, gratuitement ou contre paiement. Dans tous les cas, vous avez l'obligation de respecter l'intégrité des données et de mentionner la source sous la forme: << Source: INSEE - Correspondances adresses-zonages urbains.

in English:

"INSEE, holder of this product's intellectual property, concedes right of final usage and distribution of the data it (the product) contains. Nevertheless, you are not allowed to distribute the said product as is, complete or in substantial parts, for free or against payment. In any case, you have to respect the integrity of the data and cite the source as << Source: INSEE - Correspondances adresses-zonages urbains."

Offical site

Un Point C'est Tout

UPCT is a project aiming at creating a GFDL-licensed database of GIS information (trackpoints, maps, ...)

Apparently the Free Software Foundation is modifying the GFDL so that it will be compatible with CC-BY-SA (mostly so that Wikipedia is compatible with everything else). If this is applicable to all GFDL works then we will be able to use this datasource. See [3] Andrewpmk 15:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

BD Carthage

This is a hydrographical data collection of French river and water points. It's now free to use it but I don't if we are able to use it in OSM. For testing the river Isere, the Lac Léman, Lac d'Annecy, Lac du Bourget, Lac d'aiguebelette et le lac Paladru have been imported. The licence is here. If it is compatible with OpenstreetMap Licence's I Can import whole of it.

Après enquête,il me semble que la possibilité règlementaire d'inclure les données de la BD Carthage à la base OSM ne sont pas claire : d'un coté Fredb relève que : "L'Acceptant ne peut exercer aucun des droits conférés par l'article 3 avec l'intention ou l'objectif d'obtenir un profit commercial ou une compensation financière personnelle." D'un autre le Sandre indique que : "La BD CARTHAGE est à présent gratuite pour tout tiers sous condition d’une utilisation non commerciale, et ceci pour la durée de la convention (3 ans). La notion de sphère eau n’existe plus." Pour en avoir le cœur net j'ai épluché le forum de georezo.net où la discussion ne porte pas explictement autour de la "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0" J'ai donc contacté les services du SANDRE et le responsable de l'IGN et le forum Georezo en leur demandant : "Bonjour, je participe au projet de cartographie www.openstreetmap.org. Ce projet est un wiki cartographique dont l'objectif est de constituer une base de données routières enrichie par les internautes. Pour des besoins de reperages nous aimerions y inclure les données de la BD Carthage. La licence de celle-ci précise que : "La BD CARTHAGE est à présent gratuite pour tout tiers sous condition d’une utilisation non commerciale, et ceci pour la durée de la convention (3 ans). La notion de sphère eau n’existe plus." N'étant pas pas moi-même juriste, je voudrait savoir si celle-ci est compatible avec la licence Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 si nous prenons le soin de spécifier dans la base d'OpenStreetMap l'origine de la BD-Carthage? Merci"

Corine Land Cover

La BD Corine Land Cover est une base de données qui représente l'occupation du sol européen. Tous les éléments géographiques de plus de 25 ha y sont présents (eau, bois, ville, etc.).(cf. Wikipedia) Selon Francis BERTRAND (Chef de projet CORINE land cover France) cette base est disponible gratuitement (cf. Georezo). Avis au specialiste de des licences pour determiner si on peut ajouter tout çà dans OSM.

UK

Local authority street naming notifications

I wrote an email to my local authority when I found out that they notify interested parties on the council's decisions on naming and numbering new properties and streets. For areas that have already been densely surveyed and mapped (90%+), it would be an invaluable list of places that might need re-surveying or other editing.

I got an answer back - the council do make the information freely available on their web site, but it's in the form of a PDF file per decision, in a human readable format only, and the whole list is not easily searchable. The information contains no geographic information other than relative references, eg.

       That a new development of a house being built on the
       site adjacent to 47 Belmont Avenue, Barnet, Herts, EN4
       shall be postally addressed:
       WOODVIEW HOUSE, 1A NORRYS ROAD, BARNET,
       HERTS, EN4 9JX.

