![]() | |
Founded | 22 August 2006 |
---|---|
Type | Company limited by guarantee |
Registration no. | 05912761 |
Location |
|
Coordinates | 52°33′04″N1°49′07″W / 52.55098°N 1.81860°W |
Expenses | £91,607 (expenses for 2011-12) [1] |
Website | www |
The OpenStreetMap Foundation (abbreviated OSMF) is a non-profit foundation whose aim is to support and enable the development of freely-reusable geospatial data. Founded in 2006, it is closely connected with the OpenStreetMap project, although its constitution does not prevent it supporting other projects.
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2021) |
The OpenStreetMap Foundation was registered in England and Wales on 22 August 2006 as a company limited by guarantee. [2] In 2007, it held the first State of the Map conference in Manchester.
In October 2009, the foundation announced that its members, rather than the OpenStreetMap contributors at large, would vote on changing OpenStreetMap's data license from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike to the Open Database License. [3]
In September 2013, the foundation began accepting corporate memberships in an "associate member" (nonvoting) category. The initial corporate members were Geofabrik, Geotab, Naver, NextGIS, and Mapbox. [4] [5]
Active contributors membership program was introduced in August 2020. As per this active contributors to OpenStreetMap through editing (at least 42 active days in the latest period of one year) or off-line activities can apply for free of cost membership. They will have voting rights for electing board members. [6]
In June 2021, the foundation stated that the effects of Brexit have prompted them to consider a move back into the European Union due to issues with database rights, difficulties with getting charitable status for the foundation, and the increasing difficulty of using PayPal and banking in the United Kingdom. The foundation has not announced the location of its new headquarters. [7] As of February 2024, the candidates for relocation are Belgium and Luxembourg. [8]
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a membership organization. Membership in the foundation is separate from a user account on the OpenStreetMap website: a user account is required to contribute to the map, while foundation membership entitles one to vote at a general meeting. [9]
The foundation is run by a board of seven members, including the foundation's officers: chairman, secretary and treasurer. [10] The board is elected by the foundation's dues-paying members. As of April 2024 [update] , the board consists of Guillaume Rischard (Chairperson), Craig Allan (Secretary), Roland Olbricht (Treasurer), Sarah Hoffmann, Mateusz Konieczny, Arnalie Vicario, Daniela Waltersdorfer. [11]
Several working groups, composed mostly of volunteers, carry out day-to-day operations on behalf of the foundation: [12] [13]
Several local chapters are affiliated with the OpenStreetMap Foundation. [17]
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2021) |
The OpenStreetMap Foundation promotes and supports the OpenStreetMap project, but does not formally own the project or its contents. [18] The foundation's relatively low profile in OpenStreetMap's development has been contrasted with the Wikimedia Foundation's relationship to Wikipedia. [19] [20]
In addition to day-to-day operations within the OpenStreetMap project, the foundation and its working groups run several initiatives to promote the project's growth. Its annual State of the Map conference is the flagship conference within the OpenStreetMap community. The GPStogo program lends GPS receivers to mappers in developing countries. [21]
The Apache Software Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the Apache HTTP Server, and incorporated on March 25, 1999. As of 2021, it includes approximately 1000 members.
A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the most widely used standard for open-source software.
Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena.
An orthophoto, orthophotograph, orthoimage or orthoimagery is an aerial photograph or satellite imagery geometrically corrected ("orthorectified") such that the scale is uniform: the photo or image follows a given map projection. Unlike an uncorrected aerial photograph, an orthophoto can be used to measure true distances, because it is an accurate representation of the Earth's surface, having been adjusted for topographic relief, lens distortion, and camera tilt.
Waldo Rudolph Tobler was an American-Swiss geographer and cartographer. Tobler is regarded as one of the most influential geographers and cartographers of the late 20th century and early 21st century. He is most well known for coining what has come to be referred to as Tobler's first law of geography. He also coined what has come to be referred to as Tobler's second law of geography.
A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed geodata sources. OpenStreetMap is freely licensed under the Open Database License and as a result commonly used to make electronic maps, inform turn-by-turn navigation, assist in humanitarian aid and data visualisation. OpenStreetMap uses its own topology to store geographical features which can then be exported into other GIS file formats. The OpenStreetMap website itself is an online map, geodata search engine and editor.
GlobalLogic is an Indian digital services company providing software development services. It is a subsidiary of Hitachi. GlobalLogic has corporate headquarters in San Jose, California.
