napo
22 de abril de 2024
The Commons are fundamental resources for collective well-being and survival, encompassing natural, cultural, and digital elements accessible to all: clean air, drinkable water, green spaces, libraries, museums, public squares, and digital resources like open-source software and open data.
Managing these Commons, whether by public entities or private organizations, is crucial as it benefits the entire community and ensures the sustainable use of resources, thereby keeping them available for future generations.🌳🤸
A prime example of a digital common good is OpenStreetMap (OSM), a free and collaborative mapping platform allowing anyone to contribute and reuse geographic data. This has fostered the growth of a global, active, and expanding community.
OSM stands out for its data accessibility, stimulating innovation and creativity. The quality and continuous updating of data are ensured through collaboration in an open and participatory governance model, promoting a sense of collective ownership and responsibility among contributors.
Many approach OpenStreetMap as an alternative to Google Maps, but this simplified view only partially captures its essence.
While Google Maps focuses on integrated services and data density in areas of greater interest, OpenStreetMap offers detailed and reusable data managed by an active and regulated community, where services and products grow exponentially based on initiatives from enthusiasts, companies, and organizations.
In its definition, OpenStreetMap identifies three key concepts: local knowledge, community management, and open data.
These elements highlight how data is curated by those who share their local knowledge and are supported by a community that establishes the rules.
🔥OpenStreetMap is a stellar example of a digital common good whose open data is freely available for everyone to reuse.🔥
🇪🇺To learn more about how European regulations such as the Data Directive are supported, click here.🇪🇺
One can choose to use OpenStreetMap through third-party products (e.g., maps) or services (e.g., geocoder) available on the site, but only by becoming an active part, thus contributing to the creation of the database does one understand the value and become part of this ecosystem capable of generating innovation.
The necessary steps to contribute to OpenStreetMap are as follows:
✅ Register on the site and accept the terms under which one contributes: whether to release everything under CC0 (therefore in the public domain) or to release under the ODbL license (a license designed for data with the constraint to ensure that the data's openness remains such), sharing ownership with OpenStreetMap Foundation (the non-profit organization that takes care of the project's sustainability).
✅ Collect data in the most diverse ways: through a GPS, importing open data, modifying existing data (correcting or enriching), tracing from satellite images, and more while respecting the rules the community sets.
✅ Specify the collected data following a taxonomy (or, better, a folksonomy) by reading the list of the map features.
✅ Once the data is in OpenStreetMap, it then becomes available in various forms: maps in all shapes and representations present both on the official site and on third parties, applications, geospatial services, reprocessed data distributed in multiple formats, and even objects like maps printed on paper or in 3D and representations on bags or clothes and various gadgets.
Investigating how one can contribute offers many insights that immediately clarify how much OSM is an incredible innovation lab where formidable ideas are hidden, talents meet, and projects are born.
Part of this experience is discovering that data sources and data collection methods stimulate incredible creativity:
💡 Thus, a fiscal receipt becomes a fundamental resource for combining local knowledge information ( = the place where the purchase occurred) with those that are difficult to remember ( = the house number) flowing into this database. Recording on paper remains a simple tool that allows operation even without energy or internet coverage. Thus, projects like FieldPapers and SketchMap Tool are born where selecting on a web application the area where data will be collected generates a PDF from which to print the map on which then, with a pen, one will take notes that then, magically, by taking a photo of the sheet with the annotations, will find themselves geolocated on a digital map ready to be integrated into OSM.
💡 Some fix their smartphone on their vehicle (or even on foot) and start taking geolocated photos. These photos are then assembled on a platform (e.g., Mapillary) that allows them to be used as immersive panoramic views (the same used by Google StreetView). Artificial intelligence is then applied to extract information such as road signs or urban decor, thus enriching OSM again.
✨As can be seen, the creativity through which the OSM community collects data brings innovations that, in turn, can give life to entrepreneurial initiatives✨
The primary motivation remains, however, that of passion and making it easy to insert, also offering vertical applications for the collection of monothematic data of social interest, such as accessibility for those who move in a wheelchair (e.g., the wheelmap project) or the location of fire hydrants (e.g., osmhydrant) and more.