Occasionally, whole new streets get notified.

       That the access road beginning at the junction with Page Street,
       London, NW7 serving Copthall Leisure Centre and the
       surrounding properties shall be named:
       CHAMPIONS WAY, LONDON, NW4/NW7.
       That the access road that starts at Champions Way and ends at
       the Great North Way, London, NW4 serving Copthall Stadium
       shall be named:
       GREENLANDS LANE, LONDON, NW4.

These lists are not in a standard format among local authorities, and each local authority needs to be handled differently. I plan on writing a web scraping script to attempt to identify the changes, and by searching the nearby street names, pinpoint them on the map, so I would have a list of streets that need editing / surveying. Welshie 15:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

UK cellphone antennas

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/19/sitefinder_made_public/

U.S.

Check metadata for each shape file obtained from government sources, and search for "Use_Constraints:" or similar to help determine usability of data with OpenStreetMap. Many will list this as "None" and should be fine to use, but others from the same page will have varying constraints. When there is any doubt, ask the contact listed in the metadata for permision, and check with the Legal Talk mailing list. --Dalep 04:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

National

TIGER

More detail on the TIGER page

The Tiger road data is imported

The U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER geographic database covers the United States (including Puerto Rico). The data is available from the Census Bureau as TIGER/Line files in ASCII text format - http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/. ESRI shapefiles of the TIGER data is available at http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html .

The TIGER data are in the public domain - http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/tigerfaq?Q11 .

US Forest Service

Many national forests have GIS data available for download. A statement from region 6 (Pacific NW) http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/data-library/gis/disclaimers.shtml says that the data are public domain. Unfortunately each forest seems have their own index of data and data organization. There are some files very relevant to OSM (trails; recreation points listing campsites, docks etc) and some not so useful to the normal OSM reader (owl and fish habitats).

USGS

The USGS has a centralized database ( http://seamless.usgs.gov ) that contains many data sets, several that would be of use to OSM, including very detailed surface water data sets (rivers, streams, lakes, tiny ponds), dams, federal lands . The data are in the public domain ( http://seamless.usgs.gov/faq/general_faq.php#six ). However, they do request attribution of data to USGS, so it may require a followup to use in OSM.

Department of Transportation links

DOT homepage links for all 50 states. Check each for the GIS department, and statewide downloadable data.

Alabama

Mobile, Al.

City of Mobile All layers

Alaska

Alaska DOT downloads.

Alaska Geospatioal clearinghouse Has limited availability by time of day.

District of Columbia

DC GIS Main page. The GIS Data Clearinghouse/Catalog link contains hundreds of data layers.

e-mail confirmation that OSM may use DC data provided source credit is given to "District of Columbia (DC GIS)". --Dalep 02:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Florida

Florida Department of Transportation GIS data in shape format. Web site, and direct FTP Everything should be in public domain as a result of state law, but has not been verified yet.

A site for tracking down other sources of data in Florida is FindGIS, a blog/site that is pursuing Florida government agencies to release their GIS data as required. As well as list where that data can be found. Not all is free, or released as Public Domain. See each site individually.

NOTE about http://www.cfgis.org/ Careful reading suggests they are claiming copyright (and limiting distribution) on behalf of the data sources they have in the Clearinghouse even for sources that are/should be public domain. Further inquires should be made before using anything downloaded from here, or check the original source.

Counties listed below for more detailed information layers, better accuracy and up to date roads. Just be careful of the datum for the county data.

Broward County

Broward County GIS Data

Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

City of Fort Lauderdale GIS downloads

Orange County

Orange County GIS Should be in public domain, but not verified yet.

Seminole County

Seminole county GIS Lots of Shape layers, and even aerial data 1940-present, but not all geotagged. Should be in public domain, but not verified yet.

Volusia County

Volusia County GIS Should be in public domain, but not verified yet.

