NPS + OSM = Places of Interest

2013-06-12T00:00:00-06:00

Like many others, we are huge fans of OpenStreetMap (OSM). We use OSM data in many of our projects, and it is also a critical component of our basemap, Park Tiles.

Because of the important role OpenStreetMap plays in our projects and workflows, we have an interest in ensuring OSM coverage for our National Parks is as complete and accurate as possible. Therefore, we want our Parks to be active and engaged citizens in the OpenStreetMap community, and we also want the Park Service as an organization to contribute back to the community in substantive and meaningful ways.

Given all of this, we are excited to announce a new project our team is undertaking for the National Park Service called Places of Interest (or POI). We've established two overarching goals for POI:

Streamline the process of getting National Park Service data into OpenStreetMap
Make it as easy as possible for both the public and non-technical NPS employees to help improve Park Service maps

This post will outline our initial thoughts about how we might be able to meet these goals. Our plan is a work-in-progress, and we expect it to evolve as we work our way through the project and learn more from the knowledgeable OpenStreetMap community.

The Plan

Our vision for Places of Interest is an integrated system that facilitates moving data back and forth between OpenStreetMap and our internal NPS datasets. The system will include several different components:

A public-facing instance of the new OSM editor, iD, that the public can use to contribute data to the Park Service.
An internal instance of iD that our employees can use to contribute to OpenStreetMap and/or our datasets.
A set of internal tools that Park Service employees can use to validate data coming in from public contributors and other NPS staff.
Services and tasks that publish data (validated or raw) via web services and file downloads for usage in our digital maps and other applications.

Raw data coming in through the public interface will be pushed to both OpenStreetMap (under the ODbL license) and internal NPS databases, where it will be considered public domain.

If relevant, data created via the internal interface will be pushed to both OpenStreetMap and our internal databases. An example of non-relevant data would be something like the location of water stops along a trail race in a park. We will house this data in a separate system and publish it so it can be consumed by our digital maps, but it would never be pushed into OpenStreetMap or one of our internal enterprise databases.

Relevant data that make it through our internal approval processes will be pushed into the corresponding NPS dataset and will also be tagged as nps:approved=yes and pushed back out to OpenStreetMap.

Here's a flow diagram to help illustrate how all the different pieces fit together:

Benefits

The benefits to be gained from integrating OpenStreetMap into our internal workflows and data structures are numerous. Places of Interest will allow us to:

Take advantage of an untapped resource

Our National Park Service GIS community does a tremendous job developing and maintaining geospatial data for our Parks, but they are limited in number (some Parks don't even have local GIS support) and often overtasked. Places of Interest will allow us to take advantage of the 1,000,000+ OpenStreetMap contributors and the 22,000+ Park Service employees who likely don't even know what GIS stands for. These groups make up a huge untapped resource of motivated individuals who are passionate about our National Parks and willing to help improve our data and maps.

Tell our stories

Places of Interest will also enable those 22,000+ non-technical Park Service employees to tell stories they've never been able to tell before. These employees work on-the-ground to protect some of the world's most beautiful and iconic places, and the knowledge they've gained from their experiences needs to be shared.

Up to this point, if a Park Service employee wanted to build a map, they had to overcome numerous hurdles - technical and otherwise. Places of Interest, coupled with a few other tools our team is working on (namely Park Tiles, the NPMap JavaScript library, and the NPMap Builder), will eliminate these hurdles and enable our employees to build and deploy high-quality digital mapping products.

Open up our data and processes

Places of Interest moves the Park Service in the direction defined by President Obama's Open Government Initiative, which has three primary tenets: Transparency, participation, and collaboration.

One of the primary goals of Places of Interest is to mirror authoritative National Park Service geospatial datasets out to OpenStreetMap, so it can be used by the public, other government agencies, and private organizations in any way they choose. If we can accomplish this goal, we will also be in compliance with President Obama's May 9, 2013 Executive Order: "Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information."

Further our mission

Places of Interest also fits right in line with NPS Director Jon Jarvis' "A Call to Action" initiative, which is intended to prepare the National Park Service "for a second century of stewardship and engagement." Specifically, Places of Interest falls in line with two actions:

Go Digital: "Reach new audiences and maintain a conversation with all Americans by transforming the NPS digital experience to offer rich, interactive, up-to-date content from every park and program. To accomplish this we will create a user-friendly web platform that supports online and mobile technology including social media."
Out with the Old: "Engage national park visitors with interpretive media that offer interactive experiences, convey information based on current scholarship, and are accessible to the broadest range of the public. To that end we will replace 2,500 outdated, inaccurate, and substandard interpretive exhibits, signs, films, and other media with innovative, immersive, fully accessible, and learner-centered experiences."

