Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Adam Snape]

Hi All,

As the quarterly project has just been announced I thought I'd provide an
update on my progress with systematically contacting councils regarding
PRoW data.  I'm trying to get as many as possible released, up-to-date,
under a clear unambiguous OGL3 licence and pro-actively published by the
councils (thus removing the need to repeat the process a couple of years
down the line.

As you can imagine it's a large task, so the time taken to do it and the
speed of local government action means that in many cases results won't be
useable until after the quarterly project. That said, progress so far is
encouraging,  I've checked or contacted all the county councils and I've
started working my way through the Metropolitan Boroughs/Unitary
Authorities. The responses I've had back have mostly been fairly
encouraging (a minority less than encouraging!), I've had quite a few
updated or new datasets, OGL licences and Open Data releases, some of which
I have already sent to Barry at Rowmaps, I have a few more which I'll send
in the coming days. Perhaps most encouragingly a surprisingly high
proportion (albeit probably still a minority) have committed to proactively
publish their data in the coming months.

Finally, In the coming days  I'll update Rob Whittaker with my progress so
that his PRoW OpenData table ( http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/open-data/
) so that it can be updated.

Kind regards,

Adam Snape

On 1 June 2018 at 09:10, Nick Whitelegg  wrote:

>
> Hello Adam,
>
> That's great - that will be very useful.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> --
> *From:* Adam Snape 
> *Sent:* 31 May 2018 19:07:05
> *To:* Nick Whitelegg
> *Cc:* Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); Talk GB
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> Yes Hampshire's data is unambiguously available for use under OGL3.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Adam
>
> On Thu, 31 May 2018, 09:52 Nick Whitelegg, 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> (Adam - apologies for not quoting, but this email client performs the
> annoying habit of top-posting and haven't figured out a way to get it to do
> standard quotes).
>
>
> So, just to clarify, taking my local authority (Hampshire) as an example,
> does this page _definitely_ confirm that their RoW data is available under
> OGL?
>
>
> https://www.hants.gov.uk/aboutthecouncil/informationandstats/opendata/
> opendatasearch/publicrightsofway
>
>
> Reason being that I'm now in a position where I may be able to do
> something with this data and I'd like to use Hampshire as it's my local
> county.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> ----------
> *From:* Adam Snape 
> *Sent:* 30 May 2018 11:37:47
> *To:* Nick Whitelegg
> *Cc:* Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); talk-gb
> *Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data
>
> Hi,
>
> Just a word of warning to double check the licensing terms before use.
> Many councils' licensing is ambiguous in that they'll refer to the OGL then
> state or link to the incompatible OS Open Data attribution terms.
>
> Whilst it's a wonderful resource and I think Barry has done a great job,
> the rowmaps site doesn't help with licensing clarity. There are quite a few
> references to unverifiable private email communications where the licence
> terms differ from the publicly available terms. Any mention of the OGL is
> taken at face value even if when checked the licence is actually the OS
> modified OGL ie. the incompatible OS Open Data licence! Perhaps most
> seriously, rowmaps also relies on a misinterpretation of communication with
> OS to suggest that OS Open Data licensed material is now automatically OGL3
> licenced material.
>
> All of this matters very little to most users of rowmaps but for OSM
> purposes as we require ODBL compatibility we need greater clarity.
>
> Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with
> all of the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly
> licensed their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them).
> I'll also try and get new or updated data where not currently available or
> several years old. Ideally I'll get the authorities to include a clear
> unambiguous licence on their websites but, failing that, I'll publish the
> relevant communication online so that it is verifiable and we do at least
> have certainty about the data currently available to us.
>
> In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all
> authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data,
> rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update
> their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this
> automatically o

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello Adam,

That's great - that will be very useful.


Thanks,

Nick



From: Adam Snape 
Sent: 31 May 2018 19:07:05
To: Nick Whitelegg
Cc: Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); Talk GB
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

Hi Nick,

Yes Hampshire's data is unambiguously available for use under OGL3.

Kind regards

Adam

On Thu, 31 May 2018, 09:52 Nick Whitelegg, 
mailto:nick.whitel...@solent.ac.uk>> wrote:



(Adam - apologies for not quoting, but this email client performs the annoying 
habit of top-posting and haven't figured out a way to get it to do standard 
quotes).