Iowa

Iowa DNR "The NRGIS Library is public information, and offered freely to encourage the wise utilization of Iowa's natural resources." from the about page.

Massachusetts

MassGIS main download page. The import Catalog lists this as imported with a massgis_import_* tag. Which layers were imported?

Long distance trails and Bike Trails Are these already imported with the above?

Minnesota

Minnesota DOT GIS Data

The Minnesota Department of Transportation releases 1:24000 scale GIS data files. From the site: "The data set includes information about transportation features (roads, railroads and navigable waters), as well as boundary information (State, County, and Municipal Boundaries, Mn/DOT District Boundaries, Civil, and Congressional Townships, State Forests and Parks, Military Reservations, Indian Reservation Lands, National Forests and Parks), and stream and lake locations." The files are "free of charge" from the MNDOT website: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/maps/gisbase/html/datafiles.html but no mention of them being explicitly public domain/copyright free. It's probably worth contacting them though. --BenFranske 08:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

North Carolina

North Carolina DOT: GIS data including Bikeroutes

The NC Department of Transportation releases their bike routes as a GIS layer in ESRI. I think they also may have normal roads as well, but it's less of a point with TIGER. Unfortunately, the website: http://www.ncdot.org/it/gis/DataDistribution/BikeMaps/ is down so you can't download the data yet, but you can read about it on the google cache here: http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:r1G7ut9_T_EJ:www.ncdot.org/it/gis/DataDistribution/BikeMaps/&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=in&strip=0

As soon as the site is back up, I'll contact them to see if it's available for OSM. --Thylacine222 07:19, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

These data are available again. --jumbanho 18:00, 23 Aug 2008 (UTC)

A complete NC DOT data list Metadata lists any restrictions on use, many require accredidation, but are otherwise free for any use. An e-mail from David Giordano at ncmail.net (listed contact) confirms this. Road data is offline until late Sept. 2008 though. --Dalep 01:00, 29 Aug 2008 (UTC)

Oregon

Portland, OR

portlandmaps.com is operated by the city of Portland and has GIS datasets. I can't decipher the legalese, but it seems to be free (public domain).

6-24-08 I called the city and the information on the site is public domain. Also, it seems the raw GIS data might be available through Metro.

Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon

Jaimie L. Bradbury ( jbradbury@fs.fed.us ) has GIS datasets of the MT. Hood National Forest in Oregon, US that are in the public domain in the US available. Again, I don't have the necessary technical expertise to actually do any import work, so maybe someone else could pick this up, or help me do it myself. The rest of the national forests in the US probably have public domain data like this that includes trails and such. I'd be willing to look into this more if it would be useful. --anlayne 18:54 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Pennsylvania

Allegheny County, Pa

Allegheny County has very nice, accurate GIS data available in both shapefiles and as WMS layers at PASDA. These are much more accurate then the TIGER lines, and include bike paths and pedestrian-only ways.

I've spoken to them on the phone (on 7-8-2008), and they consider this data to be in the Public Domain. I'm trying to figure out how to upload this data to OSM - if anyone had tips, I'd love to have them. --Morgan-pgh 16:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Tennessee

Tennessee State Parks

State GIS portal but no direct downloads.

Texas

Texas provides some good data from the [www.tnris.org Texas Natural Resources Information System]. I can't tell if the data's completely PD, or how accurate it is yet, but I work with this data, and it seems pretty close for what I use it for.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Statewide GIS data --Dalep 01:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The City of Austin has an excellent set of public-domain GIS data available for download as shapelfiles covering the city and its environs. Not only are there up-to-date layers for streets and arterials, but also water features, railroads, political boundaries, etc. There also is a comprehensive file of property parcels, and another file of points for discrete addresses. [4]

Utah

Utah GIS portal I did not locate the copyright/PD status of these other than "free".

