4 ms·

Governments should open all their mapping data, as some have already done. Probably in quite many countries, there are also entities collecting more detailed da

Governments should open all their mapping data, as some have already done. Probably in quite many countries, there are also entities collecting more detailed data that is used for the maintenance of the roads. All this should be opened up as well. I believe just giving out the data freely will benefit these countries more than trying to extract some small profits by selling it.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Hybrid approach: a compromise like the original public-private copyright deal, might be best. You tender your data to the government. Government publishes it but gives you exclusive rights for N years. In exchange, for the first 2N years, only those who have contributed can access others’ data. Maybe throw in some tax deductibility if the incentives aren’t strong enough.
roel_v 9y ago
"Governments should open all their mapping data" Most don't have a lot of useful data they collect/maintain themselves. It's often easier and cheaper to buy it from some party who gets others to pay for it as well, spreading costs. I used to think like you do, back when I didn't realize just how much work it is to maintain, and then to provide it to all stakeholders in the formats they require. Here in the EU there was a big push 10-ish year ago to make all this information free, at various levels; see e.g. the INSPIRE directive and all work that that caused. Nowadays people have experience with just how much work it is, and have experienced that the promised benefits didn't quite realize (for various reasons). Most enthusiasm is gone, I feel. (as a researcher, all this data becoming free/easy to download has been a huge quality of life improvement for me; but no more than that. I don't feel there is that much new stuff going on that wasn't possible before. Sure, before you had to chase people for weeks and sign all sorts of agreements, but the end results were more or less the same for professionals. Interested amateurs at home would give up in the past, but they didn't/don't produce all that much useful anyway.)
pier25 9y ago
You can't trust governments to have updated and reliable data.
- moccachino 9y ago
  That depends entirely on the government and the set of laws and incentives they operate under.
beisner 9y ago
In most countries, private companies’ (particularly Google) mapping data is far better than government data.
larrymyers 9y ago
The US does have open mapping data: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html While useful for taking the US Census, the TIGER data isn't really suitable for most navigation tasks. At best it can be used as a base layer to build a geospatial dataset. OpenStreetMap did this about a decade ago: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER That being said, the current administration is looking to cut TIGER funding, not increase it. For the foreseeable future getting mapping data suitable for navigation in the US is going to be the job of private for-profit companies.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I've read that a lot of the limitations/errors associated with mapping data once you get away from fully maintained paved roads stems from limitations in TIGER data. You get into very secondary roads and there's not much that's really authoritative to distinguish all the gradations between unpaved but well-graded and maintained and in appropriate weather you can drive it with high-clearance 4WD if you know what you're doing.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    For a navigation system those roads are mostly a "last mile" problem. They generally aren't as direct or connected as main highways, so graph based navigation naturally ignores them. Main highways are also reasonably well marked in the tiger data, so the lack of differentiation for the lower priority road type doesn't impact a system that prioritizes larger highways (a pretty reasonable heuristic). The lack of differentiation is a big problem if you want to pick which way to go when driving around though.
    - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
      For a car navigation system, yes. For a bike navigation system it's a massive problem.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      I mostly agree with all that. Although in some areas like the rural US West, very secondary roads are pretty common. This becomes a bigger problem as more and more people depend on computers to tell them where to go without thinking much about it. Of course, this isn't really a new problem. People have died following roads on paper maps that weren't suitable for, say, winter travel.
tinus_hn 9y ago
The data that is used to compose a map is not the same data you need for navigation. Generic map data is freely available for pretty much everywhere.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Hybrid approach: a compromise like the original public-private copyright deal, might be best. You tender your data to the government. Government publishes it but gives you exclusive rights for N years. In exchange, for the first 2N years, only those who have contributed can access others’ data. Maybe throw in some tax deductibility if the incentives aren’t strong enough.

roel_v 9y ago

"Governments should open all their mapping data" Most don't have a lot of useful data they collect/maintain themselves. It's often easier and cheaper to buy it from some party who gets others to pay for it as well, spreading costs. I used to think like you do, back when I didn't realize just how much work it is to maintain, and then to provide it to all stakeholders in the formats they require. Here in the EU there was a big push 10-ish year ago to make all this information free, at various levels; see e.g. the INSPIRE directive and all work that that caused. Nowadays people have experience with just how much work it is, and have experienced that the promised benefits didn't quite realize (for various reasons). Most enthusiasm is gone, I feel. (as a researcher, all this data becoming free/easy to download has been a huge quality of life improvement for me; but no more than that. I don't feel there is that much new stuff going on that wasn't possible before. Sure, before you had to chase people for weeks and sign all sorts of agreements, but the end results were more or less the same for professionals. Interested amateurs at home would give up in the past, but they didn't/don't produce all that much useful anyway.)

pier25 9y ago

You can't trust governments to have updated and reliable data.

moccachino 9y ago
That depends entirely on the government and the set of laws and incentives they operate under.

beisner 9y ago

In most countries, private companies’ (particularly Google) mapping data is far better than government data.

larrymyers 9y ago

The US does have open mapping data: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html While useful for taking the US Census, the TIGER data isn't really suitable for most navigation tasks. At best it can be used as a base layer to build a geospatial dataset. OpenStreetMap did this about a decade ago: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER That being said, the current administration is looking to cut TIGER funding, not increase it. For the foreseeable future getting mapping data suitable for navigation in the US is going to be the job of private for-profit companies.

ghaff 9y ago
I've read that a lot of the limitations/errors associated with mapping data once you get away from fully maintained paved roads stems from limitations in TIGER data. You get into very secondary roads and there's not much that's really authoritative to distinguish all the gradations between unpaved but well-graded and maintained and in appropriate weather you can drive it with high-clearance 4WD if you know what you're doing.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  For a navigation system those roads are mostly a "last mile" problem. They generally aren't as direct or connected as main highways, so graph based navigation naturally ignores them. Main highways are also reasonably well marked in the tiger data, so the lack of differentiation for the lower priority road type doesn't impact a system that prioritizes larger highways (a pretty reasonable heuristic). The lack of differentiation is a big problem if you want to pick which way to go when driving around though.
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    For a car navigation system, yes. For a bike navigation system it's a massive problem.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I mostly agree with all that. Although in some areas like the rural US West, very secondary roads are pretty common. This becomes a bigger problem as more and more people depend on computers to tell them where to go without thinking much about it. Of course, this isn't really a new problem. People have died following roads on paper maps that weren't suitable for, say, winter travel.

tinus_hn 9y ago

The data that is used to compose a map is not the same data you need for navigation. Generic map data is freely available for pretty much everywhere.