A conversation on the possibilities of reliable open data in 3D mapping, spurring economic growth, and the Overture Maps Foundation’s role ahead.
“We are building a broad coalition with different perspectives and knowledge. My goal is that we can leverage that to build an open map data set that meets many of the needs of these markets now and into the future”, says Marc Prioleau, Executive Director, Overture Maps Foundation, in an interview with Geospatial World.
What is Overture Maps Foundation?
Overture Maps Foundation (Overture) was formed to create reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data for the globe. This open map data can be used to power current and next-gen map products and services to support mapping professionals and developers. Overture is building a global, open map dataset that will be driven by the market needs for more accurate, more featured, and more up-to-date maps. It intends to build this data through open collaboration across many organizations and to provide the resulting data under permissive open data licenses. This will establish a foundation of global, open map data that can support advanced, interoperable map and location services.
What value will Overture bring to the government entities that build and provide open map data?
Overture has been talking to government agencies at all levels to understand how the project can support open data initiatives. From our discussions to date, we have identified the following areas of potential value:
- By including open government data in a global dataset, the value of that data increases through the connection to other data and users. This integration makes it usable by billions of people around the world in applications that require a global database, which increases the impact of an open dataset beyond what it would be on a stand-alone basis.
- The technology companies in Overture have significant resources for AI, computer vision, machine learning, data aggregation and conflation. These technologies can be used to process data such as aerial LIDAR or street-level imagery into map data that can be used to create or enrich other data.
- Feedback generated through the usage of map data is an important source of information, especially in cases where data is inaccurate or has changed. Overture will bring different mapping signals from high volume usage to bear and will build feedback loops to capture and process data about changes in the world. This can help the contributing agencies understand where the world has changed and where data may need to be refreshed. We are still validating these value propositions and hope to refine and improve them through collaboration with these owners of open government data.
You recently released the Global Entity Referencing System to boost geospatial data interoperability. Tell us more about it.
Overture’s Global Entity Reference System (GERS) is a system of structuring, encoding, and referencing map data to a shared universal reference. This will provide a mechanism to conflate datasets from different providers based on a specific GERS ID assigned to each feature. Part of the work Overture is doing is to build this stable ID system and a process for attaching a GERS ID to map features.
This is hard to do, but an amazingly powerful component of the plan for Overture. The benefit of adding a stable identifier to different features on maps means that you can now start attaching all kinds of other data to those features to enable all sorts of use cases.
Additionally, those attached data sets can be from different sources if we all agree on a common identifier for that feature. For example, two geospatial datasets that contain a footprint representing the Empire State Building can be easily conflated because both footprints will contain the same GERS ID, referring to the entity: “A Polygonal representation of the footprint of New York’s Empire State Building.”
In June, we published some of the design concepts around GERS and have begun to engage with interested parties in defining the actual models and process for assigning GERS IDs.
How can open source mapping contribute to infrastructure development, spurring economic growth?
If mapping is fundamental to infrastructure development, then the availability of high-quality open map data can only accelerate that development. The obvious reason is that open data is available for anyone to use without complex licensing restrictions.
However, the biggest benefit that open map data provides is a shared framework for infrastructure development. Overture is building base maps with the assumption that other data sets, for anything from digital twins to flood zones to potholes, can be mapped to it. That allows planners to combine data and see the ways in which they interact.
Tell us about your collaboratively built building height dataset using 3D Elevation Program LIDAR?
The USGS Building Height project was a great example of the type of collaboration that is possible around open map data within the Overture project. Overture Engineers worked with the team at the US Geological Survey (USGS) and their 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) data to create a database of building heights at scale.
Engineers used the 3DEP data as a measure of surface elevation across the United States. They then identified the areas that were identified as buildings using open source datasets for building footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft. Last, they subtracted the observed elevation from the ground elevation to derive building heights which, when combined with the building footprint data gave rough 3D building data.
There are three things that stand out to me about this collaboration:
- First, it shows the value of open license data from authoritative sources to spur innovation. This was not an anticipated use of the 3DEP data, but open licenses allow creativity and innovation.
- Second, it shows the value of collaboration across an ecosystem. No company or agency had all the needed parts, but by collaborating, we were able to create a new useful dataset. That is a founding premise for Overture; that the varied contributions of a big community can build a better map than any organization.
- Third, it is a model for a process that can be replicated across the world. Developing countries that need map data can use similar pipelines to pull value out of LIDAR data. Overture hopes to build similar AI/ML/CV pipelines to create map data from many types of sensors, potentially accelerating the creation and maintenance of map data worldwide.
What are some of your upcoming projects, and is enabling digital twins in the cards for the foundation?
Building out the GERS system mentioned above is a huge development that will evolve as we listen and learn. Similarly, we announced a first version of a data schema that allows map applications builders to consistently ingest Overture map data for use in their platforms. That will also require some iteration and evolution. Ultimately, Overture is about building map data and that is what the team is really excited about. Overture has set up four areas for our initial focus.
These are the transportation layer, places, buildings and administrative boundaries. Each of these have a different roadmap as we prioritize among the many directions we can go. That prioritization is done by the members of the Overture Map Foundation in a largely consensus driven model.
Digital twins fits in the Building work stream. We probably should use more precise terms for those various use cases; some require highly detailed models while others might be able to use lower resolution models. In either case, those models should be anchored and aligned to an accurate up-to-date basemap.
Whether the digital twins are Overture-built open data or private data built and registered to Overture’s basemap data, we hope to support this sector of the market.
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