Washington

links to various Washington agencies

West Virgina

West Virginia GIS Data Clearinghouse

Spokane, WA

The city of Spokane, WA publishes free (gratis) GIS datasets for street centerlines, parks, waterways, city boundaries, etc. The centerlines seem to cover all of Spokane County.

Their data is of much better quality than the TIGER/Line data—though TIGER/Line does cover a few things that Spokane's data does not: roads in some trailer park in the Latah area (Club Dr., etc. around 47.63783,-117.44589); Centennial Trail (partial coverage).

I'm contacting them to see if we can include this in OSM. --Jpl 01:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Canada

Geobase

Data is free and unrestricted, however registration is required to download.

The Geobase web site does claim that the data is free and unrestricted, however their license still imposes restrictions. See [Geobase license] especially sections 4.4 and 6.3 This license when last discussed on the talk mailing list was found to be incompatible with OSMs license. Rw 21:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I will not upload any more data until I've clarified this, if anyone so wishes feel free to remove the NU data (it fits exclusively inside a 'square'). On my initial, and admittedly brief, review of the GeoBase license, 4.* is purely about indemnifying Canada from liability (a topic Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 does not seem to cover) while I agree that more clarification of 6.3 would be helpful (it could potentially be argued that OSM is a derivative product under 1.4 and also that under 6.1, 6.* can only lead to termination due to actions on the part of the Licensee - Canada can not revoke the license if, as it stands, it is complied to when the data is taken), having said this I'm not OSM's lawyer. I will contact Natural Resources Canada and see what their take on license compatibility is - would this be sufficient? If possible, could you point me towards the talk mailing list discussion on the issue, so that I'm not repeating what has already been researched.
Natural Resources Canada can not evaluate license compatibility due to the potential liability issues that would create for them, so it's back to the data not being usable in it's current state. I will try and get some legal advice on the matter when I'm back in Canada in the fall.
I (DShpak) am currently trying to establish a discussion with Geobase about the OpenStreetMap project, and the possibility of granting the data to OSM under a non-attribution licence. Dshpak 18:52, 14 May 2007 (BST)
the conversation with Natural Resources Canada has continued. Their most recent email indicating their wish that we use the data and their evaluation that the licenses were compatible. Casual discussion with those on the foundation has been positive but we await an official statement. Rw 01:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Formats available:

ESRI Shapefile - same as TIGER, so potentially import scripts could be reused

Geography Markup Language (GML)

http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/search.do?produit=nrnc1&language=en

GeoBase is a federal, provincial and territorial government initiative that is overseen by the Canadian Council on Geomatics (CCOG). It is undertaken to ensure the provision of, and access to, a common, up-to-date and maintained base of quality geospatial data for all of Canada. Through the GeoBase portal, users with an interest in the field of geomatics have access to quality geospatial information at no cost and with unrestricted use.

On February 11, 2007 the GML file for Nunavut was converted to OSM (using a Visual Studio 2005 C# app from http://www.in7ane.com/osm/ which so far just extracts/saves ways with road number/name and type metadata) and attempted to be uploaded via JOSM, but repeatedly failed due to timeouts. The source and the converted file are at the above link as well. Splitting into chunks of 5000 nodes seems to work: 1st of 5 Nunavut files seems to have uploaded and rendered ok (http://www.informationfreeway.org/?lat=10309654.4095&lon=-7112655.03296&zoom=12&layers=B00), so the rest of the Nunavut set was uploaded on February 12, 2007 (4th file timed out on uploading ways, but seemed to resume).

Processed: BC* MB NB NL NS* NT NU PE YT
Uploaded:  NU
*no single osm

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on A) submitting the large resulting files without having to split them up and submit dozens of files through JOSM B) submitting data for provinces that already have partial road data.

GeoGratis

data: http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/download/index.html

Vector and raster data, including scanned and vector topographic maps, aerial and satellite imagery.

licence: http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/licence.jsp

Has the same (as far as a cursory examination suggests) licence as Geobase (above).

