Blog
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…
Mar 4, 2025 |
Overture’s User-Centric Focus – A Q&A with Albi Wiedersberg, Overture’s New Product VP
Albi Wiedersberg was just named VP of Product Management at the Overture Maps Foundation, where he’ll extend his existing work on meeting user, partner and member needs. The creation of the VP of product role continues Overture’s focus on filling out executive ranks in its third year of operation as…
Feb 18, 2025 |
Overture Maps Foundation: Making Open Data the Winning Choice
Overture Maps Foundation (Overture) was formed in December 2022 to address a pressing need for reliable, interoperable open map data. The vision was intentionally huge and transformative for the mapping industry, and, while much work remains to be done, the team has been making that vision happen, piece by piece.…
Feb 10, 2025 |
Building Platform-Agnostic Infrastructure: A Story of Collaboration at Overture Maps Foundation
At Overture Maps Foundation, collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. While our data releases and Explorer tool represent visible progress, there's an equally important effort happening behind the scenes: transitioning the data pipelines from member companies to Overture’s platform-agnostic infrastructure. This isn't just a technical migration —…
