Import/NGS OPUS Control Points
This is a plan for the addition of National Geodetic Survey (NGS) control point data for the United States, which was generated through the OPUS program. This effort builds on successful import projects completed in the last couple of years and more recent assisted mapping projects in which address and building data has been prepared for mappers to add to OpenStreetMap via OSM editors (see Data Updates section below). For a list of other Esri-curated datasets that are available for mapping, please see Esri ArcGIS Datasets.
Goals
The goal of this effort is to add geodetic survey control point data for the United States, using authoritative data from NGS, which is a division of NOAA.
Schedule
Data preparation was completed in January 2023. The edits to OSM would be performed incrementally by OSM mappers over the remainder of 2023 and beyond, starting after data is reviewed by the OSM community.
Source
The source control points were downloaded in December 2022 from the NGS ArcGIS Online organization.
The processed survey points that can be added to OSM are available to access on ArcGIS Online (see NGS OPUS Survey Points). You can Open in Map Viewer to preview (click features to view tags) or sign in to export data for offline use.
OSM ODbL Compliance: Yes, the data is public domain data provided by the U.S. Government.
Data Preparation
The processed survey points referenced above were created using these Esri Data Processing Steps for Buildings and Addresses, developed and refined while doing data prep for several city and county communities in the United States. Below are a couple notes specific to the NGS Survey Control Points data.
- The processed data contains 66,022 points
- The data includes a couple address (addr) keys (e.g. county, state) that have been prepared to be added as tags in OSM.
Data Conflation
Existing survey control point features in OSM will not be replaced.
Data Updates
The plan is to perform the updates using a new version of RapiD and an updated Map with AI plugin for JOSM (see Esri blog post on new tools in OSM editors for more detail). The new tools enable OSM mappers to access ArcGIS Datasets hosted in ArcGIS Online and select individual features to use while editing OSM. The mapper is able to select a feature, review and edit the feature geometry and available fields, and then save their edits.
The mapper has the benefit of using existing features that have been created by the data provider, along with their available field values that have been pre-processed by Esri, while also being able to compare that feature with existing OSM data (e.g. street names) and imagery to ensure it is accurate and consistent. The data source used for the edit will be added as a tag to each feature that is saved as part of a changeset unless deleted by mapper.
Accounts
The plan is for OSM mappers to use their standard OSM accounts if they are editing with RapiD and JOSM editors for OSM and editing individual features. However, if OSM mappers wish to do any 'bulk' edits or imports where they do not examine individual features, then they should create and use new dedicated import accounts (e.g. <username>_<community>_import) for those changesets.