It’s true. Getting data into OpenStreetMap can, at times, be difficult.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are some great applications out there for pulling data off your GPS, or tracing Yahoo imagery or adding your favourite coffee shop as a POI from your iPhone. But, what if your organization has building footprints in Darwin Glacier Lambert Conformal 2000 for an entire city in Oracle Spatial and you want to put that data into OSM?
I have written in the past about using data from OpenStreetMap in your FME workspaces as a data source, and so I was happy when we recently added a very early stage writer to compliment the reader. So what does this new OSM writer mean? Well, if you’ve got some data you would like to share with the OSM community, you can write it to OSM XML just like you could with any other format supported by FME. If you want to load your city’s public data into OSM you can use FME to create OSM XML from that data. (Note, make sure the license of data you don’t own allows this, just because it’s public doesn’t mean it can legally be loaded into OSM. Read and understand the terms and conditions)
To use this writer you will need to be running an FME 2011 beta. It is still in a somewhat early stage of development, but will improve as time goes on, and become easier to use.
So if you use OSM data, and you have something to share, why not give back to the community by loading it into OSM? Download an FME 2011 beta and let us know what you think. If you’re not a current FME customer, feel free to sign up for our evaluation program for a 14 day trial. Once you get your trial license, you can download the beta and be up and running with our OSM writer. We’re always open to comments and suggestions!
Michael Weisman