Distributed GIS refers to GI Systems that do not have all of the system components in the same physical location. This could be the processing, the database, the rendering or the user interface. It represents a special case of distributed computing, with examples of distributed systems including Internet GIS, Web GIS, and Mobile GIS. Distribution of resources provides corporate and enterprise-based models for GIS. Distributed GIS permits a shared services model, including data fusion based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services. Distributed GIS technology enables modern online mapping systems, Location-based services (LBS), web-based GIS and numerous map-enabled applications. Other applications include transportation, logistics, utilities, farm / agricultural information systems, real-time environmental information systems and the analysis of the movement of people. In terms of data, the concept has been extended to include volunteered geographical information. Distributed processing allows improvements to the performance of spatial analysis through the use of techniques such as parallel processing.
A 3D city model is digital model of urban areas that represent terrain surfaces, sites, buildings, vegetation, infrastructure and landscape elements in three-dimensional scale as well as related objects belonging to urban areas. Their components are described and represented by corresponding two- and three-dimensional spatial data and geo-referenced data. 3D city models support presentation, exploration, analysis, and management tasks in a large number of different application domains. In particular, 3D city models allow "for visually integrating heterogeneous geoinformation within a single framework and, therefore, create and manage complex urban information spaces."
The British Cartographic Society (BCS) is an association of individuals and organisations dedicated to exploring and developing the world of maps. It is a registered charity. Membership includes national mapping agencies, publishers, designers, academics, researchers, map curators, individual cartographers, GIS specialists and ordinary members of the public with an interest in maps.
The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) is an international non-governmental organization that enhances international cooperation between the worldwide organizations with interests in the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. Originally named International Society for Photogrammetry (ISP), it was established in 1910, and is the oldest international umbrella organization in its field, which may be summarized as addressing “information from imagery”.
Maged N. Kamel Boulos is a British health informatician, scientist and Full Professor of Digital Health with Sun Yat-sen University (China), having worked before that at the Alexander Graham Bell Centre of Digital Health, University of the Highlands and Islands, at the University of Plymouth, at the University of Bath and at City University London. Other held affiliations include Universidade de Lisboa. He is particularly known for his research into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications in health and healthcare, which received wide news media coverage. He is credited with coining the phrases 'online consumer geoinformatics services' and 'wikification of GIS by the masses' in 2005, when neogeography and virtual globes were still very new.
The Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) is the professional association for surveyors and spatial science workers, including cartography, hydrography, remote sensing, engineering and mining surveying, photogrammetry and spatial information in Australia. The Institute's members are involved in communities of practice such as land administration, land development, natural resource management, forestry, agriculture, defence, marine environment, local government, health, education, transport, tourism, and many more. The institute deals with policy, administration, collection, measurement, analysis, interpretation, portrayal and dissemination of spatially- related land and sea information, together with associated planning, design and management.
Pix4D is a Swiss software company that specializes in terrestrial and drone photogrammetry mapping software. It was founded in 2011 as a spinoff from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Computer Vision Lab in Switzerland. It develops a suite of software products that use photogrammetry and computer vision algorithms to transform DSLR, fisheye, RGB, thermal and multispectral images into 3D maps and 3D modeling. The company has 7 international offices, with its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
OpenDroneMap is an open source photogrammetry toolkit to process aerial imagery into maps and 3D models. The software is hosted and distributed freely on GitHub.
Qihao Weng is an American geographer, urban, environmental sustainability, and remote sensing scientist. He has been a Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since July 2021, and was the Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Change and is a professor of geography in the Department of Earth and Environmental Systems at the Indiana State University.
Web GIS, or Web Geographic Information Systems, are GIS that employ the World Wide Web to facilitate the storage, visualization, analysis, and distribution of spatial information over the Internet. The World Wide Web, or the Web, is an information system that uses the internet to host, share, and distribute documents, images, and other data. Web GIS involves using the World Wide Web to facilitate GIS tasks traditionally done on a desktop computer, as well as enabling the sharing of maps and spatial data. While Web GIS and Internet GIS are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different concepts. Web GIS is a subset of Internet GIS, which is itself a subset of distributed GIS, which itself is a subset of broader Geographic information system. The most common application of Web GIS is Web mapping, so much so that the two terms are often used interchangeably in much the same way as Digital mapping and GIS. However, Web GIS and web mapping are distinct concepts, with web mapping not necessarily requiring a Web GIS.
Duccio Rocchini is an Italian professor. Since 2019, he has been serving as a full professor at the University of Bologna and holds an honorary professorship at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague.