Support for Overture Maps

[mpaine-act]

What is the relationship between Overture and OpenStreetMap?

Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.

https://overturemaps.org/resources/faq/

[dekarl]

What is the gain over direct consumption of OpenStreetMap data?

Per their press release the transportation / road data is pure OSM. The addition is the places and building dataset which is relevant for the geocoder and map renderer, but not so much for the routing engine.

Transportation: The OMF’s Transportation layer represents a worldwide road network derived from data in the OpenStreetMap project. This community-built data has been recast into the Overture data format which provides consistent segmentation of the data and a linear reference system to support additions of data such as speed limits or real-time traffic.

https://overturemaps.org/overture-maps-foundation-releases-first-world-wide-open-map-dataset/

It may get more interesting if they ever start offering real-time road traffic data to predict Bus reliability. But that appears to be a better match upstream where the real-time transit data is generated.

[mpaine-act]

You raise good points.

On the language of "OMF’s Transportation layer represents a worldwide road network derived from data in the OpenStreetMap project", we don't know if the derived data is the same or augmented with extra POV or other road symbols and correctios. Perhaps an A/B comparison and discussion with them on their roadmap would be appropriate to confirm things.

[t2gran]

What is the business use-case?

[mpaine-act]

More accurate road symbols and geometry beyond what OSM provides while remaining compatible with OSM (in theory). I am not an expert on this topic, but using OSM for turn-by-turn directions for drivers is still an open problem for transit agencies.

[t2gran]

I would encourage you to call into one of the developer meeting to discuss this. I am unsure on how big of a change this is/the effect on other users of OTP who uses OSM. If the changes to OTP are big (changes to internal model) then this would possibly require a approval from the PLC as well - but we will be able to answer that in the dev meeting.

[Cj-Malone]

This is inherently a political comment, feel free to ignore me or mark this comment as off topic. I have never contributed code to OTP, you don't owe me anything.

Technically, if this OSM road network re formatted. You'll be taking on a lot of work to get the same data. You will be giving up control of when, instead you'll have to fit into a release pattern that doesn't care about your needs. You will give up what you ingest, imagine if one of the Overture companies wants to sell oneway data, the OSM data will be stripped from the release. Or they just don't care about an attribute you want. You will no longer be able to tell your users to fix the data in OSM and update, instead they will now have to wait for an unknown period of time. Even if Overture release monthly, how old would the data be by the time they release?

If it is different, you can get the Facebook ML roads, already conflated from the Daylight sidecar file. (Same with buildings) You can get addresses directly from Esri.

Politically, I contribute a lot of data to OSM and code to Free Software projects. I do this because I believe in freedom. I want to further the Commons. Not because I want to support big organisations with free labour.

You are in a powerful position, Overture wants attention. Ingesting Overture gives them relevance, gives them market share and gives them mindshare, it indirectly votes against OSM by taking attention away from us.

Don't forget Overture actively decided not to release in an OSM format. They could have released in OSM formats like Daylight. They don't want compatibility, they want control.

TLDR, choose freedom, ignore them.

[BredeD]

The upcoming SOTM2023 is sponsored by Overture and has at least one session about it. I will be there; anyone else? It is interesting to learn how Overture will work with OSM and other data sources and whether there will be any advantages for us, and if so, what will that be?

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is stale because it has been open 90 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 30 days

[BredeD]

See my summary of the SOTM2024 here.

Close this issue. I hope Overture will make the map data better and the OSM community stronger.

[mpaine-act]

OM is beginning to roll out ML-derived geometries from aerial imagery (non-OSM). This could be an improvement for turn-by-turn directions or access restrictions.

source

[BredeD]

Please call in to one of the dev meetings.