Mike, What you describe is technically feasible, would potentially be fine with the OpenStreetMap community, and would in my view be a really excellent initiative. There are probably three issues:
1. The load you'd put on servers. If this is an application used by relatively few local government officers, and you have few resources, you might get away with just using the OpenStreetMap servers including the tile server for the maps, and something like the Overpass API to overlay custom sets of features (see http://overpass-api.de and http://overpass-turbo.eu). However, you might want to consider setting up your own server and keeping an up-to-date copy of the OpenStreetMap data so you can guarantee uptime and avoid overloading community systems. 2. Training local government officers to enter data into OpenStreetMap. Will this just be GIS officers, or others? It wouldn't be great if large numbers of inexperienced people came along and started making lots of edits without understanding some fundamentals about OpenStreetMap, even with a simple dialogue. It could overwhelm local users who are often quite happy to offer some advice. Worse, it could lead to lots of copyrighted material flooding in. Then again your dialogue, and the volume, might make this a non-issue. 3. Getting existing data into OpenStreetMap. I imagine a large proportion of the assets you are talking about aren't in OpenStreetMap yet, so they'd need to be added. We really don't like people bulk-importing data, it causes all sorts of problems. We are also incredibly cautious about licensing, and usually copying over local authority data brings with it complicated issues about Ordnance Survey rights. So you'd need to get clear legal advice on that to satisy us, and then carefully work with the community to bring in the data you have, merging it with existing OpenStreetMap data. See this page for some further info: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import_guidelines Others may be able to offer more hands-on help. There are companies you could speak to, like: http://www.opencagedata.com/ http://www.geofabrik.de/ http://www.itoworld.com/ (for transport-related work) There are also others on this list with much more technical talent who could advise, and some councils already using OSM extensively, such as James Rutter at Surrey Heath council (@Chobhamonian on twitter). Regards, Tom On 6 February 2014 14:13, Mike Thacker <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello > > I am working with tools used by a large number of UK councils, rather than > us maintain separate data on local government assets (libraries, public > toilets, contact centres, etc), we should like to hook in to Open Street > Map to use its data and help maintain it. > > So I'd like to do two things: > > 1. Overlay on the Open Street Maps we already use (see the rather > small example within this report <http://reports.esd.org.uk/Reports/14> we > generate) assets of types selected by users. We can either do this by > switching on the relevant OSM layers or by downloading the data and > overlaying it on a map. Note that maps are usually for a single local > or fire authority. > 2. Provide an interface whereby local authority officers can update > existing assets and add new ones to directly to Open Street Map via a > simple dialogue that we provide. We can introduce some validation on who > does this. > > I'd like to explore the feasibility of doing 1 and 2 above and whether we > are safe doing 2 without any suggestion that we might impair the quality of > OSM data. > > I'd really appreciate any feedback by email or ideas as to whom I should > contact and how. > > Thanks in advance > Mike > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb > > -- http://tom.acrewoods.net http://twitter.com/tom_chance
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