On August 1, 2024, Overture Maps hosted an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session, diving deep into their recent General Availability release and future plans. The AMA featured key members of the Overture team, including Marc Prioleau (Executive Director), Amy Rose (Technical Director), Pascal Clarysse (Fellow from TomTom), and Jennings Anderson (Software Engineer at Meta).
If you missed the live event, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with this comprehensive recap. If you’d like to hear directly from our team, watch the complete AMA session on our YouTube channel.
Key Takeaways:
- General Availability (GA) Release Highlights
- Transportation Layer Progress
- Global Entity Reference System (GERS) Insights
- Future Roadmap
GA Release Overview
Amy, Overture’s Technical Director, kicked off the session by explaining what the GA release means for Overture Maps. This milestone marks the graduation of Base, Buildings, Divisions, and Places themes from beta status, along with the establishment of Schema version 1.0.0. Notably, the GERS implementation now includes a changelog, enhancing transparency and traceability.
The release also introduced several exciting additions to the Overture ecosystem. A new Addresses theme has been added in alpha stage, opening up possibilities for more comprehensive location data. The launch of the new Overture Explorer site provides users with an intuitive platform to interact with the data. Additionally, the introduction of Overture tiles offers enhanced flexibility for developers and map creators.
Checking out “Lion Crushing a Serpent” in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Park
Amy emphasized that while this release is a major achievement, it’s just the beginning of Overture’s journey. The team is actively working on a schema versioning plan, developing detailed data guides for each theme, evaluating new data sources, and preparing the Transportation theme for its own GA release. These ongoing efforts underscore Overture’s commitment to continuous improvement of our open map data offerings.
Pro Tip: Start exploring the new Overture Explorer site to familiarize yourself with the latest data offerings and discover how they can enhance your mapping projects.
Transportation Layer Progress
Pascal from TomTom provided insights into the Transportation layer’s journey to GA. Currently, the team is addressing several challenges, including missing linear referencing for connectors, segmentation issues, and the need for longer ID stability monitoring. These factors have kept the Transportation layer in beta for now, but a clear roadmap to GA has been established.
The path forward began in July 2024 with the publication of a Splitter tool, providing users with control over way segmentation. The August 2024 Overture Release will introduce subclasses, adding more granularity to the transportation data. Looking ahead, the team plans to implement linear referencing for connectors in Q4 2024, a crucial step in enhancing the layer’s functionality.
To ensure the final GA release meets the needs of Overture’s diverse user base, an RFC will be published in August to gather community feedback. This is your chance to shape the development of the Transportation layer.
Keep an eye out for the RFC in August to provide your input on the Transportation layer and help shape its development.
Global Entity Reference System (GERS) Insights
Jennings from Meta highlighted the crucial role of GERS in creating a unified Overture ecosystem. GERS provides stable IDs across Buildings, Divisions, Places, and Transportation themes, serving as a backbone for data integration and referencing.
The benefits of GERS are far-reaching. It enables seamless integration of various data sources, allowing users to combine Overture data with their own datasets effortlessly. The system facilitates efficient linking of information across themes, creating a more comprehensive and interconnected mapping experience. Perhaps most excitingly, GERS enables third-party data attachment to Overture features, opening up a world of possibilities for customization and specialized use cases.
The Washington State Ferries Terminal building in the Overture Explorer page. The inspector panel shows the ID and other attributes, such as height, that was attached via GERS when the data was published.
Insider Tip: Consider how GERS can enhance your existing mapping projects by providing a stable reference system for data integration and cross-referencing.
Community Engagement and Data Quality Assurance
Marc touched on the growing Overture community, which now includes over 30 companies representing diverse use cases in mapping technology. This collaborative approach is central to Overture’s vision of creating high-quality, open map data sets that serve a wide range of needs.
Now that Overture’s data is available, we anticipate a growing user community. We want to build a community mechanism for those users to hear from Overture about plans and developments and for Overture to hear from users regarding what is working and where we can improve. Building these communications and this community is a goal as adoption grows. If you are already using Overture, we’d like to know and to add you to our list so that you can get updates and information as we move forward. Subscribe to Overture’s upcoming newsletter here.
The Overture team emphasized the importance of community involvement in improving data quality. Currently, GitHub repositories serve as the primary channel for reporting issues and providing feedback. However, recognizing the need for more user-friendly options, the team is developing plans for additional feedback mechanisms to make the process more accessible to a broader range of users.
Behind the scenes, Overture is developing robust validation processes to ensure data consistency across themes. These efforts aim to maintain high data quality as the project grows and evolves. The team encourages users to be as specific as possible when reporting issues, including detailed information about the location and nature of any problems encountered. This level of detail helps the team address issues efficiently and improve the overall data quality.
Best Practice: To contribute or provide feedback, check out the Overture GitHub repositories at github.com/OvertureMaps. When reporting issues, provide specific information about the location and nature of the problem to help the team address it efficiently and effectively.
Conclusion
The Overture Maps AMA provided valuable insights into the project’s progress and future directions. As Overture continues to evolve, community engagement remains crucial in shaping the future of open, collaborative mapping. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or mapping enthusiast, there are numerous ways to get involved and leverage Overture’s growing ecosystem.
Get involved:
- At Overture, our priorities align with the needs of our members. Become a member today.
- Explore the new Overture Explorer site.
- Check out the Overture GitHub repositories.
- Stay tuned for the Transportation Layer RFC in August.
- Consider how you can integrate Overture data into your projects using GERS.
Talk to us:
You can access the datasets by following the process outlined here. We encourage users to report bugs and provide feedback on the data, schema, and GERS on one of our Overture GitHub repositories:
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