So, just to clarify, taking my local authority (Hampshire) as an example, does 
this page _definitely_ confirm that their RoW data is available under OGL?


https://www.hants.gov.uk/aboutthecouncil/informationandstats/opendata/opendatasearch/publicrightsofway

Reason being that I'm now in a position where I may be able to do something 
with this data and I'd like to use Hampshire as it's my local county.

Thanks,

Nick



From: Adam Snape mailto:adam.c.sn...@gmail.com>>
Sent: 30 May 2018 11:37:47
To: Nick Whitelegg
Cc: Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); talk-gb
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

Hi,

Just a word of warning to double check the licensing terms before use. Many 
councils' licensing is ambiguous in that they'll refer to the OGL then state or 
link to the incompatible OS Open Data attribution terms.

Whilst it's a wonderful resource and I think Barry has done a great job, the 
rowmaps site doesn't help with licensing clarity. There are quite a few 
references to unverifiable private email communications where the licence terms 
differ from the publicly available terms. Any mention of the OGL is taken at 
face value even if when checked the licence is actually the OS modified OGL ie. 
the incompatible OS Open Data licence! Perhaps most seriously, rowmaps also 
relies on a misinterpretation of communication with OS to suggest that OS Open 
Data licensed material is now automatically OGL3 licenced material.

All of this matters very little to most users of rowmaps but for OSM purposes 
as we require ODBL compatibility we need greater clarity.

Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with all of 
the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly licensed 
their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them). I'll also try 
and get new or updated data where not currently available or several years old. 
Ideally I'll get the authorities to include a clear unambiguous licence on 
their websites but, failing that, I'll publish the relevant communication 
online so that it is verifiable and we do at least have certainty about the 
data currently available to us.

In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all 
authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data, 
rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update 
their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this 
automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems that 
only a minority of authorities who have released data currently publish it 
proactively.

Kind regards,

Adam


On 27 May 2018 at 11:21, Nick Whitelegg 
mailto:nick.whitel...@solent.ac.uk>> wrote:


Thanks for that - looks like a few councils are OGL which means we should 
theoretically be able to add designation tags from the council data.


Agree about not copying the data verbatim from council data - am more 
interested in giving people a way to easily identify council paths unmapped on 
OSM.


Nick





___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org<mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org>
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb


___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Chris Hill]

Robert,

thanks for chasing the East Riding of Yorkshire council to receive their 
rights of way data licenced as OGL. I failed to get this but your 
tenacity, knowledge and skilful wording made the difference. Thanks again.


Chris


On 30/05/2018 22:47, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) wrote:

On 30 May 2018 at 11:37, Adam Snape  wrote:

Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with all
of the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly
licensed their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them).
I'll also try and get new or updated data where not currently available or
several years old.

That sounds great. Some time ago I was planning to do something
similar, but have been side-tracked by other projects and have never
found the time. This is as far as I got:
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/progress/open-data


In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all
authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data,
rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update
their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this
automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems that
only a minority of authorities who have released data currently publish it
proactively.

Indeed. Also, the Environmental Information Regulations (which PRoW
GIS data probably fall under, rather than FOI, though FOI Publication
Schemes still apply) also includes provision for councils to
proactively digitise and publish environmental data they hold --
whether requested or not-- but they don't seem to be making much
progress with this...

Anyway, Adam, I've just sent you a longer private message with some
more thoughts you might be interested in.

Robert.



--
cheers
Chris Hill (chillly)


___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Nick Whitelegg]

(Adam - apologies for not quoting, but this email client performs the annoying 
habit of top-posting and haven't figured out a way to get it to do standard 
quotes).


So, just to clarify, taking my local authority (Hampshire) as an example, does 
this page _definitely_ confirm that their RoW data is available under OGL?


https://www.hants.gov.uk/aboutthecouncil/informationandstats/opendata/opendatasearch/publicrightsofway

Reason being that I'm now in a position where I may be able to do something 
with this data and I'd like to use Hampshire as it's my local county.

