Bulk GPX track data

Last year, at about this time, the OpenStreetMap Foundation made a big splash when it released the first Bulk GPS Point dataset. That may have been the largest publication of GPS point data ever. Many users were thrilled to have that raw data and to put it to good use. But they also wanted more. They wanted the track file details.

In fact, requests for bulk OpenStreetMap GPX track files go back to 2007 or earlier. Now, the combined talents of the OpenStreetMap community and the resources of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, make that dream a reality.

Announcing the GPX Planet

The scale of this dataset is fairly large.

848,000 GPX files
2.6 Trillion GPX points
260GB of GPS data (uncompressed)

Not everybody will be able to manage all of this data at once. It is likely, as with planet files and planet extracts, that somebody will offer GPX extracts.

What is this data good for?

Well, it’s interesting and there is a large quantity of it. Many OpenStreetMap contributors have been asking for it for years. Previous uses for this type of data have included

artistic organic trip data as maps
confirm turn restrictions
confirm one-way restrictions
confirm speed limits
and many more of your ideas in the comments

The future

There are hopes and plans to improve this service over time, including

quarterly updates
addition of vdop / hdop precision data, where available

You can help

You can help to improve this service by contributing your GPX track data. Upload your GPX files through your OpenStreetMap account. Collect new track files as you survey.

You can also help by using the data for something interesting and / or by publishing some code. OpenStreetMap user Zverik has started the ball rolling by creating gpx2pgsql to put the gpx data into your rendering tool chain.

Thanks

Thanks as always to the million-plus OpenStreetMap contributors over the eight years of the project so far. Especially, thanks to the thousands of contributors who collected and uploaded their GPX track files, and to Lars Franke, who wrote the first Java GPX dump code in 2010, and to Ian Dees who rewrote that into the current Python code, and to the many others who were involved in ways large and small.

So, where is it?

Find the GPX planet on the planet site and mirrors.

The image in this article is a visualization of some of the GPS point data in Europe. The image is licensed CC-By-SA and was created by Dave Stubbs.

Database maintenance

Updates included below the original post.

OpenStreetMap database unavailable on 31 March 2013

There is a current problem with the OpenStreetMap database and so the data API is currently unavailable due to hardware failures.

The current issues were first observed early on 31 March 2013 when the primary database server became non-responsive. The system administrators are aware of the problem and will resolve it as soon as possible. A complicating factor is the observation of a holiday at the hosting facility that prevents physical access to the server until Tuesday morning.

With the database unavailable, editing is not possible. Other database-related activities, such a new-user-signups, are also unavailable.

Other non-database-related services should operate normally. Tiles are being served with current data.

The system administrators will continue to take steps towards the return of normal operation. Given the aforementioned holiday at the hosting facility, normal operation may not return until some time Tuesday, 02 April 2013.

2013-03-31 1810 UTC – Admin on site

One of the OpenStreetMap Foundation hard working system administrators is currently on-site at the hosting location and working on a solution.

Thank you to the facility and everybody involved for permitting access during the holiday.

Corrective actions are in progress. Services are not yet restored. Stay tuned.

2013-03-31 1900 UTC – Return to normal operation

The database has been returned to normal operation. All OpenStreetMap services should be operating as expected.

Thanks again to the admin team and our hosting providers for the prompt resolution to this unscheduled outage.

Interesting video using OpenStreetMap data

The short video, Motorville by Patrick Jean uses OpenStreetMap data in static and animated form while weaving an interesting story.

Congratulations on the nice film, Patrick.

