Public Geospatial Data Project

There is an official official foundation committee page which provides more detail on meetings and discussions.

Mission

Promote the use of open geospatial formats

Providing best-practise guidelines and examples for use of open and free standards for data (GML, WMS, WFS-T) and metadata (Dublin Core, RDF).

Promote public access to state-collected geodata

Lead by example in demonstrating economic value and research activity generated by open access to public geographic information.

Run a repository of open geodata

A collection of geospatial datasets shall be hosted by the PGDP. Additionally, links to other open data repostories shall be collected.

Present and explain licenses for public geodata

The PGDP aims to collect licenses suitable for the publishing of public geodata. The license shall be presented along with a summary of its benefits and focus.

Approach

After a Definition phase this has become an official committee within OSGeo.

Working Groups

At the first meeting of the geodata committee we decided to focus interest through three Working Groups:

• A Geodata Discovery Working Group which would focus on indexing and search of data and metadata repositories.
• A Geodata Packaging Working Group to look at creation and maintanance of really high quality and rich data packages to offer for educational purposes with software packages, with GRASS GIS in particular.
• A Geodata Licensing Working Group to look into parallel licensing developments and to consult on guidelines for open licenses for geodata.

Meetings

This group is having regular meetings on IRC on the #osgeo channel on irc.freenode.net. At the moment this is happening on Wednesdays at 15:00 UTC. fixed time around the world

People interested in participating

• David Bitner
• Allan Doyle
• Florian Kindl
• Pericles S. Nacionales
• Markus Neteler
• Jo Walsh
• Helton Uchoa
• Aaron Racicot - Ecotrust - aaronr at ecotrust.org
• Daniel Brookshier
• Schuyler Erle
• Jeff McKenna (DM Solutions)
• Steve Coast
• Mikel Maron
• Alessandro Frigeri
• David Blasby
• Dan Putler
• Arnulf Christl
• Please add yourself

Organizations to beneficially connect with

• EOGEO
• OpenStreetMap Project
• GSDI Association
• The Open Planning Project
• Federal Geographic Data Committee
• Open Geospatial Consortium

Events

Events where we can either promote our positions or are likely to run into like-minded individuals.

• Asian Conference on the Digital Commons - April 18-20, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand
• Where 2.0 - June 13-14, 2006, San Jose, California, USA
• FOSS4G2006 - Free And Open Source Software for Geoinformatics - September 12-15, 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland

Geo Data Repositories / Group Collection Projects

• OpenStreetMap Project
• Free Earth Foundation
• Canadian Base Data
• Various Free Datasets via Bittorrent
• Global Map - International Steering Committee for Global Mapping
• Geonames.org - Geonames is integrating geographical data such as names, altitude, population and others from various sources
• Geospatial One Stop
• Global Change Master Directory

Geo Data Repository & Policy Research

• University of Maine Commons for Geographic Data
• MetroGIS Datafinder Twin Cities, MN Metro Area Public Agency Data Sharing Effort (includes section on benefits/testimonials from public geodata)
• MN Governor's Council on Geographic Information
• New York City Open Accessible Space Information System
• Massachusetts GIS

On the Geodata Repository page, a draft outline for OSGeo's own repository project is being prepared.

Geo Data Policy Advocacy

• Public Geodata Project (IRC: publicgeodata) with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation
• Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data Manifesto
• Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them (United Kingdom)

Open Access

There are also more general open access movements, often aimed at scientific data, that could provide a venue for broadening awareness of the geo-specific issues.

• Berlin 4 Open Access - From Promise to Practice - March 29-31, 2006 Golm, Germany
• Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
• Conservation Commons - "The Conservation Commons is characterized by an underlying set of Principles which supports open access to, and in particular the fair use of, data and information related to the conservation of biodiversity."
• The Locus Forum - "The Locus Association is a trade association of private organisations working to increase opportunities and reduce barriers to fair trade between the public and private sector, particularly in the use of Public Sector Information."
• Public Participation GIS - "

Further Reading

• Ordnance Survey challenged to open up - 2006-03-23 article in the Guardian
• Give us back our crown jewels - 2006-03-09 article in the Guardian
• Why Europe Needs to Provide its Own Public Geodata by Jo Walsh (Feb 15, 2006)
• ShareAlike considered harmful for geodata by Richard Fairhurst, a critique of GPL-like licensing situations with suggested LGPL-like model for distribution.
• "Open Source Software for Spatial Data Infrastructure (FOSSDI)". SDIC submitted 2005 to INSPIRE/EU.
  PDF with layout | HTML without layout
• Open Networks and Open Society: The Relationship between Freedom, Law, and Technology - MIT World video featuring Hal Abelson, John Wilbanks, Creative Commons
• Articles Testimonials Studies Performance Measures about Metrogis, a collaboration for GIS data sharing in the Twin Cities, MN, USA