Thanks,

Nick



From: Adam Snape 
Sent: 30 May 2018 11:37:47
To: Nick Whitelegg
Cc: Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); talk-gb
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

Hi,

Just a word of warning to double check the licensing terms before use. Many 
councils' licensing is ambiguous in that they'll refer to the OGL then state or 
link to the incompatible OS Open Data attribution terms.

Whilst it's a wonderful resource and I think Barry has done a great job, the 
rowmaps site doesn't help with licensing clarity. There are quite a few 
references to unverifiable private email communications where the licence terms 
differ from the publicly available terms. Any mention of the OGL is taken at 
face value even if when checked the licence is actually the OS modified OGL ie. 
the incompatible OS Open Data licence! Perhaps most seriously, rowmaps also 
relies on a misinterpretation of communication with OS to suggest that OS Open 
Data licensed material is now automatically OGL3 licenced material.

All of this matters very little to most users of rowmaps but for OSM purposes 
as we require ODBL compatibility we need greater clarity.

Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with all of 
the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly licensed 
their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them). I'll also try 
and get new or updated data where not currently available or several years old. 
Ideally I'll get the authorities to include a clear unambiguous licence on 
their websites but, failing that, I'll publish the relevant communication 
online so that it is verifiable and we do at least have certainty about the 
data currently available to us.

In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all 
authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data, 
rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update 
their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this 
automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems that 
only a minority of authorities who have released data currently publish it 
proactively.

Kind regards,

Adam


On 27 May 2018 at 11:21, Nick Whitelegg 
mailto:nick.whitel...@solent.ac.uk>> wrote:


Thanks for that - looks like a few councils are OGL which means we should 
theoretically be able to add designation tags from the council data.


Agree about not copying the data verbatim from council data - am more 
interested in giving people a way to easily identify council paths unmapped on 
OSM.


Nick





___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org<mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org>
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb


___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Robert Whittaker (OSM lists)]

On 30 May 2018 at 11:37, Adam Snape  wrote:
> Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with all
> of the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly
> licensed their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them).
> I'll also try and get new or updated data where not currently available or
> several years old.

That sounds great. Some time ago I was planning to do something
similar, but have been side-tracked by other projects and have never
found the time. This is as far as I got:
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/progress/open-data

> In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all
> authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data,
> rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update
> their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this
> automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems that
> only a minority of authorities who have released data currently publish it
> proactively.

Indeed. Also, the Environmental Information Regulations (which PRoW
GIS data probably fall under, rather than FOI, though FOI Publication
Schemes still apply) also includes provision for councils to
proactively digitise and publish environmental data they hold --
whether requested or not-- but they don't seem to be making much
progress with this...

Anyway, Adam, I've just sent you a longer private message with some
more thoughts you might be interested in.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker

___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Adam Snape]

Hi,

Just a word of warning to double check the licensing terms before use. Many
councils' licensing is ambiguous in that they'll refer to the OGL then
state or link to the incompatible OS Open Data attribution terms.

Whilst it's a wonderful resource and I think Barry has done a great job,
the rowmaps site doesn't help with licensing clarity. There are quite a few
references to unverifiable private email communications where the licence
terms differ from the publicly available terms. Any mention of the OGL is
taken at face value even if when checked the licence is actually the OS
modified OGL ie. the incompatible OS Open Data licence! Perhaps most
seriously, rowmaps also relies on a misinterpretation of communication with
OS to suggest that OS Open Data licensed material is now automatically OGL3
licenced material.

All of this matters very little to most users of rowmaps but for OSM
purposes as we require ODBL compatibility we need greater clarity.

Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with
all of the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly
licensed their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them).
I'll also try and get new or updated data where not currently available or
several years old. Ideally I'll get the authorities to include a clear
unambiguous licence on their websites but, failing that, I'll publish the
relevant communication online so that it is verifiable and we do at least
have certainty about the data currently available to us.

In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all
authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data,
rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update
their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this
automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems
that only a minority of authorities who have released data currently
publish it proactively.