Weekly OSM Summary #65

March 11th, 2013 – March 25th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

Learnosm.org has been relaunched with a nice new design.
The database & webpage of the OSM editor JOSM has been moved to a new server.
HOT submitted their “MapMill – Crowdsourced Disaster Damage Assessment” project at the Knight Foundation News Challenge.
Michal Migurski about Mapnik Vector Tiles (MVT).
A first module (osm-auth) of the new OSM Editor “iD” has been published. Further modules will follow.
How can you replace GoogleMaps with OSM maps on your Blackberry phone? A blog post by Luca Filighedd.
Andy Allan posted a first preview of his new Outdoor OSM Map style. Andy is the creator of OpenCyclemap which you can check out here.
An online article about the growth of OSM.
Michelin publishes and sells city maps based on OSM data now.
At corefact.com you can create your own OSM “postcards”.
The new OSM Professional Large User Summit (OSM PLUS) will take place after the State of the Map United States conference in San Francisco (June 10th, 2013).

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Join OSM PLUS – the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit

Henk Hoff and I have been working with Steve Coast to develop the idea of a OSM commercial users conference. We have called it OSM PLUS – the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit (http://osmplus.co/). Here is the announcement email:

The OpenStreetMap Professional Large Users Summit is going to be held just after SOTM US, on June 10th in San Francisco at the Marriott Union Square. You can register here. Be quick, space is limited.

OSM PLUS is new and focused on professional users of OSM data and toolchains commercially, academically, in government and elsewhere. It is a paid-for event and we expect it to be more of a conversation than a traditional presentation. Many professional users have similar concerns and expectations for OSM. We want to explore these in an environment focused on coming up with solutions.

Today, OSM is a volunteer-only organization. This focus doesn’t always satisfy the needs of many users. We want to have an open conversation about ways to make OSM better. Because of that, the program will be influenced by those who attend.

PS you can use the code “GPS” to get 20% off the ticket price if you register soon.

Weekly OSM Summary #64

February 25th, 2013 – March 11th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

The Geofabrik updated their established and famous OSM Data Extract server. Furthermore they offer regional OSM Diff files.
Microsoft Bing offers some new high resolution satellite imagery.
Caerus is working with Stamen Design on a new version of Walking Papers. Read more about the new advantages here.
Some stats from Mapping Kathmandu.
A series of new blog posts about the architecture of the new OSM editor iD [1][2][3].
An interview with the OSM Chairman Simon Poole at swissinfo.ch: The globe, mapped by you.
The OSM History Viewer is back online. What is it?
You can find all Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) board minutes here. Also, HOT is now tax exempt in the US. Further, a new HOT task for Madagascar is available now. Derick Rethans created an animation of the HOT Mapping efforts in Mali.
The “How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap?” webpage shows the main and latest activity area of a contributor now. To get more information read Pascal Neis’ blog post here.
OWL API and History Tab Beta are back online. Thanks Pawel!
Seasonal mapping: Some stats about ski piste data collections in the past few years from Yves.
The video of the “Virtual Mappy Hour – Let’s Talk MapRoulette” is online at Youtube.
Garmin Connect now uses OSM maps too.
“State of the OSM Coastline” a blog post by Jochen Topf.
Richard Weait wrote a blog post about the Toronto OSM Hack Weekend.
“A OSM GPS Tile Type” by Tom MacWright. It hits the OSM GPX API, processes GPX with toGeoJSON, draws pictures with Canvas and it is Open Source.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Scheduled Maintenance – 08 March 2013

Some OpenStreetMap services will be off-line on 08 March 2013 for scheduled maintenance.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation, Operations Working Group advises that on 08 March 2013, scheduled maintenance of OpenStreetMap services will occur from approximately 0900H to 1600H UTC. The following service changes are expected:

API read-only from 0900H to 1500H UTC
Diffs off-line from 0900H to 1500H UTC
Wiki off-line/read-only from 1000H to 1600H UTC

The scheduled maintenance includes upgrades for the database server and improvements for the wiki server. Some more specifics given on the wiki. Actual service times may vary within the service windows described above.

Thank you, in advance, for your patience and understanding during the maintenance window.

Thank you, as always, to the Operations Working Group, for their tireless efforts that keep OpenStreetMap services working smoothly.