Statistics Canada (Unfree)

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss2006/DataProducts/RNF2006_e.jsp is the 2006 Road Network File

Has ARC/INFO, MapInfo, and GML road network data with street names and address ranges (like TIGER/Line data, who they say they are cooperating with). Their license agreement is similar to GeoBase's (they state that their data will become part of GeoBase by the 2011 census), however the data seems to be a bit off from the GeoBase set.

If they are working on interoperability with TIGER/Line data, which I assume is ok to use in OSM, it would suggest that the data should be ok to use once the license is clarified. (Feb 22 update: waiting for a concrete reply from National Resources Canada about the GeoData license).

Checked site listed, NON commerical only.. ShakespeareFan00 15:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Above statement based on http://www.statcan.ca/english/reference/conditions.htm Reproduction of Free Information ... Non-commercial Reproduction ... Users are forbidden to copy the data and redisseminate them, in an original or modified form, for commercial purposes"; however there is also: "Reproduction of Free Information ... Commercial Reproduction ... commercial redistribution is prohibited except with written permission from the Statistics Canada Copyright Administrator. Please complete the Application for Copyright Authorization Form" - if we do not go ahead with GeoBase, maybe someone wants to try and get a licence from Statistics Canada?

Open GIS Consortium (Unfree - unconfirmed)

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/dataservices/web_map_service.html

I stumbled upon this while looking on Google for WMS data for Canada. It seems to be open, somehow, but I haven't found the explicit license. I also haven't been able to use the WMS server at all..

Checked site, Appears to be non-commercial use only ShakespeareFan00 15:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

If somebody knows what the above statement is based on please source the assertions. The only reference to a licence is "provided free of charge and does not require a contract or license agreement" (on the linked page).

The free data link (shape files) takes you to GeoGratis above. --Dalep 03:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Australia

GDA94/AHD) (Unfree)

http://www.ga.gov.au/nmd/products/digidat/100k.htm

Currency: 2005.

Coordinates: Geographical.

Datum: Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA94), Australian Height Datum (AHD).

Format: ESRI Personal Geodatabase Version 8.3, ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo mid/mif and ER Mapper Compressed Wavelet (ECW) Raster.

Medium: Online Download (free) or Packaged CD-ROM ($99).

New Zealand

GW-Projects (unfree)

Apparantely a lot of free data is available in New Zealand. It has been used to create a comprehensive set of Garmin maps.

Legal stuff is at the bottom of this page: http://gwprojects.orcon.net.nz/gps/TM/tmmaps.html

see [WikiProject_New_Zealand] for more potential sources

Spain

See Spain Potential Datasources for a more up-to-date information (in Spanish)

SIGPAC

One branch of the local goverment has a GIS-like application for controlling the rural land use, with a lot of excellent ortophotos: http://sigpac.mapa.es/fega/visor/ (Flash required) This branch has been contacted, and they have said (quite literally):

[We] have no problem in the images of the SIGPAC being used in [the OpenStreetMap] project.

IDEE

People from Madrid have already contacted the IGN ("Instituto Geográfico Nacional" or "National Geographic Institute"). They want to make data "more public", and so have agreed to let us import some of their data. Depending on the success and impact, we might be able to import lots of data and use the new aerial imaginery (called "PNOA", covering the entire country at 50 cm/px).

Cadastrial data

The cadastre is publishing all cadastrial data as a WMS service [5]. They say:

La Dirección General del Catastro ofrece como servicio WMS la Cartografía Catastral de forma libre y gratuita.
"The general directorate of the cadastre offers the Cadastrial Cartography as a WMS service, free** and free*"

* as in "free beer"

** as in "freedom"

The spanish OSMers think that we need confirmation of that.

