Public-OSM Partnership (POP) – A Pilot Study

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, editable map of the whole world that is being built by volunteers largely from scratch and released with an open-content license. Over last decades, OSM has grew up to the largest platform for geometric data worldwide. Numerous applications have explored creative ways to take advantage of its data, which means the "fitness-for-use" quality and software basis (tools, libraries) are correspondingly mature and advanced.

However, the use of OSM in government agencies is still new. Similar to the Public-Private Partnership, this Public-OSM Partnership (POP) is a partnership of community representatives working together with citizens and association representatives of the crowdsourcing project OpenStreetMap (OSM) to fulfill a public task by coordinating and optimizing their resources and activities.

To achieve this study goal, our study members need to know how data is processed in government well, also have certain mapping experience on OSM, or keen to exploring the potential of OSM in scope of government use. The two main target groups of this pilot study are defined by the main data owners: blue-light organizations (Schutz & Rettung Stadt Zürich) and GIS and cadastre offices (GIS office Kt. Zürich).

The objectives are as follows: 1. Clarification of important licensing issues when monitoring, comparing or transferring OSM data (with ODbL licence); 2. Identification of typical processes and evaluation of software tools for monitoring OSM data; 3. Identification of typical processes and evaluation of software tools for the alignment and quality assurance of OSM data; 4. Identification of typical processes and evaluation of Software tools for the transfer of OSM data.