September 21, 2011 -- 1Spatial is delighted to announce the company’s participation in a new, collaborative project OpenStreetMap Great Britain (OSM-GB), in partnership with the Centre for Geospatial Science at the University of Nottingham, to create a quality enhanced and topologically structured version of OpenStreetMap covering Great Britain.

OSM is a free and open worldwide map created by a community of over 450,000 volunteer contributors which has been described as the Wikipedia of maps. It is rich in detail and used in a wide range of applications on mobile devices and the web for navigation, games, search and humanitarian relief.

The OSM-GB is a 15-month research project, which has two main objectives:

• Using 1Spatial’s Radius Studio platform and data quality expertise, the research will explore rules-based processing firstly to identify, flag and then fix (where possible) any errors or inconsistencies in the OSM data and then to project the data on the British National Grid to create a repurposed dataset for the UK which will be available as a free OGC web service, a tile service or for download
• By improving the overall utility of OSM data for Great Britain, OSM-GB seeks to give increased confidence to the user community and attract users in the public sector and other domains who have not yet evaluated OSM data against their traditional sources. The project will test whether these “professional” users can be encouraged to become contributors to OSM extending the coverage and detail of OSM

An early example of the output from OSM-GB and further details of the project can be found at http://www.osmgb.org.uk

Jeremy Morley, Director of the Centre for Geospatial Science, University of Nottingham said:

“The rise of OpenStreetMap was one of the transformative stories of the previous decade, and as its coverage has improved so has the usefulness and uptake of the data. However, there remain barriers to professional, analytical use connected with issues of data quality and completeness and, to a lesser degree, the specific projection and tailoring for use in Great Britain. The Centre for Geospatial Science is particularly pleased to be partnering with 1Spatial, world leaders in spatial data and quality management, to research the means to create a quality-improved and verified OSM dataset. We look forward to adding further dimensions to the research of OSM quality, to examining how OSM can be combined with other map data sources to create best-of-breed products and feeding back quality reports to the OSM community.”

Robert Chell, Consultancy Manager at 1Spatial added:
“This project is a great opportunity for the Centre for Geospatial Science and 1Spatial to collaborate to understand the issues and build a set of requirements upon which we can base and deliver an effective solution. We are very much looking forward to building a good working relationship with the OpenStreetMap community and contributing to this growing and important enterprise.”

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About 1Spatial

1Spatial is an industry leader in the provision of intelligent data quality and integration solutions for organisations worldwide that need to trust their location-based information.  For more than 40 years, 1Spatial has been providing solutions and services to public and private sector organisations who handle high-volumes of business critical data.  By automating the transformation of complex and distributed data into accurate and valuable information, organisations can improve operational efficiently, reduce costs, manage compliance and improve decision making.   These solutions are delivered through its own sales and services team with headquarters in Cambridge, UK.  For more information, visit www.1spatial.com 

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About the Centre for Geospatial Science

The Centre for Geospatial Science (CGS) University of Nottingham is a post-graduate centre undertaking multidisciplinary research into spatial data infrastructures (SDI), geospatial intelligence, geospatial interoperability and location-based services (LBS). The Centre provides a nationally unique research grouping spanning both Geography and Engineering as well as employing researchers with computer science, mathematics and linguistics backgrounds. The multi-disciplinary mix is key to addressing the intersection of a number of disruptive technologies (ubiquitous positioning, sensor webs and remote sensing, novel user-generated content technologies, pervasive computing, developments in semantics/ontologies and spatial search, augmented reality and mobile communications). For more information see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cgs

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