The good folks at Heigit have released ohsome-planet, a handy tool to turn OpenStreetMap history data from PBF into GeoParquet files, ready to use in common GIS applications.
Working with raw OSM data presents several challenges due to its complex structure. Typically, users require data that is readily compatible with Geographic Information System (GIS) applications. Our new tool streamlines this process, providing a structured and GIS-ready dataset for improved usability.
The tool also enriches OSM element data by integrating information from OSM changesets and administrative boundaries. This additional contextual data allows for more efficient and straightforward spatial analysis, further improving the utility of OSM datasets.
The tool is written in Java and you have to build it yourself; a small price to pay for more easily accessible free and open data.
Apple Maps now shows the borders of Indigenous land in Australia and New Zealand.
Apple Newsroom:
Beginning today, Apple Maps now displays Indigenous lands in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. By gathering information from Indigenous advisors, cartographers, Traditional Owners, language holders, and community members, Apple Maps will show reserves and Indigenous Protected Areas, Indigenous place names, Traditional Country, and dual-language labels. Indigenous lands place cards feature information about the local area and Traditional Owners, and can be curated to allow communities to add their own photos, destinations on their land, and text in their own language. Representation of Indigenous lands in Apple Maps provides users with a more comprehensive experience while also recognising the stories and significance behind them.
Apple Maps will now include more than 250 dual placenames for cities and towns across the country, with more to be added.
I’m struggling to confirm this. On the latest versions of both macOS (15.3.2) and iOS (18.3.2), no traditional place names are shown instead or in addition to the English names. It’s technically feasible to show two names simultaneously for a location, as we’ve seen with Gulf-of-Mexico travesty—it just hasn’t been done.
When I search for “Naarm,” the traditional name of the Melbourne area, only “Melbourne” shows up as a match. Likewise, a search for “Gadigal” or “Cadigal” returns matches in the Sydney area, like “Gadigal Station,” but not Sydney itself.
I love a good deep dive into often-overlooked map-related challenges. Here Hanbyul Jo wonders why Mapbox chose to vertically display labels in Hangul, whether the choice improves legibility, and since when Koreans horizontally read and write Hangul instead of vertically.
Meta, one of the founding members of Overture Maps Foundation, has successfully transitioned its suite of global basemaps used across apps such as Facebook and Instagram to Overture’s base data layers
The goal was to build an up-to-date, validated, global basemap using OpenStreetMap that could power all of Meta’s use cases. Daylight included validation checks designed to find and correct mapping errors, building footprint detections, lidar derived building heights, name translations, and a global land cover layer. This global dataset was made publicly available and has served the maps at Meta for the past five years.
As a founding member of Overture, Meta has been deeply involved in developing the processes that produce Overture’s published data. In fact, the very same validation processes and pipelines that were used in Daylight are also now used to produce Overture’s regular data releases.
Notice the past tense. There is no official announcement confirming Daylight’s end of life. But there hasn’t been an update since November 2024 after more than four years of at least twice-monthly releases.
If you are a student or early-career developer and want to make your mark in open-source geospatial, the following geospatial organisations are participating in the 2024 Google Summer of Code:
The Protomaps project, a set of protocols and software for serving fast map tiles over the Web, is transitioning to a new funding model.
Previously, Protomaps’ main source of funding was selling one-time downloads of basemap tiles. Now you can purchase access to commercial, hosted tile APIs and hands-on support through the project’s GitHub sponsorship page:
For $14, you get one million tile requests via the commercial API. The tileset is derived from the Daylight Map Distribution, which includes data from OpenStreetMap but has gone through additional quality checks.
For $140, you get fifty million tile requests via the API, plus an optional downloadable tileset in case you’re looking to host the tiles more cost-efficiently should you exceed the allowance.
Then there are two access tiers for $2,000 and $4,000, which give you access to Protomaps developers to provide support and consulting services.
In addition, all components needed to produce PMTiles and run the Protomaps infrastructure are open source; you can run the APIs yourself for the infrastructure cost only.
Developing open-source projects and financing them by selling professional services for development, maintenance and knowledge transfer is an idea some German geospatial businesses, like Terrestris or Wheregroup, have successfully implemented for years. But I haven’t seen it yet for a company selling map tiles.
Development Seed’s data team in Ayacucho, Peru has spun out to form GeoCompas:
I am pleased to announce that the skilled data and annotation team from DevSeed is separating to become an independent employee-owned company called GeoCompas. The Geo AI practice at Development Seed has grown, and the GeoCompas team has been essential in providing crucial mapping, annotation, QA, and automation support. Their expertise in geodata is now available to everyone.
The new company focusses on OpenStreetMap editing, data labelling and annotation for AI projects, but also development of data processing pipelines and web services.
Darren Wiens of SparkGeo demonstrates an AI-driven approach to generating audio descriptions for interactive web maps. The overall process is simple yet effective:
Convert the current map view to an image.
Upload the image to OpenAI’s API to return a text description of the images.
Upload the text description to OpenAI’s API to receive the audio of the text description.
It’s one example of how new generative AI technologies can be put to good use. It is simply impossible for humans to provide alt-text for large interactive maps and AI is the one (the only?) way to make textual descriptions of maps scalable.
This looks like an interesting event: Element84 are hosting a three-hour workshop on user-centred design with a specific focus on geospatial applications:
Join us for a comprehensive 3-hour experience tailored for UX Designers delving into geospatial patterns, Frontend Developers honing essential UX design skills, as well as Leaders and Management keen to understand the profound impact of effective design on geospatial workflows. Immerse yourself in geospatial patterns, tackle hands-on design challenges, and absorb essential UX principles meticulously crafted to meet the specific demands of the geospatial sector. Whether you’re looking to seamlessly integrate geospatial patterns into your design mockups, enhance your understanding of how users will interact with your software, or understand the value of a targeted design process, this workshop ensures you depart with practical skills for creating useful and impactful geospatial applications.
The workshop is scheduled for 19 March. Tickets are 75USD.