Next Steps

This post is just the beginning. Places of Interest is a huge project, and we are not going to be able to change the way the National Park Service "does" geospatial data overnight.

Over the coming months, we are going to tackle a few specific tasks to help move Places of Interest forward:

Introduce our parks to OpenStreetMap and (hopefully) get them excited about engaging with the OSM community.
Work with the NPS and OpenStreetMap communities to improve coverage for our Parks.
Define priority themes and tags for National Park Service data. We will utilize existing OSM tags, where available, and propose new tags and/or use interim tags, where necessary.
Build out the system and pilot its usage and the worfklows in a few parks. Data that our parks contribute to OSM will be tagged nps:verified=yes.

Get Involved

We are excited to work with the OpenStreetMap community, and would also love to have you involved!

If you are interested in helping out, join the talk-us-nps mailing list, where we'll be posting project updates and Park Service employees will be interacting with members of the OpenStreetMap community. We would also love to hear any feedback you might have. You can reach us at npmap@nps.gov or get in touch on Twitter: @npmap.

Heading to State of the Map US

2013-06-05T00:00:00-06:00

Nate and I are headed to San Francisco for State of the Map US (SOTM) this weekend. SOTM is a gathering where people from across the country meet to discuss, learn, and present about the work they're doing with OpenStreetMap (OSM).

We'll both be presenting in the "OSM in Government" track on Sunday, June 9th starting at 10:30am. Nate will present on our new Places of Interest system, and I will present on an OSM pilot project that we recently did with Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

All sessions at the conference will be live streamed and posted on the State of the Map US website, so be sure to watch if you can't make it to San Francisco. If you're going to be in San Francisco, find us or get in touch on Twitter: @npmap!

Denver OpenStreetMap Editathon

2013-04-17T00:00:00-06:00

Join Mamata and I as we help improve OpenStreetMap coverage for our National Parks at the Denver OpenStreetMap Editathon this Saturday, April 20th, on the DU campus.

We'll be meeting in Room 123 of Boettcher West (2050 E. Iliff Avenue) from 10am-4pm. Wifi is provided, but make sure to bring your own laptop. You can RSVP on the OSM Colorado Meetup event page: http://www.meetup.com/OSM-Colorado/events/108729232/.

We hope to see you there!

Using Park Tiles in ArcGIS Online

2013-03-22T00:00:00-06:00

Esri recently released a new version of ArcGIS Online that introduced some new capabilities, including the ability to add a Tile Layer with a URL template. This means that Park Tiles, which is designed and hosted using tools from MapBox, can now be added to an ArcGIS Online map.

How To

Go to the My Map view in the ArcGIS.com map viewer
Click on the Add button in the top left hand corner of the My Map interface
Select the option to "Add Layer from Web"
From the drop-down in the Add Layer from Web window, choose the option to reference "A Tile Layer"

Copy and paste the follwoing into the "URL" field:

http://{subDomain}.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/nps.pt-shaded-relief,nps.pt-urban-areas,nps.pt-river-lines,nps.pt-admin-lines,nps.pt-park-poly,nps.pt-mask,nps.pt-hydro-features,nps.pt-admin-labels,nps.pt-roads,nps.pt-road-shields,nps.pt-park-points,nps.pt-hydro-labels,nps.pt-city-labels,nps.pt-park-labels/{level}/{col}/{row}.png

If you would like to use Park Tiles as your basemap layer, check the option "Use as Basemap"
Give the map a Title and Credits
In the Subdomains field type the following: a,b,c,d
Click the button to "Add Layer"

You should now see Park Tiles loaded into the ArcGIS Online map viewer.

You can hide layers by taking the ID of the layer out of the URL. For example, you can hide Road Shields by taking nps.pt-road-shields out of the URL.

Our Conference Schedule for 2013

2013-02-21T00:00:00-07:00

Sequestration is putting a bit of a damper on our travel this year, but we are still planning on attending and presenting at several conferences. Mamata is doing the bulk of the traveling, but our entire team is going to try to make it to State of the Map US in San Francisco in June. Here's a list of the conferences we'll be at this year:

FedGeo Day - February 28, 2013 in Washington, DC
FOSS4G NA - May 22-24, 2013 in Minneapolis, MN
SOTM US - June 8-9, 2013 in San Francisco, CA
NACIS - October 9-11, 2013 in Greenville, SC

If you are going to be at any of these conferences, make sure to find us and say "hello"; we'd love to talk shop!

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