January 21, 2010 – Today volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project announced that free mapping data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the United Nations and other sources have been organized into an open information network for the nation of Haiti. The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a public resource that may be updated by anyone and used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap editors, the Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief and rebuilding.

The Haiti SDI is based on international standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®): the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) Interface Standards. The Haiti SDI provides four capabilities:

Haiti SDI Cascading WMS – A unique service that provides a single access point for applications like Google Earth, Gaia SDI Platform and OSM editors that implement WMS. The service works by aggregating WMS deployed in the last few days into one easy-to-use resource - including New York Public Library, University of Cincinnati, CubeWerx framework WMS, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe imagery, government data and more.

Haiti SDI OSM WFS – A data service that refreshes from OpenStreetMap sources (Geofabrik) every hour, and deploys the data as OGC WFS so any application may instantly connect to the most up-to-date information from the OSM community.

Haiti SDI UN WFS – A data service that provides United Nations framework data through an open interface that implements the WFS standard. United Nations framework data includes Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population information.

Haiti SDI VGI WFS – A Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) service that enables anyone to add to the information described above, contributing their own Haiti framework data and information about emergency operations, locations, and points of interest data. This service employs OGC standards based tools such as the Gaia WFS-T Extender.


“We hope the Haiti SDI will help the people of Haiti and everyone working to assist them," said Jeff Harrison, coordinator for the Haiti SDI project. “We are planning coordination sessions in the coming days and working to make sure this resource is openly available to as many people as possible.”

All OpenStreetMap, United Nations and Volunteered Geographic Information for Haiti SDI are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

The Haiti SDI services are evolving rapidly. Updates are being posted on The Carbon Project’s blog at http://carboncloud.blogspot.com and links are being transferred to Crisis Commons. Please contact Email Contact for more information.

About The Carbon Project

The Carbon Project is an innovative, high-energy software and technology company specializing in spatial data infrastructure applications and innovative geosocial solutions. The company provides SDI, GIS and Gov 2.0 solutions to meet tomorrow's transportation, infrastructure, environmental and national security challenges. Headquartered in Burlington, MA with offices in Virginia, The Carbon Project is a privately owned company backed by individual investors. For more information please visit: www.TheCarbonProject.com.

About CubeWerx

Founded in 1996, CubeWerx develops Standards-based Commercial-Off –The-Shelf software products (SCOTS) in response to Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) requirements for interoperable information infrastructures. CubeWerx’s innovative products build on open standards, including OGC standards, to provide flexible service oriented architecture solutions. CubeWerx products allow large and small organizations to participate in a distributed infrastructure composed of users and providers of geospatial data and geo-processing services. More information on CubeWerx products and services is available at www.cubewerx.com.