I spent some time this week at the annual Bay Area geo-geek gathering - OReilly's Where 2.0 conference in San Jose.
There is a lot of really exciting stuff going on with open public geodata repositories - essential infrastructure that will enable developers to quickly build new sites and applications that leverage geographic data.
OpenStreetMap is trying to solve an enormous barrier to the geoweb which is the way basemaps are licensed in the United Kingdon and other European countries - where the government owns a copyright and requires a license for use of basic geodata like the street map. (In the US, this is free public data). The project is leveraging the commons and GPS track logs to create a public repsoitory of street grid data. The London map is one of the most developed and shows how a wiki-like commons can be used to build such an open, free data archive that any web developer can use to build applications through an open API.
During lunch I met a really interesting fellow Andre Lewis, who didn't present but told me about his pet project ShapeWiki is another spin on the OpenStreetMap idea, but instead of drawing lines, you draw shapes, another critically important kind of geographic feature that is useful in designating all kinds of zones, districts and areas.
I've been entering some shapes into the database - mainly different neighborhood boundaries in New York City, and various iterations of them as they have changed over the years. The coolest part is that you can tag shapes and then look at the GeoRSS feed of the whole collection of shapes using Google Maps - check out all of the shapes tagged "nyc" for instance.
Most exciting of all, though, is GeoCommons - recently launched by my friend Sean Gorman and his startup FortiusOne. GeoCommons is a potenital killer of desktop GIS, by combining a free, massive public geodata repository with lots of tools for doing web-based GIS analysis and tools for collaboration. People can create an share maps that answer questions like "Where is the Safest Place to Go to College?" or "Has the DEA Busted a Meth Lab in MY Neighborhood?"
The geoweb is really starting to blossom - for more background, take a look at IFTF's 2004 research report - Infrastructure for the New Geography.
So what does this mean, in your view, for compilers of specialty GIS data like neighborhood boundaries from Maponics (the company I work for)?
Posted by: darrinclement | June 10, 2007 at 06:17 PM