Orthoimaginery

The IGN publishes a lot of (free as in "free beer") imaginery at [6]

Besides that, there is a list of available orthoimaginery sources at [7]

Austria

geoland.at

geoland.at is an effort to bundle GIS data from the Bundesländer (federal states). They state [8] that usage of grapics/informations within the scope of publications / websites is only permitted provided that the "© Geoland" and the source reference www.geoland.at are given.

Styria

The local government of Styria provides GIS data on their website [9]. According to the website the data available for download is freely usable "frei verwendbar" (free as in speech) provided their copyright notice "Quelle: GIS-Steiermark" (which would translate to: "Source: GIS-Styria") is preserved. The data covers roads, rivers, cities and political territories. It is available in EsriShape format. Maybe the government of Styria would be willing to relicence their data under CC terms.

Upper Austria

DORIS (Digitales Oberösterreichisches Raum-Informations-System) provide a lot of geographical information (thematic maps, orthophotos, ...) in a MapBender-like web interface. Currently they are thinking about ways to support the OSM community. A decision is planned for fall 2008 (see German summary of email contact Talk:WikiProject_Austria).

Mexico

INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía] is a public institute, and its information is "of public utility" and should be freely usable. I am in the process of contacting them, to check whether and how this information can be integrated into OSM.

South Africa

Chief Directorate: Surveys and Mapping of South Africa

Chief Directorate: Surveys and Mapping of South Africa has 1:50k raster maps available for the whole of South Africa, these maps are available using the South African Freedom of Information Act

The License Agreement is fairly restrictive from OSM's point of view. "No products may be copied or reproduced by any means, including digital, without prior permission."

"The Licensee shall not Commercialise the Data or any product or service derived from or incorporating the Data, unless it has first obtained the written consent of the CDSM. The CDSM may grant or refuse its consent in its absolute discretion and may grant its consent subject to any condition or conditions whatsoever."

Recently discussed here and here.

It is uncertain if the data is completely free/libré. Does the "Promotion of Access to Information Act" not grant this? Further investigation is needed.

Municipal Demarcation Board

Municipal Demarcation Board distributes shapefiles of South African provinces, districts and municipalities. Grant Slater has received permission to use the data in OpenStreetMap.

MadMappers (Data Dependent)

MadMappers seems to have a large amount of data covering the whole of Africa. It may be worth contacting them.

Argentina

MAPEAR (Unfree)

Nothing in project MAPEAR should be used since their license is not compatible. Although their maps are free as in beer they are not free as in speech.

Brasil

Projeto TrackSource

Projeto Geominas Public domain data on Minas Gerais state. Created by the state government, includes geographical, administrative and climatic data.

PortalGPS has good maps. I am unsure about their copyright. But it seems worth to figure it out.

Finland

digiroad (Unfree)

The Finnish Road Administration (Tiehallinto) maintains a database called digiroad covering all roads and streets in Finland which would contain all information OpenStreetMap needs about roads for Finland. (Shorelines, parks, amenities, boundaries, placenames, etc would still have to be collected using traditional OSM procedures.) The database is available for licensing relatively cheap, a few hundred euro. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, it is not currently licensed under terms suitable for OpenStreetMap. The English summary document says that "Data from Digiroad will be free-of-charge for public organisations for internal use and for free public services" but I couldn't find anything as promising in the more recent Finnish documentation.

However, my (naïve?) hope is that it will eventually be possible to convince them to "open up" the data enough for OpenStreetMap. Clearly digiroad is not maintained and sold for profit, there aren't even any royalty fees collected from commercial users of the data.

I mailed the project coordinator asking for more information. The coordinator had changed from that mentioned on their webpage to another person though, though, but I did eventually get a reply from her. Basically it was quite positive, but they need time to consider this. They also interpret current regulations as allowing them to sell (for the very reasonable amount) the material only to companies and institutions, not to individuals. Also the data should be used to benefit "services for transport and logistics" (badly translated from the vague term "liikkumisen palvelut"), but on the other hand, what else could it be used for? (Maybe the intent of this restriction is to prevent production of pure maps from the data. That would then indeed seriously prevent importing it into OSM, I think.)

