EU Mobility Data Regulation

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The EU is in the process of setting up an EU-wide data infrastructure for mobility data. Mobility data includes everything from road infrastructure (road types, width of roads, access restrictions, ...) over public transport infrastructure like stop points and routes to charging stations for electric cars. And it not only includes "static data" but also real-time "dynamic data" such as information about (planned or unplanned) road closures, availability of charging stations and capacity utilization in public transport vehicles. The idea is that everybody running such infrastructure is required to publish the data about this publicly, so that service providers can use it for (intermodal) routing and other new services. This is a huge effort and there are several different kinds of EU regulations involved. And there is also an ongoing process to bring these into national laws in all EU member states.

OpenStreetMap is an important player in all this. Private and public transport everywhere uses OSM data. We need to get aquainted with what is happening here. In general this regulation is a good thing for OSM, because it proscribes the release of this data as some kind of Open Data which makes it usable for us. But the use of this data is not totally free, it comes with some obligations and we need to make sure these are compatible with OSM.

EU Regulation

This is a (not necessarily complete) list of EU regulations on this topic:

(Note that some of these regulations have several versions. The links above try to go to the current ones, but this might change.)

Analysis of the regulations

This analysis is not comprehensive. It is the current state of our knowledge and might change.

Most of this analysis was done based on the text of the German law and not only the EU regulations. At the current time it is unclear how much of the issues described below are a problem with the EU regulations and how much they are a problem with the German law which seems to be a bit stricter in these instances.

1. There was some discussion about the definition of the "data holder". There are different definitions in the different EU regulations, but 2022/670 in Article 2 (14) has a seemingly very broad definition that could be read as including OSM. Our current reading is that the definition when read in the context of the whole regulation is not applicable to OSM or other people or organisations owning data if they are not actually the ones providing the infrastructure this data is about.

2. There is a requirement for data users to report inaccuracies in the data back to the data owners. This could be problematic if OSM is using this data, because for technical, organizational, and legal reasons (ODbL) we can not guarantee this. This requirement would potentially not only affect the OSM project itself but all other downstream users.

3. There is a requirement for map producers and service providers to keep data up-to-date. This could be problematic if OSM is using this data, because we can not guarantee this. This requirement would potentially not only affect the OSM project itself but all other downstream users.

The Situation in Germany

In May 2024 we (FOSSGIS as the OSM local chapter in Germany) got a copy of the draft law implementing all this into German law for comment. We analyzed the law together and noticed the problems mentioned above. We wrote a statement about this which we officially sent to the ministry in charge of drafting this law. We only had two weeks to do this, so this analysis is not comprehensive.

OSM-Contact for Germany: Jochen Topf (jochen.topf@fossgis.de)

Retrieved from "https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=EU_Mobility_Data_Regulation&oldid=2716511"