New Zealand data import projects
- About
This page was last updated 12 years ago. The only ongoing import project is documented in LINZ. - Captured time
- 2012
New Zealand has relatively open government, and is willing to release data under very permissive licences. This is a policy to be applauded; they are ahead of a lot of other governments in this respect. The New Zealand Government released the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government on August 8th 2011. Departments are encouraged to license data in open formats and have created NZGOAL as the default framework.Note however that this only applies to central government and NZGOAL is not compatible with the ODBL. The open government movement in New Zealand has done a lot of work in getting access to data sets and OSM users are encouraged to join the discussion on the Open.org.nz and ask for advice before approaching the different departments. The group has lots of people inside government who are willing to help connection people to the right sources.
linz2osm Bulk Data Upload Tool
There is ongoing work to import bulk data sets in New Zealand. The initial imports are for the LINZ data however it is envisioned that this tool may be used to import other large datasets that require careful merging. → See the LINZ page for more information. ← This tool is the preferred method for processing bulk datasets and due to recent funding will be undergoing significant improvements in 2012.
- Check it out: http://linz2osm.openstreetmap.org.nz
LINZ data
LINZ has a range of data, developed with public funding, including details of roads and land titles. The data is provided under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Crown Copyright which is not compatible with the ODBL however permission has been granted to import this data into OSM.
See the LINZ page for more information, and the archives of the nz open gis google group (see above).
Do not import LINZ data yourself. There is a project underway to manage this data import in a controlled manner. Please join the NZ OpenGIS mailing list and get involved with the project. Zenbu data
Zenbu is a user-generated business-listings website, with data released under the Creative Commons by Attribution license, which is compatible with that of OSM.
Main article: Zenbu
LENZ/LCDB
I just spotted this today on http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2009/new-zealand-geographical-data-released-under-creative-commons (posted 2 July 2009)
- Two major environmental databases are set to become more accessible and easier to use following the re-release of these digital maps by the Ministry for the Environment.
- The Land Cover Database and the Land Environments New Zealand classification layers, widely used by agencies in environmental and resource management planning, will now be issued online with a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
- ...
The Level 4 data appears to be around 25m resolution. The data is hosted on koordinates. I'm not sure if this would be of use to OSM?
DOC data
Some DOC data has been released under the Creative Commons by Attribution Licence, which is compatible with that of OSM.
Main article: DOC
Official Information Act (OIA)/Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA)
It has been suggested on the NZOpenGIS list, that any information obtained under this act is free of copyright, instead being Public Domain. This is not true. The OIA and LGOIMA do not waive copyright.
Christchurch City Council
In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, Chch council released data pertaining to damaged roads and bridges, under a CC-BY license, which is compatible with the CC-BY-SA license of OSM.
The data is available from koordinates.com, and is being imported (2011-02) by mappers who communicate via NZ Open GIS group - https://groups.google.com/group/nzopengis if you would like to help
US government data
All data released by the US government is public domain, so can be included in osm. some of it is relevant to nz
NOAA.gov New Zealand weather stations
http://nzopengis.googlegroups.com/web/mms-nz.osm.bz2
GPS monitoring stations data from NASA
http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/network/netindex.html
CIA World Data Bank data
WikiProject Import WDB contains information about the WDB data, which is public domain, and therefore compatible with OSM. The data should be investigated to ascertain whether there is anything useful in it for New Zealand.
To do
find out what data is contained in the data set
find out whether there is better data already uploaded for New Zealand
use the script detailed on the WDB wiki page to import anything usefulvmap0 data
vmap0 is a data set containing information on all the world's roads, but it is generally low quality. It is in the public domain, and is thus compatible with OSM. There is a discussion currently (2008-01-08) under way on the osm talk list, concerning upload of vmap0 data to osm, by a user from the FlightGear project. For the moment, I have suggested that no data is uploaded to new zealand, at least until the status of the linz data (which is probably better quality) is resolved Myfanwy 02:52, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- Target scale for DCW/VMap0 data is 1:1 Million, Target scale for LINZ topo data is 1:50,000.