Mapping has seen a revolution in the last 15 years. There is still room for the long-established tradition of skilled cartographers and geographic information specialists creating carefully-designed, professional maps. But map-making is increasingly available to more people and at a lower cost. One of the forces that has made this possible is free and open data to make maps with.
The Open Data Institute, co-founded by Tim Berners-Lee, describes open data as information that is available for anyone to use, for any purpose, at no cost. This doesn’t mean there are no legal requirements attached to the use. Usually you will need to show a simple attribution statement in your final map or application naming the data source and its copyright. There are also many sources that don’t quite pass the ODI criteria, including those that don’t allow commercial use.
Individuals have done some amazing things in creating crowd-sourced datasets, with OpenStreetMap probably the most prominent mapping achievement. The ODI make a good case for companies to open up some of their data, but the argument is strongest in the public sector. Across Europe, government organisations at various levels have joined the open data initiative and freed up important datasets to the public. A key part of this programme has been the providing tools that help people find the data. There are text based search tools like the European Union Open Data Portal and the UK’s Data.gov.uk, and mapping search tools like the EU INSPIRE Geoportal. The INSPIRE initiative has introduced standards that make the latter much easier to do Europe-wide.
So what European open data can we make maps with? First, there are base mapping tiles that show standard atlas features like places, road networks, coastline and country borders. These are great if you just want to see the basic lay of the land or give context to a specialist dataset.
Next, there are specialist spatial datasets for use in mapping software, such as the road network, administrative boundaries or nature reserves. Europe-wide datasets include OpenStreetMap and EuroGeographic’s EuroGlobalMap which is sourced from National Mapping Agencies. Many national mapping agencies and government departments have followed the open data agenda, although the level of detail of this free data varies by country. Occasionally it is left to regional administrations to release data for their own area.
Key national statistics like census data are often released to the public along with the spatial data that is required to visualise them. Mapping tools can be used to link the census tables to area boundaries, giving a powerful visualisation of census information.
Finally, many datasets have a component like a postal code that can be geocoded and placed on a map. This makes a huge number of other government datasets mappable, from hospital locations to school results to brownfield sites.
What does this all mean for the professional map-makers? The availability of open data has been good news for mapping service companies like our own. In the past, many potential customers lost interest as soon as a 4 figure cost for mapping data was mentioned. Now it is often just the professional’s time that has to be covered, making many European mapping and analysis exercises more affordable and cost-effective. Part of the argument for freeing up data is that it can act as an economic driver, allowing people to do things more efficiently.
Open data is even creating a new part to the traditional information industry. For example, there is now a cottage industry in companies extracting OpenStreetMap data to meet particular requirements. People often don’t have the time to find their way to the data they need, or the skills to quickly extract and visualise relevant information from this. If your organisation needs help with a possible mapping project or application, you could call on the European open data experience of companies like ours.
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