Blog
Nov 18, 2025 |
Building Complete Address Coverage: How We Brought Every Address in Mississippi Together
Coverage in Jackson Mississippi To the uninitiated, address data appears simple. Scrawl an address on an envelope and a postal service will deliver it to the specified destination. However, the data enabling these systems is a complex mess of unique local formats, thousands of data sources, and obscure rules that…
Oct 14, 2025 |
Open Collaboration Wins: Overture Named to Fast Company’s 2025 Next Big Things in Tech
We’ve long thought that we’re onto something big here at Overture. And now the rest of the world does, too. I’m pleased to announce that Fast Company has recognized the Overture Maps Foundation as a winner in its 2025 Next Big Things in Tech competition for the Global Entity Reference…
Aug 25, 2025 |
Overture and the OpenTravel Alliance: Enabling the Future of Travel with Open Data
Overture is collaborating with the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), which recently joined the Linux Foundation and Overture as a member, to solve a long-standing challenge in the travel industry: data interoperability. For years, the travel sector has struggled to standardize location data for hotels, attractions, and other points of interest across…
Jun 25, 2025 |
Understanding Overture’s Global Entity Reference System
Today, Overture Maps Foundation announced the general availability of the Global Entity Reference System (GERS). GERS provides common, open, accessible IDs for geospatial entities like buildings, places, and roads, making data sharing, onboarding, and joining easier. This post explains how GERS works and how to use it. The Challenge GERS…
Jun 25, 2025 |
Introducing Bridge Files
One of our goals at Overture is to make geospatial data easier to work with. We want to help geospatial experts and data generalists easily connect to our datasets and, in turn, facilitate data sharing among them all. This is why we spend so much time on our persistent Global…
May 21, 2025 |
Reaching Billions with Up-To-Date Places Information in Overture
Imagine your business information seamlessly integrated into maps and location services used by billions of people worldwide. This isn't a future vision; it's the reality Overture Maps is creating today, powered by collaborative, open data.
May 15, 2025 |
Overture Member Summit 2025 Highlights: Transforming Map-Making Through Collaboration
The second annual Overture Member Summit recently brought together more than a hundred people from 30 member organizations in Charleston for three days of collaboration and progress. The energy throughout the event was remarkable, with members engaged in early morning sessions to late-night discussions about everything from Brussels sprouts to…
Apr 29, 2025 |
Why We Chose GeoParquet: Breaking Down Data Silos at Overture Maps
In today's data-rich world, the geospatial community faces unique challenges in storing, processing, and sharing this data at scale. As mapping datasets grow in complexity and size, traditional file formats struggle to keep pace with modern cloud environments and distributed computing needs.
Apr 1, 2025 |
Overture Maps Foundation at GeoBuiz 2025: Eliminating The Conflation Tax on Geospatial Data
The geospatial industry faces a critical challenge: we're drowning in data but starving for efficient ways to use it. A recent panel at GeoBuiz 2025 revealed how open map data collaboration might be the solution we need.
Mar 11, 2025 |
Making Open Data Part of a National Data Infrastructure
Amy Rose was recently named the first CTO of the Overture Maps Foundation (Overture) and will lead Overture’s work in making its datasets interoperable and accessible to all kinds of users. She has also recently been appointed to the federal government’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC), where she’ll join others…