I sent more mail asking for clarifications, pointing out that the price as such is not the issue here, surely it would be possible to collect for instance 20 euros per person from a group of interested individuals, or even ask some company to "sponsor" freeing this data. The licensing issues are the main concern. No further replies yet.

I hacked together some code to convert the sample data available from the website [10] (sorry, documentation in Finnish and Swedish only) into OSM format. See here: [11]. Plain C. Needs shapelib and iconv(), otherwise no external dependencies. Screenshot of part of sample data loaded into JOSM here: [12].

--Tml 09:33, 24 September 2007 (BST)

The Finnish page says that the licensing conditions are formed to match client requirements so it should be possible to get a good license. Then the only problem would be their fee (about €380) which mandated by law. --LH 15:11, 9 September 2007 (BST)

Reading the contract details, the licence gives you the right to use the data for a certain purpose for a maximum of 5 years. After the 5 year period the copy must be returned or destroyed. I recommend reading the example contract.

RHK

The Finnish Rail Administration possibly has exact geodata for all of the state-owned rail network. With rail deregulation being implemented and all, they seem to be quite open, and publish lots of information on the web, including a very detailled "Network Statement". Alas, this document doesn't include coordinates of stations etc, only the distance (down to one metre resolution) along the rails from the designated point of origin. (Trivia: this point of origin is the previous Helsinki station, 159m south of the present Helsinki Central station, and not actually accessible by rail.) I mailed then asking if the network geodata (and useful other information, like number of tracks and electrification) could be made available in some suitable format and could be donated to OSM. They didn't promise anything except that maybe in the next "Network Statement" they will include actual coordinates. So probably it doesn't make sense to wait for something that might not happen, but continue mapping rail lines as before.

They have an interactive web service that contains information for all level crossings in Finland. For many of the crossings coordinates are included (in the Finnish national KKJ grid, not WGS84, but conversion formulae are well-known) . From this service one could semi-mechanically generate an at least partially quite accurate (for those lines that have plenty of level crossings) map of the rail network. This might be interesting especially for freight-only lines where actual GPS mapping of course is hard to do (without actually trekking along the line). Data for one level crossing here: [13]. Their reply to my mail was a bit vague but I got the impression that it should be OK to import the level crossing locations. The location of an individual crossing is obviously not a copyrightable work, but as a collection it is covered by copyright for databases and collections.

--Tml 08:28, 25 October 2007 (BST)

Japan

KSJ

National-Land Information Office, a section of National and Regional Planning Bureau(NRPB), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport(MLIT), Japan, provides some geo data. http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/

Licenses – Their terms of use is written in Japanese; a summary in English is as follows.

2-3. If you reproduce the National-Land Information or create derivative works, you must do a citation of the source (e.g., "「国土数値情報（○○データ）　国土交通省」", a literal translation, National-Land Numerical Information (XX Data), MLIT Japan).
3-1. You may use the National-Land Information free of charge.
4. Disclaimer. MLIT Japan makes no warranty on your use of the National-Land Information.

Accuracy/Quality – Almost National-Land Numerical Information is based on "Map 25000" and "Map 50000" by Geographical Survey Institute (GSI) Japan. Files are in KSJ original format and datum is Japanese Geodetic Datum 2000 (JGD2000) which is based on ITRF94 and GRS80.

This is the old data of KSJ2 and it have some type of data which KSJ2 doesn't have, e.g. road, submarine cable　and power line, cultural properties, etc.

KSJ2

http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/

National-Land Information Office, a section of National and Regional Planning Bureau(NRPB), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport(MLIT), Japan, provides some geo data. See KSJ2 page.

ISJ

National-Land Information Office, a section of NRPB, MLIT Japan, provides place reference information in city block level for many (not all) municipalities. http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/isj/