🔥In fact, OpenStreetMap meets the needs of anyone who needs to collect geolocated information🔥
From here, the social value of OpenStreetMap is at the centre of its nature. The speed, the simplicity with which data is entered, and the reactivity of the community have found vast space in the humanitarian aid sector.
The most important case is that of HOT - Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, a non-profit organization that uses the collaborative mapping project to respond to crises and natural disasters worldwide.📢
HOT OSM aims to create detailed maps of the world's most vulnerable areas to assist humanitarian and development interventions. Local and global volunteers use satellite-based mapping tools to update and improve maps of areas that often need better documentation.
Accurate maps are crucial for planning emergency responses and relief operations during emergencies like earthquakes, floods, or epidemics. HOT mobilizes a global community of volunteers who contribute to creating these essential maps, using satellite images and other sources to update OpenStreetMap.
Similarly, the United Nations has created the UN Mappers initiative to activate a community of mappers in areas where updating maps is difficult. The goal is to support UN peace missions and humanitarian aid by providing detailed maps that can help in field operations.
Through collaborative mapping, numerous local actions have also allowed the solving of social problems or giving voice to communities, with the enormous advantage of having a space where data is stored and magically returned in the form of maps, applications, analysis, and artefacts.
The example of Touch Mapper is very powerful:
One contributes to OpenStreetMap by providing details on the heights of buildings (even just indicating the number of floors) and other information. By going on the site, one selects an area of interest. The output is a file ready to be used by a 3D printer, thus returning to a blind person the possibility to touch the map of that area and get to know it.
Creating applications and services still brings the need for sustainability and thus often gives life to entrepreneurial initiatives.
Generally, the first path is born from the desire to have a map (thus a representation of the data) different from what other providers offer (for example, Google Maps).
In approaching this, developers begin to know the various ways to access the map, often also through third-party services (e.g., Mapbox or Maptiler) and also start to understand the terms of reuse and the various technologies with which to create their map publishing system with personalized rendering.
At the same time, one begins to know the protagonists of the technologies that revolve around OpenStreetMap, and thus, new talents are discovered who, if they have not created their own company, begin to be courted to be hired.
Thus, one finds oneself in front of a space where one finds new talents and ideas that allow a company to be competitive🚀
The data and coverage it offers almost globally allows it to create applications that can cover every corner of the world. Therefore, the eco-leather bag with a personalized map of your city printed on it can find a market in Italy as well as in China🌍
The data and their level of detail then become a global source that attracts more companies, and it is therefore not surprising that big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, TomTom, and Apple have also accelerated their participation in the project.
Each of these companies has begun to use OSM data and become a constructive part of it. These companies finance people who contribute to data collection and generate tools that collect data and become part of the story.
Among the tools, probably the most well-known, is MapWith.AI, a platform created by Meta that extracts buildings and streets through artificial intelligence and then proposes a human validation to import the data into OSM, thus becoming a fast and efficient tool for updating the database.
Over time, the interest of many of these big tech, in collaboration with LinuxFoundation, has led to the creation of the Overture Maps foundation, which aims to propose a set of high-value geographic data, verified, standardized, and released with an open license compatible with OpenStreetMap with global coverage that is the result of the inclusion of OpenStreetMap data with those held by these multinationals (Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom in the first place) which looks in continuous synergy to this wonderful project.
OpenStreetMap represents an impressive digital common created and enriched by people like you, who actively participate in its evolution🚀
Through sharing local knowledge and adopting open governance, this platform not only fuels innovation and participation but also generates invaluable value for society, demonstrating how collaboration can radically transform how we interact with our world.
🔔Do you want to learn more about OpenStreetMap and its possibilities?🔔
Discover how this dynamic ecosystem generates tangible benefits for society and businesses by catalysing innovation in both the private sector and public infrastructure due to its collaborative nature of providing a common good (open data).
👉 Enjoy this NGI Talk (webinar) for free by clicking here.