Weekly OSM Summary #63

February 11th, 2013 – February 25th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

The next global State of the Map 2013 conference will take place in Birmingham (UK), September 6th-8th. If you would like to participate, you can already sign in at Lanyrd.
A new “Best of OSM” poster for the year 2013 is out now. You can find the poster here and the new webpage here.
We are looking for new project ideas for the Google Summer of Code 2013.
Two new tile servers were added to the OSM project.
The HOT project needs your help to map Kunduz! Also a new online tool helps to map Mali. Some general HOT information: A blog post about the EUROSHA by Stephane Henriod can be found here. A link to the article can also be found at the News page in the UN-Spider blog.
Martin Elmar created a graphic showing the magic moments in OSM history.
In 2012 the OSM Foundation received a donation of 5000$ from duckduckgo, thank you very much!
And again a nice map comparison between OSM, Google Maps, Nokia and Yandex. This time for the City of Chelyabinsk (location of meteorite explosion).
Would like some news about the status of the OSM editor Potlatch2? A statement by Richard Fairhurst.
Mikel Maron wrote a blog post about (Not) finding local OSM communities.
A video by Simon Rogers shows how you can create a meteorites map with CartoDB and OSM data.
Michael Migurski on how you can process OSM data in Hadoop.
At the Hackweekend in Karlsruhe (Germany) Andi and Jochen created a first prototype for a potential new Map Feature table.
Keypadmapper3 is a new tool that helps to map house numbers for the OSM project. It was developed for the Android platform and your contributions will also be saved in the OpenCellIDs project.
A new tutorial for Igor Brejc’s Maperitive tool can be found here: A Hiking Web Map in Ten Easy Steps.
Steve Coast started a Crowdfunding-project to create GPS-Art-Posters.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Two More New Tile Servers

Thanks to generous donations and active members of the OpenStreetMap community, OpenStreetMap infrastructure continues to grow.

A new tile server, Trogdor, has been added to the OSM tile cache network. Located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Trogdor is currently serving tiles to IP addresses from The Netherlands, Belgium and several other central European and central African countries.

A second new tile server, Ridgeback, has also been added to the OpenStreetMap tile cache network. Located in Oslo, Norway, Ridgeback is currently serving tiles to IP addresses from Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and several others.

The list of countries served by any tile server will change over time due to expansion of the tile server network, loading, maintenance activities and other factors.

Map tiles are delivered to users based on their GeoDNS location. The OpenStreetMap Foundation seeks additional distributed tile servers. If you would like to donate a tile server and hosting, please see the Tile CDN requirements page on the wiki.

We would like to thank Blix Solutions AS for this generous donation to OpenStreetMap infrastructure.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organization, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project. You can support OpenStreetMap by donating to the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

Photo Credit. This photo of the Oslo tile cache server is kindly provided by Blix Solutions AS, licensed CC-By-SA and used by permission.

State of the Map 2013 – Birmingham

The OpenStreetMap Foundation, State of the Map Working Group, (SotM-WG) announced today that State of the Map 2013 will be held in Birmingham, England, from 6th – 8th September 2013.

The State of the Map 2013, in Birmingham will be the 7th edition of the official OpenStreetMap conference State of the Map (SotM). State of the Map conferences include:

Birmingham, England – Friday through Sunday, 06 – 08 September 2013
Tokyo, Japan – 2012
Denver, USA – 2011
Girona, Spain – 2010
Amsterdam, The Netherlands – 2009
Limerick, Ireland – 2008
Manchester, England – 2007

After more than five years, State of the Map is back in England. The country where not only the project started, but also the country where the first SotM was held.

The Birmingham bid-team are excited to host State of the Map. “We will work hard to ensure we have a memorable State of the Map 2013” Brian Prangle, the local team lead, says.

More information about the program, sponsoring, etc. will be made available in the coming months.

#SotM2013