OpenStreetMap – Get thy bearings

Google Maps is an extremely useful service, especially now that it’s good at planning journeys using public transport. But letting the search giant know where you’re going and when you’re going to be there is just spoonfeeding it data to add to your profile and allows it to get marginally richer by sending spaciotemporally relevant ads our way.

Much better would be to support the community oriented OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. It’s supported by a not-for-profit foundation which you should join for a paltry £15. OSM has been around since 2004, when Steve Coast decided to take a stand against proprietary map data in the UK and felt a Wikipedia-style crowd-sourced approach might work. Since then map data has been collected by volunteer surveyors and GIS enthusiasts or contributed by various agencies, most notably Automotive Navigation Data, which provided road data for the Netherlands, China and India. Yahoo! also provided satellite imagery from which vector maps could be freely produced. The results are impressive—certainly there are locations that require attention [you could help!–Ed], but most cities in the developed world now have reasonable OSM coverage.

GnomeMaps is powered by OSM and is – after a hiccup with tiling data last year – a slick application for finding your way around. OSM efforts have proven invaluable in crisis situations too. OSM has a dedicated Humanitarian Team who have supported disaster-relief efforts following the Haiti earthquake, the West African Ebola outbreak and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.