Announcing the OpenStreetMap based Geoportal for Albania
Redon Skikuli
(blog post ne shqip: https://openlabs.cc/anoncohet-gjeoportali-me-te-dhena-te-hapura-ne-shqiperi/)
Municipality of Tirana, the biggest municipality in Albania, has agreed to donate geospatial data to OpenStreetMap using an open license.
After communications with local and international OpenStreetMap
contributors and following the memorandum of understanding signed in
2017 between the Municipality of Tirana and Open Labs hackerspace, the donated data have already started being added at OSM through geoportal.openlabs.cc.
The available data include, but are not limited to, buildings, height
of buildings, roads and their names and will help the Albanian open
source community contribute even more to the OpenStreetMap platform.
About OpenStreetMap
OSM is a collaborative
project to create a free editable map of the world. The creation and
growth of OSM has been motivated by restrictions on use or availability
of map information across much of the world, and the advent of
inexpensive portable satellite navigation devices. OSM is considered a
prominent example of volunteered geographic information and publishes
all its data in an open source license.
Technology used for the Geoportal
During the last months the Open Labs community has reviewed the donated
data carefully and started adding information on OpenStreetMap using the
newly launched geoportal.openlabs.cc, a tool developed by Jonathan Beliën, a board member of OpenStreetMap Belgium and an active remote member of Open Labs hackerspace. The geoportal was built using open-source software like MapServer and Apache.
At the moment it provides a WMS service and a TMS service displaying
the streets and the buildings provided by the municipality. Those
services can be used inside iD Editor or JOSM. The project could not be implemented without the contribution of Besfort Guri, an experienced geoinformation professional from the Kosovo free libre open source community.
Joni Baboçi, General
Director of Urban Planning and Urban Development at the Municipality of
Tirana, emphasized the fact that “the research, analysis and data
gathering effort completed by the Municipality in the framework of the
new General Local Plan TR030 are important public assets. It is
reasonable for them to be distributed to OSM or any other open source
entity so that the data – the work for the gathering of which has been
paid for by the taxpayers and citizens of Tirana – are put to the best
use in the service of citizens in every shape or form that they see fit.
We appreciate the collaboration and continuous support of Open Labs in
making this idea a reality”.
This was a big step forward as geographical data is being used on
many services nowadays, from government, startups, everyday citizens
etc. Having better geographical data makes Tirana more accessible,
easier to explore and also offers a great tool for developers and
companies to build upon. Many other cities around the world have donated
data to OpenStreetMap and now Tirana is now part of the cities
contributing to the public domain through open data donation.
R.S