Kind regards,

Adam


On 27 May 2018 at 11:21, Nick Whitelegg  wrote:

>
> Thanks for that - looks like a few councils are OGL which means we should
> theoretically be able to add designation tags from the council data.
>
>
> Agree about not copying the data verbatim from council data - am more
> interested in giving people a way to easily identify council paths unmapped
> on OSM.
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
>
___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Nick Whitelegg]

Thanks for that - looks like a few councils are OGL which means we should 
theoretically be able to add designation tags from the council data.


Agree about not copying the data verbatim from council data - am more 
interested in giving people a way to easily identify council paths unmapped on 
OSM.


Nick




___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Robert Whittaker (OSM lists)]

On 24 May 2018 at 14:33, Nick Whitelegg  wrote:
> Following on from the recent topic regarding 1900 historical footpath data,
> I'd like to clarify exactly what we can and can't do currently with the
> council RoWs if possible.
>
> a) Copy designation status from council data to OSM?
>
> b) Trace an entire RoW from the council data onto OSM?

Using any data is ok legally if and only if it's available under a
suitable licence. Whether it's desirable to use it depends on its
accuracy and completeness. For rights of way, there are generally
three types of data/information available from councils that we might
want to use:

* The Definitive Map -- usually lines showing the Rights of Way drawn
on top of an Ordnance Survey (OS) base map.
* The Definitive Statement -- a narrative description of each Right of Way
* Electronic GIS data containing the routes of each Right of Way.

The Definitive Map and Statement form the legal record of Rights of
Way. They're "Definitive" in that if a route is included there it is
legally Right of Way, even if there's a mistake. So apart from
discrepancies between the two documents, they don't contain errors by
definition. (Though they can be incomplete, i.e. there could be Rights
of Way that aren't recorded in them.) The GIS data (that most councils
have created) is based on digitising the routes from the Definitive
Map. This dataset is usually not the legal record, and could contain
transcription errors or be out of date.

In terms of permitted usage in OSM, the Definitive Maps are off-limits
because OS claims copyright over derived maps. However, OS doesn't
claim any rights in the Definitive Statement, and OS does allow
councils to release the GIS data (without the underlying base maps)
even though it was derived from OS mapping originally. Therefore, if a
council can be persuaded to supply and suitably licence the Definitive
Statement and GIS data, then it can be used in OSM. The licence needs
to be compatible with the ODbL. The standard Open Government Licence
v3 (OGL3) meets this requirement, but be wary of councils still
releasing stuff under the now-obsolete OS OpenData Licence that was
not compatible with the ODbL. I have a (very incomplete table of which
councils have released what under appropriate licences at
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/progress/open-data -- any help to
update this would be appreciated.)

In terms desirable usage in OSM, I would generally assume that the GIS
data is an accurate representation of the Definitive Map, particularly
if it is consistent with the Definitive Statement. Therefore you could
in principle use it to armchair map Rights of Way from scratch.
However, I'd say this generally isn't a good idea, as you'd not be
able to include any of the physical characteristics of the route, and
wouldn't know if/how it crossed any field boundaries, ditches, streams
etc. Just because a route is a Right of Way, doesn't mean it's
physically usable on the ground. On the other hand, if a route is
already mapped as a highway of some sort (or can be so mapped from
licenced aerial imagery), and aligns with a route in the GIS data or
as described in the Definitive Statement, I would encourage people to
add appropriate designation=*, prow_ref=*, and access tags. If the
route on the ground differs from the Definitive Line, then I'd
recommend mapping both as separate ways: one as the physical
path/track that exists for people to use, and one as the legal line of
the right of way. My thoughts on appropriate tagging can be found at
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rjw62/PRoW_Table

In case anyone hasn't seen it, I've got a tool for comparing councils'
GIS data to OSM mapping at
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/progress/ . The matching is based
on tagging OSM ways with designation=* and prow_ref=* (so it doesn't
explicitly look for non-tagged highways that might line up with RoWs
in the council data) and it doesn't check the matched routes line up
apart from a check on the overall length and bounding box of each RoW.
There are only 8 authorities listed there at the moment. At the time
those were the only ones that I knoew of that had released their GIS
data under the OGL. I know a few more have since, but I haven't got
round to adding them. If anyone would like any new authorities added
that have released their data under the OGL, then please get in touch.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker

___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb